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First Run of Raspberry Pi Boards To Be Completed Feb 20th
An anonymous reader writes "Raspberry Pi has confirmed the first batch of $35 PCs will be constructed on February 20. They've also coaxed Broadcom into releasing the datasheet for the board. Apparently the company hit a snag with the quartz crystal package so there was a manufacturing delay, but it's since been resolved and things are on schedule for later this month."
From the announcements: "Eben and I may be going to China to make sure that the boards can be brought up properly for that date if necessary. We’ll be airfreighting them to the UK immediately, so you should be able to buy them before the end of the month."
For Asian markets, why dont they ship directly from China instead of moving them to UK first and then shipping them to their destinations
Infact, for all non EU destinations wont it make more sense to ship directly from China?
Will avoid multiple customs duties as well. (no customs will need to be paid for the UK entry)
I predict all of the Pi stories will move from my Slashdot RSS feed to my Hackaday RSS feed.
Raspberry Pi has confirmed the first batch of $35 PCs will be constructed on February 20
To save any ambiguity, the actual release says:
The good news is that this finally means we have a date for the first batch: the boards will be finished on February 20
Read up on it for more information. This is my understanding of it:
The first run is of the Model B, as they anticipate more people are interested in that set of hardware. Their FAQ likely provides more in-depth information that what I have provided here.
Troll, but:
Don't have a TomTom then?
Or one of the thousands of set-top boxes that use it?
Don't have a TV from a big-name manufacturer (e.g. Sony to name one) with media capabilities?
Don't have a Kindle?
Don't have an Android phone?
Seems to me that Sony, Kindle, Android, TomTom are all big-names and all in the consumer market where almost everyone has at least one themselves, or certainly know someone with one. That's without even trying to dig for more information, too.
P.S. How's Windows Phone coming along?
.. with no case (just bare board)...
I made a quick check and if you have a replicator or access to one or a friend with one, thingiverse seems to be flooded with different case designs for the pi. I would not be surprised if a replicator owner would squirt one out for you in exchange for a six pack.
I have noticed over the years that /. is stereotypically wimpy about basic handyman skills... Buy a box at radio shack or home depot electronics dept and drill a couple holes in it, no problemo...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Quoting user shirro from the Raspberry Pi comments:
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
My understanding is that anybody who obtains the full version of all Broadcom datasheets, unless placed under an NDA of Greater Warding, will have everything he needs to discover their CEO's true name(in The Old Tongue) by which he can be banished forever from the temporal plane.
Understandably, he is kind of touchy about that.
Quartz crystals for geeks 101:
Quartz crystals are the basis of reliable, relatively frequency stable oscillators. They are at the heart of most every computer system of any size or complexity (yes, some use RC oscillators, others use more exotic stuff, but, we're talking the 99% here...)
Without a reliable time source, you cannot do asynchronous serial communications and any number of other things that require your computer to have the same sense of time as another computer it is attempting to talk to.
These same crystals are also at the frequency basis for many radio systems for similar reasons, except in the radio realm the crystals can be used to control the radio frequency for transmitters and receivers to lock to each other without much tuning fuss.
Extra geek points if you remember the crystal color combinations to make Sleestak repellent noise (from Land of the Lost).
They're only making them in batches of 10,000 so I don't think there's a risk of them over producing giving their current demand. If the number of people subscribed to the mailing list and raspberry pi forums is any indication of interest they will easily sell several 10,000 lots this year. Many people, myself included are interested in buying multiple of these devices each.
If you compare the $50 roku to the $35 raspberry pi, the $50 roku contains no ethernet port, no usb port and no SD card. It also only support 720P instead of the 1080P the raspberry PI supports. The $35 raspberry pi has more hardware features and is $15 less expensive than the $50 roku. The $50 roku does come with a remote control and free shipping which the $35 raspberry pi does not have.
...if you have hopes for Flash and Silverlight based streaming services...
How much widget-ry (advertising sources) do you even need? I have hopes that Raspberry Pi will accomplish their mission of letting whoever wants to program, learn how to program. In my opinion, the smarter the human race, the better. /naivedreams. And the best part about all of this is, if you do care enough about Hulu etc, you can just take chromium and adapt it to the PI or wait till it runs android apps, etc. I think the biggest issue is getting these things out to the people that want them.