Raspberry Pi Gets a Red-Tape Delay; Awaits CE Certificate

judgecorp writes "After many delays, the Raspberry Pi computer has arrived in Britain, but has been stopped by the need for a CE approval sticker to say it meets European regulations. The Raspberry Pi Foundation expects the sticker to be a formality, and says it failed to apply because it thought the Pi did not qualify as a 'finished end product.'"

Comments

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody in that foundation even thought they'd need to meet CE regulations? What else have they forgotten about? Is it even RoHS compliant?

Re:Seriously?

[interkin3tic]

lets not pretend this has been handled well.

Compared to what? How large consumer electronics organizations release hotly anticipated products? In the case of the Galaxy Nexus or whatever you want to call that phone, I was waiting around for months to hear a date announced. Then it was announced, then it was recanted. Then a worldwide release date that excluded the US was announced. I believe that may have been taken back and forth a time or two, don't really know since it didn't affect me. Then there was a US release date that was complicated by carriers dragging their heels or FCC approval or something like that. One could argue that's not directly samsung's fault, I'd argue it's about as much samsung's fault as this current issue is raspberry pi's fault. Anyway, by the time it finally got here, I had already bought a galaxy S2, which itself was rescheduled several times, once I believe due to some patent issues.

I hear some of you already typing that this is not a fair comparison, and you're right: samsung has much more money and employees to get it right.

Also, the street dates on the phones seem to have been announced very shortly before the actual release. I'm assuming that was so that they could squeeze a few more dollars out of people buying new, very soon to be obsolete phones. Which is bullshit.

Anyway, my point is this: On things I really want to buy, I want to have a rough estimate as to when I can buy it as early as possible. Delays are always going to happen, and I'd rather have a company push the date back and explain why it's delayed rather than the "Available next week. Actually no, it's not going to be, we'll tell you if and when it's happening. That is all."

Re:Seriously?

[citizenr]

The initial 10k batch was made on behalf of the Foundation at some factory in China. That batch of 10k are being resold by Farnell and RS. Further production of the Pi will be handled by RS and Farnell.

So "we're making a batch, they're at the factory being made, bear with us" and "here these companies will now make them!" are both true.

Thats the thing - RS and Farnell DIDNT SELL A SINGLE BOARD because THEY NEVER HAD ANY to begin with. That 10K batch was a LIE.
RS and Farnell took orders for the boards they are going to make _in the future_. Latest mail from Farnell informed me my order will be completed in July ...

btw. Rasppi doesnt like when you say thay they SCAMMED you, mods deleted all my comments from their site when I pointed out there never was a 10K batch and my "launch day" order turned out to be preorder for something Farnell is going to make in HALF A YEAR.

Re:Raspberry Pi already obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

The Raspberry Pi is already obsolete. Rhombus-Tech is coming out with a board based on the Allwinner ARM implementation, 3x as fast as the obsolete CPU the Pi crowd is using. "Mass-volume pricing (just for the CPU card, and therefore excluding tax, shipping, profit, a case and a power supply) looks to be on target for around $15:" They're also looking at reusing the BeagleBoard form factor (which is much like an Arduno) and coming out with a fast Linux board in that format.

By the time the Raspberry Pi crowd delivers, they'll be obsolete. Much like the OLPC.

and when will this ship? 3 or 4 years after? =))

Shady.

[flimflammer]

I'm confused how the Pi folks thought they could claim the device is both unfinished and finished to avoid the import taxes and CE certification? It kind of makes me question their competence.

Re:Shady.

[DaveGod]

Because import taxes and CE dictate different definitions of finished product.

This might imply your questions of competence should be directed to them instead, but bear in mind the respective organisations have quite different objectives and anyway the term is clearly a subjective one. It's not justifiable to burden one with the requirements of the other just so that the definition is consistent.

The thing that leads you back to questioning their competence may be that if they knew what they were doing they probably would have done it even if not required. It's common practice to do it just because it makes it a lot easier for anyone down the line who is turning it into a product that does require CE. Open a complex consumer product (your PC, for example) and you'll find CE stickers on about everything in there.

But it's a classic victim of it's own success. Basically all their strategy and decisions assumed a niche/enthusiast type product and their resulting actions may well have been perfectly appropriate had that been the case.

Where's the actual hardware

[DrYak]

Raspberry Pi have reached the step, where there's actual hardware, which has arrived in Britain (and so is alread under the hands of the makers, can already be tested/developped on/hacked with/whatever by the internal developpers) and just awaits CE certification before getting shipped to the end-users.

The EOMA-68 card is currently on the paper stages:

The prototype schematics are presently being developed.

It will be some time before it ship, too.

Each time that some small scale, partially or fully open maker wants to put hardware on the market (be it Pandora console, OpenMoko FreeRunner phone or its newer GoldenDelicious motherboard, OLPC, Raspbery Pi, Always Innovating's SmartBooks, and countless other project), there are delays.
Because these aren't done by large-scale constructor with lots of expertise in designing circuit and who can leverage their big numbers of mass order to get priority for components. (Big names like Asus have experience. Big names like Apple get prioritised when ordering 4mio CPUs)
On the other hand, as these process are publicly documented, newer projects will learn from the mistakes of older ones.
So you can expect that: when the next ARM-based gizmo gets announced, there will be delays, but fewer than with previous projects, and the device will be less likely to be obsolated, or ridden with un expected bugs. (See the difference with the first OpenMoko phones, which went thourgh several problems, and took longer to complete, and the newest motherboard from GoldenDelicious which was produced with a much shorter delay).

Maybe in 5-10 years, such projects will have collectively cumulated enough experience so they can avoid common pitfalls, share some design elements, designing experience, and so on. And thus most projects of this kind will be really faster to reach end-users.

But currently, the kind of delays that the Raspberry Pi expirienced are normal, and will probably still be seen with other similar small scale projects.