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ModMyPi Raspberry Pi Case Offers 5% Back To the Foundation
An anonymous reader writes "The Raspberry Pi Model B is now available to purchase, but most people are still waiting for new stock to be manufactured and delivered. In the meantime you can prepare for the tiny PC's arrival by figuring out what to do about a case. The fact the Raspberry Pi ships without a case doesn't cause a problem when using it, but encasing it in plastic will help protect and keep the dust off the components. Geek.com has already reported on one case design from hobbyist designer Marco Alici, but now another one has appeared that actually has a release date, color options, and an extra incentive to purchase it."
It's been a week since the last Raspberry Pi article, quick, let's create another that doesn't have much to say!
I had a girlfriend like that once. She'd phone me up in the middle of the night to see if I still loved her.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I wouldn't say that they're ready for purchase, seeing as how I pre-ordered mine at launch and it hasn't shipped yet.
You need the case on or it will drop your connection.
They're trying to make it as cheap as possible. Even TFA mentions this.
I figured I'd just build a small case for mine out of legos. Fun, easily modified, and undeniably geeky - if owning a Raspberry Pi isn't already enough of a geek sign.
At the risk of implying a consideration of the long term effect or *shudder* morality into capitalist economics, it is cheaper to have a local manufacturing base than rely completely on some rights-ignoring nation half way across the world. Hell, in under a year I'm sure they could get local manufacuring ramped up to the point that any cost difference is negligible. This is all the more important when you are trying to set an educational example for future domain experts with your product.
And, frankly, the few people put off by having to pay an extra $5 for initial runs will be entirely offset by the PR coup of demonstrating that, yes, it is still possible to build stuff in the West.
But, like I said, it's clear that the Raspberry Pi is just a tacky Broadcom sideline.
Did you just quote XKCD? So, it has come to this.
price = manufacturing + advertising + profit
advertising = price*0.05
price = manufacturing + price * 0.05 + profit
price = (manufacturing + profit) * (1/0.95)
Its 3D printed, why does it have to have flat sides so the USB ports stick out? Why not have a non-flat side so the USB ports are properly protected...and the hole for the HDMI port shaped the like tHDMI port...
Please rename the headline to "Random guy designs case that doesn't quite fit a product that noone can get yet"
I paid $35 for the Raspberry Pi and $5 for shipping. I have no idea where you got the idea they raised there prices. Unless you live in a place that has nice VAT or some other local taxes..
If you really think this is all useless and not really going to happen, then why don't you ignore it? That would be the reasonable thing to do.
By posting here, you are drawing attention to something that you don't like. No one compelled you to read any of the posts about the Raspberry Pi system. If you are right, ignore it and it will go away.
Your position is self contradictory. What is wrong with you>
Why is Snark Required?
5% of the profits is not the same as 5% of the sales. While it's good to hear that ModMyPi will be kicking back to the Raspberry Pi foundation, I shudder at the thought of Hollywood Accounting.
Except that it wasn't cheaper or faster. Heck,even the tax structure was against them. Importing components was taxed while importing the finished board wasn't. It was their intent to build locally and wasn't possible at the price point they wanted to hit.
Importing components was taxed while importing the finished board wasn't.
So the Foundation claimed.
We're still waiting for them to point-out the specific clause. No-one else seems to be affected by it.
At the risk of implying a consideration of the long term effect or *shudder* morality into capitalist economics, it is cheaper to have a local manufacturing base than rely completely on some rights-ignoring nation half way across the world.
Uh-huh. Because the rest of the world is local to $YOUR_COUNTRY, and it's cheaper to produce electronics in $YOUR_COUNTRY because Anonymous Coward says so. Convincing.
We're still waiting for them to point-out the specific clause. No-one else seems to be affected by it.
Except all of the electronics manufacturers who are doing their production in $OTHER_COUNTRY and also seem unable to justify producing their electronics in $YOUR_COUNTRY.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
Buy a fancy case, a PSU, a universal all-in-one remote, a IR dongle, a bluetooth dongle, a USB hub, a wireless keyboard / touchboard, an HDMI cable, cable tidies and a nice back lit display to mount the unit on. All you need now is the Raspberry Pi board to stick in it.
All this bitching about the Raspberry in general and this case goes to show just how fucking hard it is to make a good solid product. We barely think about it but for every product out there we just use without issue, a hell of a lot of people spend a hell of a lot of time, just getting it right.
Take something as simple as a drinks can, you know the kind you get soft-drinks in. Once, they had pull of tabs, and those tabs had sharp edges and they got thrown away and people stepped on them with bare feet and got hurt. That is why nowadays, can's have a opening that opens inwards leaving all bits attached.
It took DECADES for this to change. It might now seem like rocket science but clearly it was.
Apple seems famous for good design yet its white mac-book air, the plastic one, when opened had rounded edges for the bit on your desk, and sharp edges for you to lay your hands on... not very comfortable at all. A minor issue? You would think BUT this issue is known about (how many keyboards have hard sharp edges to lay your wrist on?) and yet, Apple made this mistake again when the problem should have been known as well as the solution.
When you make a thingy like this raspberry board there a million things to think off, often things that someone somewhere has already solved but getting all that knowledge into one place has never been done (go ahead, point me to a resource where every mistake in designing say an MP3 player has been recorded, let alone with the solution) and so mistakes will be re-made and re-solved over and over again.
If you ever think of making your own product, estimate the time you need to make it, then add ten times that time to examine it against all other similar products so you can prevent making the same mistakes they did.
Good luck getting that approved for budget. So more then a hundred years after the first keyboards, we still get keyboards with hard sharp edges biting into our wrists...
And you worry about a cable not clicking.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Except all of the electronics manufacturers who are doing their production in $OTHER_COUNTRY and also seem unable to justify producing their electronics in $YOUR_COUNTRY.
A single business doesn't care about what's going to happen in the long term. Businesses exist to satisfy the financial demands of their shareholders and executives, and getting "rich enough" without taking much risk means doing what seems quick and easy today. There are a few enlightened investors and entrepreneurs who don't operate like this - some of the richest people on the planet among them - but by far the majority do.
They're trying to make it as cheap as possible. Even TFA mentions this.
And they've already raised the price to accommodate their resellers, so obviously price wasn't as fixed as they originally claimed anyway...
ORLY?
I'm not an "hobbist designer", as written in many blogs. I'm a Mechanical Engineer and I work as Industrial Designer since 2001 (see http://marcoalici.wordpress.com/info). ;)
My case is designed to be printed by Shapeways (http://www.shapeways.com),using highly professional SLS (Selective Laser Sintering), SLA (Stereolithography), and FDM (fused deposition modeling machines. Nothing to do with the overall quality of home/DIY hobbyist fused-wire deposition processes. That's why it's not so cheap.
Just as a clarification.
Best regards,
Marco Alici
I think they eventually changed this after everyone yelled about it, but originally their selected retailers were adding hefty extra charges on top of VAT and shipping in quite a few EU countries. You may not have noticed the complaining because they stuck all discussion of the retailers and pricing in the off-topic section of the forum and closed a lot of the threads just like this.
At the risk of implying a consideration of the long term effect or *shudder* morality into capitalist economics, it is cheaper to have a local manufacturing base than rely completely on some rights-ignoring nation half way across the world. Hell, in under a year I'm sure they could get local manufacuring ramped up to the point that any cost difference is negligible.
That'd be great if it were true, but it simply isn't. There's a huge amount of capital equipment, skills and expertise that's needed for efficient electronics manufacturing and a few hundred thousand boards is no where near enough to support this kind of investment. Cheap labour might give China an edge, but it's economies of scales and manufacturing experience that make them hard to compete with.
I've been involved in outsourcing electronics manufacture from Australia and the Chinese companies we've dealt with provide better quality, take half the time and charge half the price of local manufacture, and these aren't sweat shops.
I think they eventually changed this after everyone yelled about it, but originally their selected retailers were adding hefty extra charges on top of VAT and shipping in quite a few EU countries. You may not have noticed the complaining because they stuck all discussion of the retailers and pricing in the off-topic section of the forum and closed a lot of the threads just like this.
psshh. the pi rdf means that you should be excited for a product that's both _cheap_ and _charitable_, if you got something negative that's OFF TOPIC. doesn't matter if there's no actual charity aspect(it's in pipeline) or if everyone involved is making money from the product. but it's not a product, since that would imply being a business selling to consumers which would imply some responsibilities.
(another offtopic note is that you can get android comps on a puck with hdmi out, remote control in etc for 70-80 bucks including shipping)
it would be nice if the next Pi article had something about some dude who received his pi doing something cool with his pi.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
but it's economies of scales and manufacturing experience that make them hard to compete with.
Exactly. Someone needs to have the balls to kickstart manufacturing in the West. Kinda like the evil pre-'80s socialist governments did all over Europe, and China has been doing for the past two decades. And Broadcom had the opportunity to plant a seed... but didn't.