Entries Open For First Ever 24-Hour Raspberry Pi Hackathon

concertina226 writes "Called the Raspberry Pi 'hack day', the competition will pit 100 entrants against one another in a number of categories using only the board, Internet access, soldering irons and as much coding as they think appropriate. Participants will have 24-hours to complete projects, at the end of which winners will be awarded from a variety of prizes including camcorders, Android tablets and the geek must-have, the Hubsan H107 Quadcopter."

Comments

No comments

[Anonymous Coward]

One hour and no comments. Looks like no one cares. Not even the First post trolls.

Re:No comments

[CaptainOfSpray]

You want comments before breakfast? You can't handle comments before breakfast. Translation: this is a European event, we haven't had our first coffee yet.

Re:No comments

[BitZtream]

Its not that no one cares, its that no one can get their hands on the freaking thing.

The delays have been so horrible someone has to be artificially holding them off at this point.

One of the sources has had my money for 7 months and nothing yet arrives, still backordered.

Foxconn could have built the fucking factory and delivered a half a billion units by now.

The Pi is basically a bunch of hype with little to no devices in anyones hands.

Use an alternative, they don't cost much more and you can actually touch them.

Re:No comments

[CaptainOfSpray]

Not true - only one supplier has been that incompetent, and that one will wake up and ship if you cancel the order. There are plenty of alternative suppliers that promise 1-week delivery, and actually achieve faster than that. There's a factory in Wales producing 16,000 units a week, and the Foundation reckons they will have shipped 1 million units this year (the original target was 100,000).. As for what people are doing with it, you are rather behind, shipmate. Read the Foundation blog http://www.raspberrypi.org/ to catch up on what's going on.

Re:No comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? I've got two currently and am considering a third (for the larger memory etc).

I suspect that you may be doing something wrong, since I'm sure there's only a 2-4 week lead time tops on them now?

Re:No comments

[BitZtream]

Please show me who has them in stock and shipping.

I just looked at the web site, the suppliers don't have them in stock.

I would love to be wrong here.

Re:No comments

[drinkypoo]

Show us someone who has them in stock and shipping the same day, and for less money than it costs me to ship a fucking toaster oven. I can order pretty much anything I want (keyboards, motherboards, whatever) straight outta China with free shipping, but it costs fifteen bucks to ship something the size of a deck of cards from the UK to the US? That is pure bullshit, and fuck them in their greedy ears for charging so much. If they can't find people in the UK willing to work for a reasonable wage and able to drop things into envelopes and apply labels quickly enough to get them out at a profit without robbing people for handling fees, perhaps they should move their operations to some other country. Oh wait, I forgot, the R-Pi people are all proud of assembling in the UK. Well, maybe they should leave the whole business to someone who can do it efficiently.

Re:No comments

[ratbag]

As I've said in other threads on this subject: cancel your order with RS, go with Farnells. I just received my second, rev 2.0 board. My first (rev 1) Pi is running the home PBX quite happily using IncrediblePBX. The second one was ordered on 2012-11-06 and arrived on 2012-11-20.

Re:No comments

[ratbag]

A quick search on the pi forums finds a US user with the following experience:

by skdrowe Â
Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:39 am
Used Newark/ Element 14. Ordered 8/3/2012, Shipped 8/10/2012 Arrived today Calif /USA. (8/20/2012).
Merchandise Total : $35.00
Handling Fee : $0.00
Tax : $3.06
Shipping : $7.65
Total : $45.71

In short, you're spending too much time whining and not enough time shopping around. Feel free to buy one of the many competitive products out there. I suspect your entitlement mentality may hit a brick wall when you seek any support from the no-name manufacturers who ship free from China, but YMMV.

So much hate for a cheap computer aimed at opening the horizons of kids.

Re:No comments

[Anonymous Coward]

I have bought and received two R-Pis already, both in the last 60 days. First one was shipped in three days (Farnell UK) and the second was took a week to ship from RS's local Finnish rep. It would seem your supplier is really bad.

Re:No comments

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get them now. I just connected one with a powered USB hub and a USB sound adapter to make a network jukebox I control with my Android phone or iPad. I'm thinking about adding some IR adapters so it can turn the receiver on/off automatically. I'm buying another Pi to learn about i2c and play with ultrasonic range sensors, and maybe one to put together my own weather station. You can make a lot of simple projects with a Pi and spare parts left from previous computers (old USB WiFi, Bluetooth, sound adapters, hubs; DVI monitors, spare cell phone chargers, etc.) Then graduate to simple electronics. There are a bunch of other low cost system-on-a-chip options out there now, and the Pi isn't right for everything, but there's a great community of people playing with them and sharing information. The great thing is that they're cheap enough that even if the Pi turns out to be the wrong choice, you didn't spend much to find that out. And, you've still got a Pi that might be right for a different project!

Re:No comments

[drinkypoo]

A quick search on the pi forums finds a US user with the following experience:

The plural of anecdote is not data. A quick search on the pi forums will find US users with the opposite experience ordering from the same vendor. Great, neither of us have proven anything.

My hate is not for the computer. In fact, I have no real hate. But I dislike being lured in to the early adopter group — I didn't order one until after they announced they had Android 4 running, which they still haven't released for whatever reason. Originally they said there were problems with sound and networking, then I read that there were licensing issues with videocore, now they've released the opengl stubs neeed to fix that but there's still no release of something they said they had working ages ago. But I do admit that I should have known better.

Re:No comments

[JonySuede]

I ordered one from Newark after javaone and I am currently running XBMC on it. I just looked at the site they are out of stock until nov 26, then they will have 1321 more

Re:No comments

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting......for my pi to arrive, it's only been 2-3 months. *sigh* Least I get the 512 MB upgrade.

Re:No comments

[illtud]

I got 5 from CPC (farnell) the morning after I ordered them this week.

Solder what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are you going to solder if you are only allowed the board, Internet access and coding?
Solder your code to the board? Solder your Ethernet cable to the board?

Re:Solder what?

[AK Marc]

How are you going to prevent someone from creating 1,000,000 lines of code and putting it on a web site to download during the competition?

Re:Solder what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honor code. Next question.

Re:Solder what?

[CaptainOfSpray]

The Pi has GPIO pins. You can control almost any electronic device that you can build or modify or connect to during the competition. Personally, I would use a breadboard, but that's because I am absolutely crap at soldering.

Re:Solder what?

[CaptainOfSpray]

You might to solder up something like http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/04/12-things-to-make-raspberry-pi

Re:Solder what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually propose an RPi to run a Nixie Clock?! A £2 MCU would be a more than adequate replacement.

Re:Solder what?

[slim]

I think GP's point is that "only the board, internet access, soldering iron and coding" is a finite list that does not include a breadboard or any other device.

Yes, it was pedantic. But pedantry is fun!

Who wrote that article?

[NewtonsLaw]

Is TechWorld for real or is it someone's blog?

"The best overall winner will also be given a tour of Sony’s Welsh in which the Raspberry Pi is manufactured"

Proof-reader sick today?

Actually, I'm not usually so grumpy but that full-page interstitial ad I had to dismiss before I got to the 7-paragraph ultra-lightweight "story" kind of ticked me off.

Re:Who wrote that article?

[BitZtream]

TechWorld is a sham.

Last story I was referred to there was about 'Microsoft created web page to convert iOS apps to Windows' except done in such a way that I had 3 different slightly less technical people at my company ask me why I hadn't run our app through this 'automated conversion' page ...

They were referring to some MSDN documentation. Actually, it was more like a sales pitch on how awesome Surface is that just happened to be under msdn.microsoft.com

Re:Who wrote that article?

[wonkey_monkey]

Proof-reader sick today?

First day back on Slashdot after several years away?

Simple code

[Anonymous Coward]

That blocks adverts for the Raspberry Pi, would be popular.

Re:Simple code

[Anonymous Coward]

I see very few ads on this raspberry pi using the mvps ad blocking host file so:

sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.adverts ; cat mvpshosts >> /etc/hosts

have i won a prize ?

Re: flats/appartment in noida

[CaptainOfSpray]

French widow in every room?

Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[mrpacmanjel]

Have I missed something?

Why is this community so hostile to the Raspberry Pi?

I know we are a cynical bunch here but anything Pi-related is usually slated here.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[drinkypoo]

I can't speak for myself but it's the jerking around that I don't appreciate. This will be done this time, no wait, it'll be done that time. We have Android for you, oh but we're not going to release it and we won't explain why. Guess what? People who ordered two days later than you got twice as much RAM, which we clearly knew about for quite some time because these things don't happen overnight, but rather than discount the obsolete part we'll just ignore the whole situation. So much for Openness of the process, there is none. Also, claiming the entire driver stack is free from end to end when it isn't. (I have previously posted about being glad they opened up the driver stubs but that still doesn't make it the complete driver source. And no I'm not interested in hearing about how nobody else opens their blob either, because this is about the claim to a fully-open driver.) And let us not even get into the drastically incompetent shipping nightmares. What I learned from this is to avoid both RS and Farnell like the plagues they are because they are not competent to put something in a box and send it to a customer. Hell, Farnell will even defraud you about backstock and shipping, at least they did me.

We're a cynical bunch, and R-Pi has done nothing to change that. Indeed, it has only served to further cement the high value of cynicism. If I were smarter, I would have waited to buy an R-Pi. Early adopters get screwed around (if not actually screwed) and I forgot that to my detriment.

My next ARM computer will probably be a pogoplug. And hey, they have GPIO too :p

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Alioth]

Farnell seem perfectly competent to me, I've been a customer for several years and I've never felt "defrauded" and all my orders have arrived when they said they would arrive.

The foundation are stuck between a rock and a hard place on the improvements issue. Since they are a non profit they don't have much wiggle room - to preannounce significant upgrades would be to do an Osbourne and potentially suffer an existential threat as people stop buying waiting for the new device.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people on Slashdot are bitter and hate the success of others. It's not just the Pi.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[drinkypoo]

The foundation are stuck between a rock and a hard place on the improvements issue. Since they are a non profit they don't have much wiggle room - to preannounce significant upgrades would be to do an Osbourne and potentially suffer an existential threat as people stop buying waiting for the new device.

I understand why they did it, but that doesn't change the fact that the process is not really Open, to the detriment of customers. Thus, I choose not to be a customer any more, at least until they have their process and problems ironed out and the hardware has settled in a single configuration and they're not creating data corruption bugs in the firmware and so on. And by the time, it's not unlikely that something better for my needs will be on the market at about the same price anyway.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[drinkypoo]

Also, sorry for double reply but...

Farnell seem perfectly competent to me, I've been a customer for several years and I've never felt "defrauded" and all my orders have arrived when they said they would arrive.

Farnell is showing warehouse stock when they have none. The orders are fulfilled from a separate warehouse and they don't actually have up-to-date stock information on it. Second, they sat on my order for a week after I was charged and before shipping. Third, they claimed I would get air shipping for the price of ground since I had to wait, and I got ground shipping for the price of ground, which is bait and switch (only because they claimed I would get better shipping, when they should have said nothing and let it be a surprise if I got it.) If these jokers are the only people who will do business with the R-Pi foundation, they must equally be a bunch of jokers.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not a product of great America.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had no problems with Farnell. I order quite a bit from them too, mostly in bulk. Ordered 10 RPi's last week, arrived 2 days after ordering. Have previously had no problems with RPi orders either. They're cheap, work well for my purposes, and there's no realistic alternative to them if you want a 1920x1080 display, sound, decent OpenGL ES, video decoding, and a nice amount of IO pins. I also work with a lot of microcontroller based projects, but where a GUI and basic media capabilities are required, the RPi is very good.

People will moan about anything though - if they paid for 256MB RAM, and they got 256MB RAM, they should be happy. The fact it's been raised, for no extra cost, to 512MB is irrelevent. If they applied their "logic" to other hardware, then they'd never buy anything since prices always decrease on any piece of hardware over time, and/or the specs increase.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think too many people will be sorry to see the back of someone like you as a customer to be honest. Go be a man-child somewhere else, there are real problems in the world.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[TeknoHog]

I wouldn't say /. as a whole is hostile towards it, but I personally think RPi is a fad, just like Arduino. Real programmers have had their embedded hardware for decades, and the idea of their special toys becoming too mainstream can be intimidating. Of course, Real Men design their own hardware with FPGAs, instead of running someone else's CPUs ;)

One particular gripe with RPi is the hypocrisy of being marketed as "open", but the graphics side is still a closed blob. I'm not sure you can ever satisfy the most extreme purists (waaa, where's my VHDL, where's my maskset) but at least it would be nice to have some honesty about what's actually open.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[drinkypoo]

Ordered 10 RPi's last week, arrived 2 days after ordering

I ordered because they said they had stock in hand. They sat on the order for a week, charged my card, and sat on it for another week, then shipped it ground when they promised to ship it air.

People will moan about anything though - if they paid for 256MB RAM, and they got 256MB RAM, they should be happy. The fact it's been raised, for no extra cost, to 512MB is irrelevent

No, it's entirely relevant. The fact is that the development process is not open. If it were open, they'd have told people that a new version was coming, and people who could benefit from more RAM could have waited. They didn't, so they couldn't. And it's relevant because now official projects will increasingly target the new model, which means that the value of the old model has been reduced because it will forever be a second-rate citizen of the Pi software "ecosystem". Not so relevant to people making robots, highly relevant to people building media players and the like, and expecting to receive the software stack from somewhere else.

If they applied their "logic" to other hardware, then they'd never buy anything since prices always decrease on any piece of hardware over time, and/or the specs increase.

They had the information, they didn't give it to us, some of us made poor purchase decisions as a result. This not only DOES mean that the value of the old hardware has been reduced (as described above) but it also supports my assertion that being an early adopter results in poor results than waiting until a product is finalized. This should not be news, but you should not argue the point, either. While some people might still choose to purchase a product which is still very much in development, it's a warning to those who don't want to be jerked around. It's not insightful or revelatory, just another reminder of an existing principle.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[An dochasac]

Farnell seem perfectly competent to me,

I ordered mine from Farnell in August hoping it would arrive in time for the mid-winter hacking season and it arrived on my doorstep the very next day. This in Ireland, a place most Amazon and UK Ebay sellers won't ship to because of the random and untrackable variations in its postal system, no post codes and addresses such as "O'Leary's Farm, County Donegal."

IMHO the reason many Slashdotters are hostile to the Pi is that many Slashdotters are based in the US, a country that hasn't been high on the Pi's priority list. Keep in mind that while the Raspberry Pi is great for us grown-up hackers, it was intended primarily for school kids in the UK. So get to the back of the queue/line or build your own.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Gruturo]

I understand why they did it, but that doesn't change the fact that the process is not really Open, to the detriment of customers.

It's _not_ Open. They're not claiming it is. That's not their purpose. They wanted to make an extremely affordable development platform to promote computer education esp. in schools, and that's exactly what they did.
They are releasing as much info/code/APIs as they can, so at a first glance it *looks* like it's an open source project... it's not. They'll be the first ones to point out that there is a shitton of NDA stuff they're not at liberty to share with the rest of the world. They're Broadcom employees using their own free time to work on an architecture they're familiar with due to their day job. They share what they can and if you don't like it you'll have to talk Broadcom into releasing stuff - or just choose another platform.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Alioth]

But it's not marketed as "open". Indeed, they go to pains to explain there are parts that will never be "open" in their FAQ. However, they do publish schematics and they do publish information and have a support forum for using the "bare metal", so it's more open than your typical PC. But it never has been marketed as "open", it's only ever been marketed as "affordable and easily programmable".

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if you paid for aboard with 256MB and were lucky enough to receive one with 512MB, that's a bonus. If you "only" got the exact thing you paid for, fully knowing what you were paying for, what the hell are you griping about? You're obviously not the target audience if you let something as trivial as this upset you. You're the kind of moaning, entitled whiner who brings projects down with constant nit-picking and negativity. Go away and start your own project; really, people like you are not really welcome anywhere. What do you really offer, besides criticism?

There's plenty you can do with the original board. For robotics, there's no need for any more RAM - it's only really useful for GUI / GPU use. I've yet to see a single project that requires 512MB, although it no doubt helps in some cases. It's a £20 board. That's nothing - not much more than the price of an Arduino UNO which is far less capable. I spend more than £20 for a lunchtime coffee and sandwich.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[slim]

If I were smarter, I would have waited to buy an R-Pi. Early adopters get screwed around (if not actually screwed) and I forgot that to my detriment.

You probably should have done. The RPi is still effectively a beta product. I've not been following all that closely, so I don't know how explicit they've been on that. But it was definitely the sense I got: this was a way to find and iron out design issues, and for the community building an education platform to get working on.

If you happen to have a use for it that's outside that scope, then great. But it's a bonus.

At £25, I don't mind any of this.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[rephlex]

I understand why they did it, but that doesn't change the fact that the process is not really Open, to the detriment of customers.

It's _not_ Open. They're not claiming it is.

They certainly have done. From http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/09/raspberry-pi-insider-exclusive-sellout-to-sell-out/

"Because our remit is education in the broadest sense, we wanted – needed – to provide completely open access to the hardware."

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[ratbag]

"Because our remit is education in the broadest sense, we wanted â" needed â" to provide completely open access to the hardware."

You provided a one line quote from a broader article in which Pete Lomas explains some of the background to why they couldn't take the fully open route, but did release all that they could. I don't think an article of this sort, written around September of this year, counts as "claiming that the Raspberry is open".

The Foundation seems to have taken a pragmatic line - as open as possible - rather than a religious one. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I for one am glad that I've got a cheap computer to work with, and I'm delighted that today's schoolkids might get to experience the excitement I had when the ZX80 first appeared.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[TeknoHog]

Good point -- I guess I'd been too focused on the hype and discussions, rather than official announcements. Nevertheless, the lack of openness seems to be a key problem for many who expect this sort of hobbyist hardware to be more open.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[rephlex]

"Because our remit is education in the broadest sense, we wanted â" needed â" to provide completely open access to the hardware."

You provided a one line quote from a broader article in which Pete Lomas explains some of the background to why they couldn't take the fully open route, but did release all that they could.

The quote was not taken out of context. The fact remains that nobody outside of Broadcom has "competely open access" to the Raspberry Pi's hardware from a software point of view.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[thesupraman]

Well, I ordered mine in (early) July, and I still dont have it (via RS).
I complained, and got told dates it would definitely ship, 3 times, which never got hit.
I got sent a 'congratulations, you have been upgraded to 512MB of ram, lucky you!' email that happened to mention I could cancel it any time before I got a shipping confirmation email.
I filled out the cancel order form, and got an immediate email claiming I could not cancel it as it had been forwarded to shipping.
I replied saying I had got no confirmation email, so they should honour the cancellation.
I still have received no confirmation of the shipping, no tracking number, and no reply to my request.

I have in the meantime purchased for less $ several much more functional devices from aliexpress.com.
All of which arrived much more quickly, at a cheaper price, for less fuss.

I am NOT based in the US. Sounds to me like the 'locals' are getting service, and the rest of us are getting scammed, hmmm?

The pi has gone from a great idea to a mismanaged, underperforming, poorly supported joke, which is a great pity.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[ratbag]

Yet you use the quote to argue that they have claimed the Pi is open. The quote has no merit in that regard. They wanted and needed to provide open access but they couldn't. They don't claim the Pi is open and they're frank about the reasons why they can't make that claim.

It's not Open, get over it and move on. Use the board, don't use the board, use one of the totally open ones out there if you want. But don't make claims on the Foundation's behalf, then complain that they aren't matching them.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[rephlex]

Yet you use the quote to argue that they have claimed the Pi is open. The quote has no merit in that regard.

The quote refers to something that was eventually done, so what else could have been meant other than "completely open access to the hardware" was ultimately achieved? Especially considering that this article wasn't the last time someone connected with the Raspberry Pi Foundation has made this sort of misleading claim, see http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221

It's not Open, get over it and move on. Use the board, don't use the board, use one of the totally open ones out there if you want. But don't make claims on the Foundation's behalf, then complain that they aren't matching them.

What makes you think I care? Whether or not the Raspberry Pi is open isn't something that particularly interests me. But claiming it is when it clearly isn't is concerning.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Early adopters get screwed around

That's pretty much the industry standard.

Re the memory upgrade... if you ordered a 256MB unit and get a 256MB unit, what's the problem? I mean, I understand why it's kind of frustrating... but, really, it's not that big a deal is it? I mean, it's cheap to start off with, and if that really much a problem you could just order the new 512MB one and eBay the old one... demand is still sufficiently high that you should get a good price for it.

Whilst I completely agree that quite a number of things that have happened have been frustrating/irritating/disappointing.... the foundation have at least _tried_ to be transparent with everything, and at the end of the day, they have achieved the goal of producing a cheap computer.

Re:Why is Slashdot to Hostile to Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

"less $ several much more functional devices from aliexpress.com."...

Curious -- which ones?

Because it doesn't merit any better

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this community so hostile to the Raspberry Pi?

Because it's a broken piece of hardware that drops USB events, loses network connectivity as a result of its USB problems, and resets when you live-plug a device into a USB port. In other words, it's a broken hack rather than a reliable piece of equipment.

Add to the hardware issues a wholly unprofessional Raspberry Pi Foundation that addresses critical concerns by banning the participants who voice them, plus a community overrun by fanboys, plus a massively overhyped product, and you have the makings of something highly distasteful.

Slashdot is hostile to it all because although its demographic has changed over the years, nevertheless it still retains basic engineering values and technical commonsense, and recognizes hype and bad faith when it sees it.

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad workman blames his tools. It's a board aimed at developers, not entitiled whiners. Sounds like you either have shoddy supporting hardware, or you really don't know what you're doing. Just go buy a nice safe PC from Dell or Apple, along with extra support packages, and you'll be happier.

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a board aimed at developers, not entitiled whiners.

No.

It's a board aimed at schoolchildren, that has become popular with developers.

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[Anonymous Coward]

The board's hardware faults are well documented, and they were acknowledged by the Raspberry Pi Foundation after countless threads on the forums about the problems that people were having.

Far from being aimed at developers, the board is aimed at schoolchildren, and those schoolchildren expect USB to work properly. It doesn't.

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess I and many others are just "lucky" then. I plugged in a keyboard and mouse, and they worked. Ethernet works. Funny that...

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[rephlex]

Bad workman blames his tools. It's a board aimed at developers, not entitiled whiners.

When I hear the term "developer board" I think of a board suitable for doing development work on, i.e. something reliable, not a board that is undergoing development, i.e. a prototype, which is what the Raspberry Pi actually feels like. It was certainly not meant to be this way though, the Raspberry Pi went through a prior beta phase which was meant to iron out the last remaining bugs before the final version of the board was created for mass production. Clearly they failed to achieve this goal.

Sounds like you either have shoddy supporting hardware, or you really don't know what you're doing.

These are the two most common excuses you hear from the Raspberry Pi apologists.

Re:Because it doesn't merit any better

[Lunix Nutcase]

Bad workman blames his tools.

And an idiot trots out lame excuses like this. Some tools actually do have defects and are broken. Being able to spot that makes you a much better workman than the excuse maker.

Big Whoop!

[Knoman]

It's like holding an auto race when there were only 2 automobiles existing in the world. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the pi, but as I enter the second month of waiting for it to show up I'm not all that certain it is not just vaporware . . .

Re:Big Whoop!

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's a good idea because then it shows the skill of the driver, rather than the engineering of the car. Which is the whole point of this.

Also, if you are waiting 2 months, perhaps you should order it from somewhere else. I ordered one and it arrived a week later. And that was only last month.

Re:Big Whoop!

[RaceProUK]

They arrive eventually - mine did yesterday. Some suppliers are just shit at getting it out on time (I'm looking at you, RS Components).

Re:Big Whoop!

[drinkypoo]

Also, if you are waiting 2 months, perhaps you should order it from somewhere else. I ordered one and it arrived a week later. And that was only last month.

If you read reports it's clear that people in the same country ordering from the same vendor are getting their units on vastly differing time scales. And "from somewhere else"? there are 2 options, and both suck.

Much ado over nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there more "news" about something that sells a few thousand units than a product that sells in the millions, Windows 8, even if the Google shills here have described it as a dismal failure.

Re:Much ado over nothing

[rephlex]

Actually, they've sold something like a million Raspberry Pi's now, vastly more than they'd originally aimed for.

No longer the case

[gwolf]

Adding my own to the experiences mentioned above — I live in Mexico. My Raspberry took just over a week to arrive home. Yes, I had originally ordered one when everybody rushed to them, and then cancelled as it seemed it would never arrive, but as soon as the eager hackers got their hands on the first run of boards, it got easier for the rest of us.

Got mine in one day?

[DiSKiLLeR]

I have to say. I don't understand what all the bitching is about.

I ordered mine from farnell (elements24 now?) a few days ago. I live in New Zealand. New-bumfuck-Zealand. Nothing ever arrives here quickly as we're literally in the middle of nowhere. And guess what? I got it next day. And they didn't even charge my credit card until a day AFTER I got it.

It actually came from New South Wales, Australia. Apparantly they have 100s and 100s in stock. Maybe there are shortages elsewhere, I don't know, but Aussies and Kiwis should have no trouble getting theirs.

So far i've had fun playing with mine. Its just headless (plugged only into ethernet and power) and i've been playing with it over ssh. I'm thinking about what home automation I can hook up to it. Also thinking of buying the PiFace, and addon board that buffers the gpios, provides relays and contacts and more.

Have fun and stop bitching about something that - honestly - is the price of a meal at a restaurant for 2. Or only 1 at a fancy restaurant. :)

Re:Got mine in one day?

[BeaverCleaver]

Element14 in .au still sell out, but they've been getting new stock in every 10 days or so. I ordered mine (together with a few other unrelated parts) a couple of days after element14 emailed me to say they had stock... by which time they were out of stock (this was early November)

The unrelated parts arrived in two days, and the Raspberry Pi and its case arrived about a week later, a day or two after element14 got them in stock, and a day or two _earlier_ than their website's expected delivery time.

Yes, it's just another anecdote... but there are plenty of anecdotes here and elsewhere about people receiving their units... and plenty of cool things people are using them for already.