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10k Raspberry Pi Units Available In December
An anonymous reader writes "A tweet appeared from Raspberry Pi stating the launch of the $25 PC wasn't happening in November as expected. So I decided to investigate further and contacted Raspberry Pi to see what was going on. Eben Upton was kind enough to email me back and give us some good and bad news. The bad news is: we aren't getting the $25 PC this month as expected. But that's where the bad news ends, as it is still arriving in 2011 for some people. Eben confirmed that an order has been placed for 10,000 units, but they won't arrive until the end of November. That means we will see Raspberry Pi go up for sale in December, but it won't be a typical 'get as many out the door as you can' launch. Those first 10k are earmarked for programmers as software is desperately required before a full consumer launch." Update: Apparently some of the details about the production of units and who can get one from the first batch have changed. Raspberry Pi has updated their front page with the latest information.
Please read from the horse's mouth:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
Quote:
An article in today's www.geek.com suggested a couple of things -- first, that we're already producing units, and secondly, that we're limiting sales to programmers only at first. Both of these appear to be the result of some horrible miscommunication (blame Eben; he's very tired).
Whoops as I read off the raspberry website
If you want one, and you click on the buy button in time, you can have one; they’re being sold on a first-come, first-served basis, whoever you are, and whether or not you are a programmer.
Still, a good enough programmer can ensure they get one merely by writing a page-watcher up to and including an entire ordering bot.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Here is the quick and dirty from their website:
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.
We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.
Our first product is about the size of a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.
Provisional specification
700MHz ARM11
128MB or 256MB of SDRAM
OpenGL ES 2.0
1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
Composite and HDMI video output
USB 2.0
SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
General-purpose I/O
Optional integrated 2-port USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller
Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
But low-power and ideal for server use. Currently I have a old laptop functioning just as an MPD server, it's overkill for such needs. I'd love to replace it with a Raspberry Pi.
The GPIO expansion ports have been intentionally made difficult to access on the Pi (to eliminate risk of accidentally plugging in something that makes it unhappy is the claim, but probably the real reason is that easy physical access to the ports would more rapidly piss off those who buy it and realize the BCM2835 datasheet isn't available unless you're a megacorporation or an ex-employee like Eben is.) Heck, the product page on Broadcom's website for this device is nothing but a marketing blurb. Anyone familiar with Broadcom's history with open source is not going to be surprised by this - it's typical classic Broadcom.
If you want to do embedded computing work and not just have a set-top-box without a case - look at the new BeagleBone. It's more expensive, but with a significantly faster CPU (same clock speed, but the Cortex-A8 does much better than the ARM11 IPC-wise) and the I/O is brought out to standard 0.1" pin headers. In addition, it takes 20 seconds on Google to find the AM3358's product page, which immediately gives you an internal block diagram of the chip, and the full TRM (datasheet) for the chip is right near the top of the page.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Some of it is open, some of it is not. Broadcom has certain IP entanglements that prevent them from open sourcing everything. The graphics drivers are almost certainly going to be closed source, but I believe Broadcom has a bounty out for creating an open-source TCP/IP stack that performs as well as their current closed source implementation. Pray tell, though, what hardware is there currently that's super-low-power, low cost and does 1080p30 h.264 and is all open source drivers?
I'd encourage people to visit www.raspberrypi.org to read the clarification we've posted. Summary
- we're in the process of accumulating parts kits for the first 10k unit production run
- we'll be doing a phased launch, to avoid the risk of kicking out 10k units and having them come straight back with a trivial early-life bug
- the majority of devices will be available on a first-come first-served basis, with a small number held back for continuity of supply to key partners
Eben Upton
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Jeez. Read the summary. Obviously it's a company that's going to launch 25 dollars. Presumably into space.
As to why you should care; well if you're a nerd you just will. 'Cause, like, this is slashdot and stuff.
This product is no more suitable for microcontroller applications than an eee-pc.
Arduino's appeal is that of low level electronic access. It can take voltage readings or output PWM and digital voltage signals. More advanced projects use serial or I2C communication with peripherals but it is all really low level access. As they say, Arduino is for physical computing.
Raspberry Pi is meant to be an inexpensive computer.... an application platform where the primary input and output are a keyboard and a monitor.
They may both be small, green, and electronic, but they are no more competitors than donuts are to potato (starchy brown food?).
How the fuck was it easier to write a comment than to fucking Google it? And how is there always some asshat who does this every single story?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What is Google and why should I use it?
Would you rather they start shipping when they only have 3.14k units in inventory?
If your project needs more I/O pins than the Raspberry PI makes available and does not require the increased memory, storage and CPU available in the Raspberry PI then an Arduino might be better suited for you.
Also Arduino boards can be programmed in pure ANSI C. All the Arduino development library does is provide some functions, headers and libraries to make embedded programming more portable across several Arduino models of hardware. You can also write in pure C++ as well there's just not a STL library ported to the Arduino yet AFAIK.
You know how it is. Haters gonna hate :)
In all seriousness, we haven't taken anyone's money, and have spent a lot of our own time and money on this. We've been very open with people about the challenges we face in getting something like this done, and will continue to be open in the run up to and aftermath of launch. We're big boys, and can handle the hate.
Eben Upton
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Thanks for the kind words. I think we're about to learn some fun lessons about what selling tens of thousands of something involves, and we'll be doing it all in public :)
Eben
Massive agreement with this. We're *big* Arduino fans (and I personally am a big Atmel AVR fan). The few bright spots in computing education right now are around exactly this sort of cheap and cheerful hardware platform. We wouldn't want to do anything to undermine them.
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Not sure where the hate is coming from here. I totally agree Beaglebone is a very neat product for people with a bit more cash and no need to drive a display.
And ex-employee? My badge didn't let me in the car park this morning, so maybe you know something I don't :)
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation
IMHO, yes, and you gave the use case yourself: "Arduinos are programmed in a scaled-down version of C. C is fine for simple things, but gets more difficult when dealing with complex algorithms." As I've said elsewhere, I've already got two Arduino Unos, but I'd still like a Raspberry Pi for a couple of more complex projects that would be difficult to implement on the Arduino. OTOH, a Raspberry Pi would be overkill for most of the things I've already done with an Arduino. Actually, I'm not even sure how you would connect a Raspberry Pi to something like an IR sensor, a BMP085 temperature/air pressure sensor, or a string of LEDs. Maybe I missed it, but are there even raw CMOS or TTL level outputs on the Raspberry Pi without having to break out USB or video outputs?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Thanks. The selling millions thing is an interesting one. When you look at the amount of working capital required to get beyond the 100k units per annum point, it's pretty intimidating. Which is why we'll be giving away the schematics and Gerbers in due course to enable clone makers.
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation
It's interesting that the community's scepticism about the price point is pretty much inversely related to my own. As we've nailed down the BOM and assembly costs, and become more confident that we have a saleable product with margin, the level of doubt *outside* the foundation has crept up :)
The proof of the business model pudding will be when we've sold 100k and I still have a house.
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation
"Not sure where the hate is coming from here."
Where's the TRM? Where's the datasheet? That's where the hate is coming from. That and years of bad memories involving Broadcom WLAN chipsets on Linux due to lack of datasheet access (and, in general, lack of access to any documentation at all)
Compare the following webpages:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/BCM2835 - Marketing blurb, no block diagrams, no datasheets, no nothing
http://www.ti.com/product/am3358 - Block diagram, family parametric comparison, and an EXTREMELY complete datasheet
For someone like the OP who is planning on doing embedded computing (by necessity, more "low-level" than just using the device as an STB), having a processor datashete is an absolute and complete necessity
Since the BCM2835's datasheet is not available (in typical Broadcom style) - why even bother wasting board space on a GPIO/SPI/I2C header that no one who purchases the Pi is going to be able to be able to use?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah, Gumstix is kinda need for embedded work too. If you want video interfaces, the BeagleBoard is the way to go. The problem is that accessing the GPIO/SPI/I2C etc of the Beagle is pretty difficult just due to how the headers are laid out. There also isn't that much "nifty I/O" for embedded work on the Beagle, as its processor is more "general purpose" oriented.
The Bone is an entirely different animal - much more GPIO and more flexible I/O.
The SPI interfaces on that Sitara are insane... They appear to be able to run at tens of megahertz clock rate, there's two McSPIs, and each supports two enable lines.
I've had a project in mind for a while that would have a Xilinx Spartan-3E's BRAM exposed to a host processor via SPI - Originally I was going to use an LM3S6965 as the host, but the Sitara will be much easier. The BeagleBoard's expansion arrangement would've made this very difficult.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A little more info, more along the lines of why there is so much generic Broadcom hate and distrust within the Linux community:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 - If you go down about 3/4 of the page, you'll see that:
Until 9/9/2010, the only drivers for ANY broadcom device were created via reverse engineering. Broadcom provided ZERO support to the b43 developers, and I'm fairly certain they still don't have any proper technical documentation. (Sorry Broadcom, but source code isn't documentation.)
After 9/9/2010 - only THREE chipsets (out of quite many) had any sort of "official" open source driver support for Linux from Broadcom.
Meanwhile, chipsets from other manufacturers (Intel, Atheros, Intersil/Harris, Ralink) have had robust open source support for a VERY long time. For many years, Broadcom WLAN chipsets were completely useless in Linux due to Broadcom's refusal to provide any documentation.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?