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Raspberry Pi Production Delayed By Factory's Assembly Flub
nk497 writes "The first shipment of Raspberry Pi devices has been delayed, after the factory manufacturing the cheap educational computer used non-magnetic jacks instead of ones with integrated magnetics. The problem is already nearly fixed, but new jacks need to be sourced for subsequent shipments, so those could be delayed slightly. 'It's inevitable, isn't it — you're freewheeling along perfectly happily and then you get a puncture,' said spokeswoman Liz Upton, apologizing for the delay."
Can someone explain to me what advantage a magnetic 8P/8C connector has over a non magnetic one? I have no idea where this would be used. My cables have that little lock tab not a magnet. Does it not need the little tab anymore (that always breaks off)?
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
From the Raspi forums :
"It doesn’t mean no network connection at all on all devices, but this board has been designed for a magnetic jack. The magnetic bits mean better signal integrity, better filtering and shorter transmission distances for data."
"Magnetics refers to the presence of transformers and chokes which are used to isolate the Ethernet wires from the RaspPi’s power supply. and each other and probably to reduce high-frequency noise. Without them you would effectively tie the RX and TX signals together and probably turn the entire network into an aerial for Radio 2 reception."
The magnetics in question aren't to hold the connector in like those in a Mac power cord, but rather the tiny transformers that are required for Ethernet differential signal isolation/transformation.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I think many people, me included, have been expecting something like this to happen. As said in the article, this is a relatively minor bump in the road that was practically inevitable and they seem to be handling it as well as could be expected.
I suspect they’ll get a bit of flack over the “4 day” thing... however they would have gotten a lot of flack if they came out with some information that turned out to be incorrect. I guess they could have come out saying “there is a minor problem and we are investigating”... but we aren’t talking credit card leaks here, and a few days to figure out what exactly happened seems fair enough to me.
I certainly don't think this is time to start panicing and referencing OpenPandora.
I can understand this critisism as I've had it many times over many different periods of "omg, not another <whatever> story".
But I'm way too damned excited over the Rasperry Pi to care! Kinda fun being on the other side of things for a change :D
How do they work?
Bye Bye, my Raspberry Pi,
I thought that I might buy you,
but the warehouse was dry,
those good old boys say just wait one more month,
but you keep running into delays,
yeah, you keep running into delays.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I have, thank you, and the transformer can be used to do exactly what I said as well as for pure isolation with the resultant signals retaining their differential status. Please consider that there are other Ethernet circuits than the one(s) you're familiar with before making general statements. Some really do need single-ended signals into the PHY.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Maybe they were using the wrong kind of tyres.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Well, the good news with everything being manufactured in the Far East is that wait a few hundred years and the Morlocks will be so far away they won't be able to eat the Eloi.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I was going to make a joke about suicide due to the shame of making this mistake, but then I remembered that this is a Chinese factory. DON'T KILL YOURSELF!
They advertise the hell out of their product, then they predictably can't deliver, then they silence any and all criticism on their forum (because not being all positive is "bad attitude", and they don't allow that), then another disaster strikes. I guess it's called karma.
If you order now, you're going to get a delivery estimate about 3 months from now. Their mailing list had more than 100000 subscribers, and Liz Banhammer has the audacity to claim surprise when demand exceeds the initial 10000 batch.
Blame the extortionate tariff on importing components versus the lack of tariff on finished goods for production being outsourced. Here's a direct petition on the matter: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/27158 -- that is the direct reason manufacture is being outsourced. From what I understand of the Foundation's statements on the matter no economy of scale could overcome the cost of the tariff because the bill of materials cost would be too high to be profitable at the desired price point as a result.
And I don't see any cost increase. Model As are $25 before tax and shipping. Model Bs are $35 before tax and shipping. That has never changed.
Fucking magnets! How do they work?
I'd certainly pay more for these things.. but their entire goal here is to make these as cheap as possible.
They also posted a pretty damn good explanation as to why they had to outsource.
I do hope they recover from this (and I suspect they will.. it's not OpenPandora yet..) and take some hard won lessons about testing and assumptions.
I also feel forry for the poor guys down in China who have to hand unsolder/resolder 10,000 of these suckers.
Actually, no. This is what happens when you outsource manufacturing to vendors in countries like China where it is common practice for them to quietly substitute parts between the reference design stage and when the device hits production. Sometimes, you get lucky and they even tell you in advance that they're doing this and you have a chance to evaluate impact on the design. Most times, they simply do it and pocket the difference in cost while hoping not to get caught.
Still good value?
What about when the returns start flooding in because a 1 cent component failed when a 2 cent one might have soldiered on? Budgeted for handling that?
I know these guys are amateurs, but do they really need to keep demonstrating it?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Perhaps you would be interested to find out what the tariff actually is? Or perhaps your definition of "extortionate" isn't the same as mine. Hint: the upper limit across the various electronics tariffs, last I checked, was 14%. Broadcom does not deserve the blind trust geeks seem to be awarding it over this Raspberry Pi project: even though some of the characters may be familiar, we're a long way from the days of the BBC B where a bunch of bright uni students got together with academic entrepreneurs.
It is, of course, quite absurd to charge on components but not on finished computers. A tariff should be a function of rights imbalance and amount of work involved. So a relatively free nation would not be subject to significant tariff, whereas a nation like China would be subject to a high tariff, the tariff increasing for completed products as more work was done under conditions not acceptable to the consumer nation. I cannot think of a better way to get developing countries to improve their citizens' fortunes. Can you?
And finally also to remove DC components, many PHYs have a constant DC component on their output lines because it's easier to vary the output currents while keeping it in the same direction than it is to change the direction of a current while maintaining smoothness.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
No, the main reason it's not financially sensible to manufacture mass-appeal items in the UK is that the unemployment benefits are higher than chinese assembly workers' wages. You can't get native brits to take on menial work as they can get more money for being unemployed than, for example, picking vegetable or jobs that other stoop labour industries can afford to pay.
If these boards were to be assembled in the UK the costs of doing so (setting aside component costs and amortised developemnt costs) would make each board massively more expensive.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Why do you assume that the same mistake - or one like it - would NOT have been made if the boards were assembled in the west? Since western wage rates are so much higher than chinese ones if this error had been made in a british or american plant it would probably be cheaper to simply crush the whole batch and start again,
Then instead of a 1 month delay, you'd be waiting 6 months - or never, since the RPi foundation would have gone bust as it was banking on the sales of these units.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How many people are killing themselves trying to keep up production with the demand for Raspberry Pi.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
This sort of thing is precisely why the standard Slashdot rant of "all they did was put x, y and z together, this isn't innovating!" is so much silliness. It's not easy to mass produce things. It takes planning and more planning. It takes money and more money than you planned on because some small aspect of Murphy's law is going to pop up and rip your balls off.
It's why the Motorola Xooms of the world come with stupid little missing bits and even why our fearless denizen of perfection, Apple, still screws first releases up 99 times out of a 100.
Production electronics is not building a Heathkit in your bedroom.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What phone do you have that costs under $25?
From TFA:
It's actually very hard to tell unless you look at the insides of the part,
Ohmmeter?
Have gnu, will travel.
This is also what happens when you talk about whatever fuckup occurred on the dark end of your super-fancy-don't-look-too-closely-contemporary-JIT-outsourced-supply-chain...
Consumer electronics widgets are constantly having their ship dates quietly revised, usually with a terse announcement from some PR flack that 'Release of Widget Foo has been moved from late Q1 to mid Q2'. Or they just go up for pre-order and take longer than initially promised to ship. Annoying; but hardly unusual.
In this specific case, I'm a bit surprised that they didn't have somebody plug one into their laptop and then wonder why the NIC wasn't working slightly earlier in the process; but so it goes.
Once again what phone was this? I take your inability to answer such a simple question as a sign that you are lying. So good day.
In this specific case, I'm a bit surprised that they didn't have somebody plug one into their laptop and then wonder why the NIC wasn't working slightly earlier in the process; but so it goes.
Reading through the forums, it sounds like they were sent early test boards which contained the correct connector before the full run. Sounds to me like the "accident" happened between the test run boards being signed off on and the full run.
So 40 Euro shipped plus tax. Versus 40 dollars (or 30 for the cheaper version) shipped for the pi. Get back to me when the concept of conversion rates sinks in to you head.
Also, let me know when you get your phone connected to hdmi and ethernet.
Then again you're an idiot who thinks a rasberry pi is a phone so I doubt there's hope for you.
I have only dabbled in electronics, but I don't care for the term "magnetics" (nor I have ever heard it before). I would think "inductor" would be a better term. Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about care to illuminate what the difference is between "magnetics" and inductors?
Better known as 318230.
I've said it before and I'll say it again and again and again. The release was insanely successful. This is a small crew with a fairly limited budget. They essentially sank all the cash they had into the first 250k and I am amazed that they still came together and are going to be able to get the first batch out without a major delay. I'm guessing licensing to these two companies had something to do with it. With no pre-orders how are they going to give preferred status to the early orders? The first 10k people get theirs shipped first so yeah they got preferred status. Do you mean the mailing list? It took them days to send out all of the emails it ended up being impossible they had over 100k people on the mailing list and only 10k boards. When apple sells out of iPhones for a month its a huge success, when this tiny company sells out a quarter of a year already its a huge fail... I don't think so this release has been insanely successful the only thing they could have done better is if they had more cash to set up the initial shipment better but alas the money tree crop hasn't been doing so well for the world lately and for a tiny group of people doing something to save the world they did damned good.
"Firstly, the schedule for manufacture for every UK business we approached was between 12 and 14 weeks (compared to a 3-4 week turnaround in the Far East)."
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509
[Posted on January 10th, 8.5 weeks ago - and manufacturing had already started at that point].
I guess UK manufacturing wouldn't have been much slower, after all.
RS
I bought a Samsung 1080 for £9.99 at Tescos recently, SIM unlocked.