Please send some boards to important key developers without CE of FCC

[alpha]

I'm not a important key developer. However if 10000 units is to much to send out as development boards then it should be OK to send 200 to 300 boards to at least some people that can prove that they are acceptable to receive this without markings.

I guess like people that are part of a Linux distribution and maybe the maintainer of ARM port or people that can show a hardware hack like Gerd... I think it would be beneficial for the rest of us that will maybe do something like this but are not going to do it right now.

Just disregard this idea if your test is done and you can start shipping very soon to all of us.

[andyl]

Don't worry - a number of boards were sent out to people like that quite a while ago.

[pepedog]

Archlinuxarm only has one, an alpha board. Please. Need. More.

[louisb]

I would particularly like more boards to go more of the openELEC and XBMC developers, as this is the main reason that I am buying a RasPi.
Thanks

[jamesh]

I'm sure more boards will go out to people who the Foundation thinks are suitable candidates. Although anyone is welcome to order from Farnell and  RS.....and I've heard they are quite cheap.

[Jim Manley]

JamesH said:

I"m sure more boards will go out to people who the foundation thinks are suitable candidates.

I look forward to early seeding for our MMORPG Pi-finity! and printable case projects. To whom do we make our anonymous bribery checks out? The Liz Upton Truffle Collection Society?


..... and I"ve heard they are quite cheap.


If time really _is_ money, as many have theorized, they"re going to be quite expensive, given all of the delays ... no! No!! NOOOOO!!! Not the dreaded mind-control self-choking maneuver, my Dark Lord Vader!!! GAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

[teh_orph]

I reckon this is a great idea. I have a stack of code totes done on my PC, tested months ago via emulation...just need a board to bring it up on. I'm also keen to work on this X port - surely "getting in there before the mass" is useful in this case?

(2+3, wup wup!)

[pepedog]

Jim Manley said:


JamesH said:


..... and I"ve heard they are quite cheap.



This is not the problem. If I ordered 5, when would they arrive?

I can pay for them. They are cheap. How frustrating is this?

[scep]

pepedog said:

This is not the problem. If I ordered 5, when would they arrive?
I can pay for them. They are cheap. How frustrating is this?



In the scheme of things waiting for a small, low cost computer I would put at 'mildly frustrating'. Two years ago I sat in a four month queue for an Amazon Kindle. I wanted one right away but they could not give me one right away. I was frustrated and I muttered bad things about Amazon.

At the same time my dad was in a queue for a heart op. Looking back, Amazon's shortcomings were relatively inconsequential, as was my frustration.

[Jessie]

This is one of the few times I'm going to side with the OP.  Don't make me regret it   There are 2000 boards sitting on a pallet.  We have already waited so long to get one and now we are waiting longer because Farnell/RS want a CE cert.  Well, I'm sorry, but if they want a stamp then good use could be made of these finished products by giving them to devs while Farnell/RS get their testing done.  What are these distributors going to do if the board won't pass CE without a PCB revision?  They just aren't going to buy them, and all this waiting will be for nothing.

I have defended this project tooth and nail, and will continue to do so because the end goal is noble.  But the current situation frustrates me, and I can gaurantee it is diverting people to other ARM projects.  I have already moved two projects to other ARM based boards.

Please don't feel my admission is a ticket to complain freely, I just want people to know that I am just as frustrated as the rest of you.  Also I appologise for this rant because the foundation members have worked hard, harder than most people realize.  They have taken personal risks, stuck their necks out at work, and all of this just to get an in-expensive computer out the the masses.

Sorry to piss and moan.

[rurwin]

It would be impossible to allocate the whole 2000 units to deserving developers. It would be trivial to pick one developer that could do great things if they had a RaspPi now. It would progress the foundations plans to allocate some number, much less than the whole pallet, to development teams that can not work without real hardware.

Otherwise those teams will be stalled for up to six months while they wait for hardware to develop on.

So let's give out a handful of units to those developers that are producing software that is vital to the foundation's mission. By all means make them pay for them, but get that software started as soon as possible.

[jamesh]

Most of the original alpha boards went to developers,  a few of the final boards are already in the hands of developers (at Broadcom - how do you think we fix bugs!). So it's not like this isn't going to happen. Not sure how many Eben has kept back for dev purposes but it's a number > 1.

However, if we start reallocating a lot of boards that people ordered in good faith on the 29th to people who haven't been in the queue.....anyone fancy dealing with those emails?

JFYI, I haven't got a release board either.....

[nick.mccloud]

I promised myself I wouldn't post on this dilemma again and I've almost lasted two weeks but ...

I too have gone as far as I can without some actual real hardware as most of my project is actual hardware (electronics, not another case).

A concern here is that as we are doing stuff with GPIO and will want to do some robustness testing, I'll probably end up pushing it too far and blow at least one board up! So two would be nice.

[RaTTuS]

i want a robotic pony also

and my need is greater than everyone else

mind you I'm going to have to wait like the other 200k+ people

[spurious]

I just got one of these to start playing on an arm processor in a limited resource environment.

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpe.....ctId=49178

It's basically a headless Linux box with an Arm9.

has Busybox on out of the box, but working on putting some more useful tools like gcc and opkg

[tufty]

Jessie said:


But the current situation frustrates me, and I can gaurantee it is diverting people to other ARM projects.  I have already moved two projects to other ARM based boards.


If you've moved them to other boards, they obviously didn't /need/ to be on the Pi, did they

From my personal viewpoint, the more people there are who wander off and implement their set top boxes on other suitable / available hardware, the better it is for the actual goals of the foundation.

JamesH said:


Most of the original alpha boards went to developers


Developers, you say?

http://hackaday.com/2012/03/22.....ent-609891


However, if we start reallocating a lot of boards that people ordered in good faith on the 29th to people who haven't been in the queue.....anyone fancy dealing with those emails?


The phrase "how would they know" springs to mind.  After all, Element14 have been changing estimated delivery dates for preordered boards on a seemingly hourly basis for over a month now...

I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised that a couple of hundred of the boards weren't grabbed by the foundation specifically for the purpose of seeding educational projects. Actually, make that "very surprised, and extremely disappointed".

Simon

[rurwin]

tufty said:


JamesH said:


However, if we start reallocating a lot of boards that people ordered in good faith on the 29th to people who haven't been in the queue.....anyone fancy dealing with those emails?


The phrase "how would they know" springs to mind.  After all, Element14 have been changing estimated delivery dates for preordered boards on a seemingly hourly basis for over a month now...


Since the boards have not come through rework yet, and there is a non-zero wastage in that process, the distributors can not have allocated all 10,000 boards, or even the 9,700 that got through the initial build. In fact they should have been rather conservative. So there are probably a couple of hundred that are not allocated to buyers.


I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised that a couple of hundred of the boards weren't grabbed by the foundation specifically for the purpose of seeding educational projects.


That's the point. The project should directly support the foundation's goals.

On the other hand, of course, "how would we know?"

[Bakul Shah]

A bit late to worry about this issue.

While we wait a useful project might be to add code to qemu for a '-M raspi' option that emulates 2835 peripherals logic as per the datasheet. Plus a framebuffer. Such a thing would have a number of uses.

[tufty]

rurwin said:


That's the point. The project should directly support the foundation's goals.

On the other hand, of course, "how would we know?"


Well, I'd know, as I'd have one in my hands[1]

I've actually suggested this before, but if we assume that the foundation have a small stock of boards "in hand", rather than giving them out, the foundation could, and should, loan them and require a large deposit in case of non-return, which might, at least, stop them being used for making STBs and MAME machines[2].

Simon

[1] Well, maybe.  Or maybe not.  But James or Liz would probably tell us anyway.

[2] Not that there's anything particularly wrong with buying a Pi and making it into a STB or MAME machine, but that's not doing anything to further the goals of the project as a whole.

[jamesh]

tufty said:





I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised that a couple of hundred of the boards weren't grabbed by the foundation specifically for the purpose of seeding educational projects. Actually, make that "very surprised, and extremely disappointed".

Simon


What makes you think that hasn't/isn't going to happen? 400 are going to QT developers for example.

However, please remember that the first batch of boards was paid for by Eben re-mortgaging his house. If he gives them all away.....

[reiuyi]

ITT: Oh my just look at all the 'programmers' wishing early access to a Raspberry Pi! I'd want it is much as everyone else while I can only write batch scripts in perl and send pwm output to leds! I'm sure that in a couple of weeks, or however long it takes to get the last important jobs done, once the pipeline has been laid and supply is near infinite, no one will be complaining

I have been following this site from the moment they placed their first blog entry, and man has it been a long wait. In the mean time, it has elevated my hobby for electronics once more. Whereas before I couldn't really be bothered designing and building anything on my own, I've recently built a custom enclosed cmoy, successfully implementing an ad8620 (one of the most demanding and annoying opamps ever) as an example project to get me up and running again. The long wait for the raspberry pi has given me interest into arduino and general embedded stuff. I'm currently looking into PIC programmers by com interface

Disagree all you want; I think the waiting has done more good for the community than any IT class they ever took !!

[tufty]

JamesH said:


tufty said:





I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised that a couple of hundred of the boards weren't grabbed by the foundation specifically for the purpose of seeding educational projects. Actually, make that "very surprised, and extremely disappointed".

Simon


What makes you think that hasn't/isn't going to happen?


It's not really a question of thinking it isn't going to happen, it's the total lack of public information suggesting that it is going to happen, or has already happened.

If the objective of getting the Pi into schools is ever going to be met (let alone the idea that it might be possible to do so before September), there's a lot of work that needs to be done – CAS are doing a lot of groundwork in terms of getting changes made at the curricular level, and it appears that work is paying off, but I don't see much in the way of educational activity being pushed by the Foundation at the moment.  Now, it may well be that this is a question of visibility, or simply that there's too much going on at the moment, what with dealing with the various – ahem – "hiccups" that the first production batch have hit, but it would, at least IMO, be worth explaining what's actually going on WRT the educational goals.


400 are going to QT developers for example.


Indeed, they are.  However, of the 425 projects tentatively "accepted", only 23 fall into the "educational" category.  That is actually a pretty good hit rate, although many of the projects don't really help with what the Pi was intended to do.  Still, those 400 boards are presumably stalled, along with the rest, awaiting CE approval.

There are a number of people on here who are working on stuff for the educational goals of the Foundation, and many of those projects could be seen as being important drivers for the short-term target of getting Pis into the hands of teachers and kids[1].  Those projects, and thus the goals of the foundation, could benefit enormously from having a loaned Pi now, rather than a bought Pi at <insert date here>.


However, please remember that the first batch of boards was paid for by Eben re-mortgaging his house. If he gives them all away…..


What, you mean he hasn't got a second house to remortgage?  Bah!

Simon

[1] For the benefit of DeliciousRaspberryCake[2], my own project is more long term, and although it's stalled in part by not having a device to test on, I can, and will, wait as long as I need.  I think you'll find that's the case with most of the people posting in this thread, including James.

[2] I'm glad the project (and the wait) has spurred you to play.  That, in itself, is a win.

[jamesh]

tufty said:


JamesH said:


tufty said:





I must admit, I"m somewhat surprised that a couple of hundred of the boards weren"t grabbed by the foundation specifically for the purpose of seeding educational projects. Actually, make that "very surprised, and extremely disappointed".

Simon


What makes you think that hasn"t/isn"t going to happen?


It"s not really a question of thinking it isn"t going to happen, it"s the total lack of public information suggesting that it is going to happen, or has already happened.

If the objective of getting the Pi into schools is ever going to be met (let alone the idea that it might be possible to do so before September), there"s a lot of work that needs to be done – CAS are doing a lot of groundwork in terms of getting changes made at the curricular level, and it appears that work is paying off, but I don"t see much in the way of educational activity being pushed by the Foundation at the moment.  Now, it may well be that this is a question of visibility, or simply that there"s too much going on at the moment, what with dealing with the various – ahem – "hiccups" that the first production batch have hit, but it would, at least IMO, be worth explaining what"s actually going on WRT the educational goals.


400 are going to QT developers for example.


Indeed, they are.  However, of the 425 projects tentatively "accepted", only 23 fall into the "educational" category.  That is actually a pretty good hit rate, although many of the projects don"t really help with what the Pi was intended to do.  Still, those 400 boards are presumably stalled, along with the rest, awaiting CE approval.

There are a number of people on here who are working on stuff for the educational goals of the Foundation, and many of those projects could be seen as being important drivers for the short-term target of getting Pis into the hands of teachers and kids[1].  Those projects, and thus the goals of the foundation, could benefit enormously from having a loaned Pi now, rather than a bought Pi at <insert date here>.


However, please remember that the first batch of boards was paid for by Eben re-mortgaging his house. If he gives them all away…..


What, you mean he hasn"t got a second house to remortgage?  Bah!

Simon

[1] For the benefit of DeliciousRaspberryCake[2], my own project is more long term, and although it"s stalled in part by not having a device to test on, I can, and will, wait as long as I need.  I think you"ll find that"s the case with most of the people posting in this thread, including James.

[2] I"m glad the project (and the wait) has spurred you to play.  That, in itself, is a win.


The problem with saying (and I'm not saying this has happened) "Yes, we have sent out 200 dev boards to these people so expect good stuff from them" is that there are x10 as many people not on that list who want one and are going to get pretty cheesed off as they think they have just as much right to free/early Pi as the other devs.

It's a tough decision to publicise this sort of stuff. We have already had flak from devs re: the alpha board allocation - people who hadn't got one and thought they deserved one, people who had got one, but one wasn't enough etc.

I'm not so bothered about the educational dev split at this stage. All devs working on the board are likely to come up with stuff that improves the educational side, whether that's the intention or not. And a lot of educational stuff can be developed on desktops and ported very easily (as it should be mostly Python). That's what I am doing.

[Joe Schmoe]

@spurious (#15):

You actually have one - in hand - right?

I ask, because the web page makes it sound like it still in the "vapor" stage.

Anyway, yes, it looks really good.  Pretty much equivalent to the Rpi for most of the things I've thought about using the Rpi for.  Just missing the audio/video, of course.  Price is about the same, so if you can really get one, right now, then it could well be a better do.

BTW, just to be clear (assuming you do actually have one in hand), you can hook up an ethernet cable and login to the box, right?

Side comment: That's my definition of a "computer".  If you can log into it (in the traditional way), then it is a computer.  If not, it is an appliance.

[jamesh]

Looks interesting. Not that fast in comparison with Raspi as it has an Arm9 CPU. At that prices I might get one if you can indeed log in to it.