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Inside the Raspberry Pi Factory
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a photo walk through of how Raspberry Pi boards are made at a Sony factory in South Wales, UK. The factory says that the multiple automated and manual checks have meant that only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped with defects."
Whoever designed the photo album viewer never heard of XMLHttpRequest.
It's all about "page views", baby!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped with defects
1 of 5 of the boards I ordered recently was defective. It has the "can't keep the USB running" error. They were the 'Made in China" versions. Hopefully the Sony-made ones will be more reliable.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Since when do they ship in a clear plastic case as in the article?
From TFA only 2 bad boards so far? http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=20657 - see this problem on as detailed on rpi site.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
I think this: post from Pi is a better "walk-through", as it includes descriptions as well as pictures.
But, that's just me.
No. Board passes all checks and later fails. Imagine a weak solder joint for instance.
Ordered two from RS early October, along with peripherals. Other parts arrived with back order notice saying they would ship 26th November. Still hadn't arrived today so phoned RS who said shipping date was now 22nd December (a Saturday?). I'm sure the Raspberry Pi folk are a very nice group of people but honestly they just come over as a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs when it comes to global fulfillment.
So even if they have defects, they still get shipped, despite the numerous automated and manual checks?
I'm not sure what you mean. No test can capture 100% of all possible faults especially if you include any of the faults that mean things work to begin with but then fail later on (e.g. a weak solder joint will work to begin with, but the increased current density will tend to exacerbate the weak point making it fail terminally).
In any chip itself there will be hard to find points of failure (a metal contact problem causing the pipeline to not flow control properly for example). Or they could be a weak driver on a memory cell caused by an implantation fail that means that under hot temperature conditions the memory write doesn't always successfully occur. What if it is a shielding problem on one of your clocks so that one multiplier experiences cross-talk sufficient to corrupt data in a cold chip only when the PSU is working with components at the limit of their tolerance?
You can find many of these faults but how much is it worth adding to the cost of the system to catch that last 1% or last 0.00001% of problems?
Production test is a hard probabilistic field where many of the problems are none obvious. At the end of the day all you can do is have the best test methodology available with careful monitoring of defect rates backed up by a solid returns policy.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
If you order one from the Newark Element 14 place, you can probably get one in about 3 weeks (maybe not right now with holidays coming up), since they're the ones using the UK manufacturing facility and can complete their orders much faster. I ordered a Model B on November 3rd and got it last week.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Because in my experience, the yield from the chinese Model B factory is 50%.
My first RPi is currently tied up in a work project, so I ordered another model B from Newark. It came in and I fired it up yesterday, no LEDs or any signs of life. Dead.
Then I noticed the main BGA in the center of the card looked a bit askew, looked closer and noticed the BCM2835 was missing. The Samsung DRAM that ordinary sits on top of the '2835 was soldered straight onto the PCB. I understand the part shooter fucking up once in a while and missing a chip, but the board shouldn't have made it out of the factory.
C'mon. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for something that's most likely going to work, than do what I'm doing now and spending even more bucks mailing the fucking thing back, and crossing my fingers that the replacement works too...
I'd never have ordered mine if I knew Sony gets something from making these.
Now you know how I've felt for the last year about the kindle fire.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Who read this as saying, "...the factory says that the multiple automated and manual checks have meant that only two of the 150,000 boards made there have been shipped DUE TO defects" I mean, could explain the supply problem. Much more plausible that the entire world is being supplied by a half-dead 89 year old electronics engineer hand-building each one, occasionally losing his glasses between runs, with a crappy 1960's era Radio Shack soldering iron...
Am I the only person who misses having the internet viewable without JS? I mean, don't get me wrong, JavaScript can do great things but a lot of the time it really isn't necessary, and often doesn't fall back nicely when JS isn't available.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Android isn't a desktop operating system.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Because it's cheaper, has a huge community and doesn't come with Android.
Mada mada dane.
Can you run Debian on it? Does it have GPIO?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So even if they have defects, they still get shipped, despite the numerous automated and manual checks? What a way to keep people from being unemployed....
[wdw]
Of course you can get manufactured goods with 100% guarantee of functionality, just like in any industry - see the Space Shuttle software error rate per kLoC. But the point is that this will cost you a lot more. Beyond a certain point, performing extra checks and tests ceases to be economical and, frankly, even becomes a folly IMO. It's easier to offer free replacements with postal fees paid by the manufacturer at that point.
Ezekiel 23:20
Every time you buy a Raspberry Pi, Sony gets a dollar.
I don't see how the Raspberry Pi can compete with similar products like the MK808 or UG802.
The other vendors aren't spamming all over tech sites.
(The Raspberry Pi people just take a really good system on a chip from China, slap it on a badly laid out board, and act like they've done something important. Annoying.)
Good point, for an extra $20 MK808 has a dual core 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB flash and WiFi. It lacks GPIO and Ethernet though. The UG802 also lacks these.
Yes its just you.
You will always get shit code. Removing JS doesn't help that at all.
Geocities caused horrible atrocities without any JS.
The first batch of Raspberry Pi's were made in China. They wanted it to be made in the UK, so they're paying a Japanese company to do it.
Appreciate the info..trouble is for many large organisations (like the one I work for), you have to go with their approved vendor list, which RS are on, and getting a new vendor approved is a non trivial task.
The ones from RS are still made in China - so you have a choice.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
and is obviously not very good at his/her job if he/she can't figure out how to pass content from the server with AJAX.
And if he were reaaally good at his job, he'd know that you don't need AJAX to swap pictures on screen. (Why did the GGP mention it anyway? I don't get it what it has to do with the task at hand anyway.)
Ezekiel 23:20
The UK computer industry enjoyed a mini-rennaisance in 2012 thanks to the popularity of the $40 Raspberry Pi
Are they serious? Do they even know where the ARM SoC is designed?
It amazes me that the Arm Holdings stock was only around $20 a few months ago, when they are without question the most dominant, stable, and secure tech company in the world. Both Apple and Google are completely dependent on the licenses they have acquired from ARM to allow them to use their risc based ultra low power cpu in their devices, and to allow the manufacturers (samsung, ti, etc) to build those chips, and yet in some cases their stocks are twenty times more.
This amazes me, but at least ARM's stock has doubled in the past few months. There is NO bigger player in the computer industry in the world than the UK. I make this claim upon the the fact that now mobile is the dominant platform, and ARM is the only real player in that game (as of yet). Anyone can license and manufacture these chips for cheap and give us crappy hardware as a result, but the ingenuity is in their reduced and low complexity instruction set which allows for their ultra low power design, which is why almost everybody is using their SoC designs.
The only reason that nobody realizes this and their stock has been stagnant in the past is because they don't have a "ARM inside" sticker on every ARM based device made. It there was such a sticker, they would be beyond any doubt the most popular company in the world.
Disclaimer: I am Canadian (and live there at the moment), but I am also a UK citizen. I also don't hold any ARM stocks, though I am kicking myself that I still have yet to acquire any, since it would have almost doubled in value over the past year.
So... they have about 1,000,000 boards shipped now... What is magic about 1,500,000?
BTW, I can generally get them in about 2-3 weeks from Newark/Element14 so I count that as "generally available" in the US.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Obviously, I'm not saying I'd rather see JS gone (well, not without a replacement - JS as a language is ugh), but rather I wish more sites would fall back to a non-JS version.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
My 5 that were shipped to the US came from Newark.com and (as mentioned before) they were all Made in China.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
By doing what, sending all of the images at once? That's great for a small album, less useful for large ones.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
yes but people end up using JavaScript to much to do things that html and css can do.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You can run Ubuntu, and perhaps other distributions. Besides, do you really need GPIO when USB will do? It just seems like a lot of hyper for nothing, when there are tons of similar boards already available from places like Alibaba. What can you do with the Raspberry Pi that can't be done with similar products?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I have 4 of them, all bought one after the other, in separate shipments. If you want one, order it, it will come. My first 3 boards all arrived within a week, the last one took a month.
Good-bye
Some will argue that. I can use Android OS just like any other desktop OS.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
they have some really slow SMT placement equipment.. The lines I program could knock that out in about half the time for SMT, and do most if not all connectors inline. I see why they produce more in china than there..
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Because not everything needs to be connected to the internet all the times and networking adds cost and complexity and security concerns. The base definition of a computer does not include networking.
Good-bye
Model B of the Raspberry Pi uses a USB Ethernet adapter, same could be done with UG802 or MK808.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
By passing all the image URLs and titles to the client once. Javascript can modify the DOM to replace the images at will by modifying the image source or adding additional image elements. That doesn't take any XMLHttpRequest requests to the server, so its not AJAX.
I LOL'd. Yes, the real thing holding back the UKs perceived dominance in the industry is lack of 'ARM inside' stickers. You probably think RIM got a bad rap too amiright?
Good-bye
Can be found here:
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Review comparing the MK802 vs. Raspberry Pi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKNPnBE-ouI , and the MK802 has now been replaces with a much faster MK808. Conclusion - the MK802 is the clear winner when it comes to value, unless you have a specific project that requires the Raspberry Pi.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I just got mine 2 days ago, a new Model B Revision 2 board...
they claimed it was made in the UK but when I opened the static bag and pulled out the board a huge "MADE IN CHINA" stamped all over it
here is photo I took of my new model B Revision 2 board - http://www.flickr.com/photos/qoaa/8233431330/
you can clearly see made in china
here is another angle with made in china at top - http://www.flickr.com/photos/qoaa/8233433632/
My original order was placed in July 5th, 2012 and I just got it on December 1, 2012 in the mail. I live in Georgia, US so I knew it would take a while to get "across the pond" but was a let down seeing it was made in china when they promised revision 2 boards were made in UK and they clearly are not.
and yes i confirmed it's revision 2
cpuinfo/free/uname info - http://image.dude-suit.net/albums/userpics/10002/raspi1.PNG
USB GPIO board. http://www.fivemanconspiracy.com/node/45
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Twice the power for twice the price doesn't make it a better deal. If the Pi has all the power you need, why spend $25 more for a "better" one?
Also, the GPIO pins. That's not a particularly Android-y feature.
Sure, but what's your point? It's easy to do bad things with Javascript, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a very flexible and useful language, and the only scripting platform supported by pretty much every browser.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Oh yeah, that makes sense.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Wow. You are really stretching my words to make that speculation. In no way did I refer to RIM, but just because I am Canadian you assume that I am a die hard RIM supporter. I am talking about the UK, not Canada. I will not go off topic of my own post, but responses like yours make me slowly loose hope for the Slashdot community.
To reiterate, my comment was that if such stickers existed, then they would be the most popular company in the world, since their chips are used in everything, but unfortunately they wouldn't be used in everything if they had such a requirement. ARM definitely does not have a bad rap, so you are definitely way off on the point of my topic.
If you think there is a lack of dominance from the UK in the industry, then you really know nothing about the industry. QED
Me neither. If I knew then what I know now, I'd never have bought an R-Pi. Notably, that the R-Pi foundation would demo Android and then never release it. Bait and switch? Probably not really, but I wouldn't have bought an R-Pi except that they had an announcement about Android working.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sure the Pi will have its place in some projects. I just don't see why there is so much hype about it. The specs aren't that impressive, but seeing something like the MK808 that's 1/4 the size of the Pi with 4x the power, that's something to rave about IMO.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
and is obviously not very good at his/her job if he/she can't figure out how to pass content from the server with AJAX.
And if he were reaaally good at his job, he'd know that you don't need AJAX to swap pictures on screen. (Why did the GGP mention it anyway? I don't get it what it has to do with the task at hand anyway.)
At least you weren't trying to browse TFA on a tablet or phone...on my iPad, the first page and every other page after that was a warning that the page I wanted wasn't "mobile-optimized." If you can't code your page to be usable on all devices, you're doing it wrong.
(One minor point in their favor: at least they're not using that abortion known as Onswipe. Whoever decided scrolling should be replaced with pagination should be taken outside and shot.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Maybe they got pragmatic and decided the best way to bring in local jobs (Raspberry Pi = British,so jobs in the UK) was to find an existing plant that could take on the work. Maybe setting up their own factory from scratch was unrealistic for the Raspberry Pi organisation (these guys aren't an existing multinational megacorp, just a start-up, effectively) but they could at least try to get them manufactured in the UK and create some British/Welsh jobs. Perhaps they also felt this would allow them better quality control (an easy drive across the country for a few hours rather than a flight to Shanghai to check on facilities) and also be more ethical in terms of production line worker conditions. Puts them ahead of Apple, at least...
Indeed, mod parent up. Not all computers have to be networked, plenty of situations where that's a security risk, costs more for the unit.
In Australia, I ordered two model B boards from element14 on Sunday and they turned up today (Tuesday), just under 50 hours after I ordered.
How would USB be a replacement for GPIO?
GPIO are useful for interfacing with low level components such as switches, LED, LCD etc. Using USB for this would be overkill.
Mine is as well, because they're not exclusively using the UK facility.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
You can get a small USB GPIO adapter, smaller than a flash drive.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I've seen some mods with the MK808 with a usb hub, ethernet port, hdmi male2female adapter all rolled into a case no bigger than the ones used for the Pi. It may cost a bit more, but you get 4x the performance. It all depends on what your looking for, but I guess the Pi might be fine for projects like - xmas lights.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So are similar devices, like the UG802 and MK802,MK808, etc. All Open Devices, and can do WHATEVER the FUCK you WANT with it.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.