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

Re:Seriously?

[VMaN]

No, seeing as comparable systems, like BeagleBone etc don't...

Next Up - GMO Testing

[cybrpnk2]

Next they'll have to prove that a Raspberry Pi is not a Genetically Modified Organism.

Raspberry Pi already obsolete

[Animats]

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.

Re:Raspberry Pi already obsolete

[gmarsh]

The $15 card you're describing is a PCMCIA card form factor. Feel free to explain how to power it, plug a keyboard into it and hook it up to their TV without another $15 card with all the connectors you need for a practical application.

Also, the Broadcom on the Pi is about as obsolete as the ATMega parts used on the Arduino card. It gets the job done in the application it's put in. God forbid it's slower than a high end Cortex-A8 processor...

Re:Seriously?

[bsane]

Raspberry Pi delayed? Shocking!

I thought we were just days away last month?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/696

TLDR: Saturday 2/25 Eben expected the boards to ship (to them) that day or Monday.

I'm sure the Pi-ers will mod me down fiercely, but come on guys... I ordered one too, I want one, but lets not pretend this has been handled well.

Re:Seriously?

[Hatta]

It's a bare board. They figured they'd get lumped in with arduino, etc, as "components" and not have to get certified. They're probably legally right, but the supplier doesn't want to take the risk. So they wait.

I dunno why they're waiting though. They could easily take their product to another supplier and sell out just as fast.

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.