Raspberry Pi Linux micro machine enters mass production
CES 2012 Week The Rapberry Pi Foundation has begun manufacturing its pocket-sized Linux-based micro in volume, with the first batch set to roll off the line by the end of the month. The charity revealed the news this week after finalising payment details, stating its Dyson-esque regret that Raspberry Pi production had to be …
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Popcornhour
Same size as the board, and very similiar guts, to my PopcornHour media box. I would assume other systems like the WD Box are similar. The costs come in firmware/ menu development.
Similar yes, but different enough not to be confused
Those dedicated streamer boxes have dedicated graphics chips in them - usually from Sigma for WD IIRC. Chips and licenses for the graphics drivers/firmware is a significant cost difference.
Is it just me, or could there be a revolution in the offing ..
Haven't been following this story too closely, till now ... but seeing the spec and price of this beastie makes me wonder how many uses there are out there, which we haven't even throught of yet. The ability to plug a fully-specced *programmable* computer into anything is going to change a lot of things. With local-level processing now available to any peripheral, how much bandwidth can be saved, and networks improved ?
aye
what do you thing routers and print server boxes are? They are fully functional computers - lots of them have been "rooted" with firmware offering expanded functionality (or just linux if you want to tinker).
From what I've read on the forum the first runs of the RPi will be without an enclosure. I know a few enthusiasts on the forum have said they are looking to design/build their own enclosure and I believe the organisation intents to supply it with an enclosure in the future.
Yup
Folks are already getting prototype enclosures from shapeways, just waiting for the boards.
one of these. a roomba. a kinect camera and a mounted nerf gun.
Terminator 0.0.1alpha
I'm already lining up projects for these
I don't care if these have a case or not - there's plenty of uses for them as they are & I'm intending on getting a couple - one to play with & one to run my weather station.
At the moment the station is running off the back of an ancient itx linux box but one of these would be ideal to replace that box. Not much local storage is needed & the rest is pushed over the ethernet.
Weather Station?
IS that one of the 1-wire ones? I have one in a box I must set up some time.
Strange choice of picture
Unless they have gone back to the alpha design its rather unlikely to look like that.
No, that's the real Model B.
Ok, not quite:
The GPIO pin header top-left is a do-not-fit*, the tiny blob of solder between the Raspberry logo and the CPU is a PCB errata fix that won't be on the final units.
The SD card holder may also be different, but that's not shown in the photo.
Other than those minor differences, it's exactly what I'll be buying in a few weeks time.
Yes, the "spider web" form factor is less than perfect, but the connectors (inc SD on the left) nearly fill the edges of the board, so what else could be done?
Expanding the board size would increase the cost, and it would be a shame to lose the RCA Composite video and stereo jack.
*They decided to let the end user solder on the GPIO pin header, as nobody has yet decided whether male, female, up, down or sideways connections is best for daughterboards.
Plus it saves a few cents - thru-hole pin headers are expensive to assemble.
Seems like El Reg have in fact sneakily replaced the photo between Dean4 posting and me reading his post.
Sorry Dean!
I want one...
Until now i wanted Arduino, now i want this instead. I wounder how easy it would be do to your own electronic peripherals with that. Can you attach sensors/leds/motors to it? God I feel like a kid in a toy store.
Gertboard
Have a look at the Gertboard - I think that will do what you want...
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/500
Re: I want one...
Then you will want one of these too:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/411
connect away.....
you can get a USB I/O port from maplins for about £10, probably less if you look around the interwebs...
Its designed for the hobbyist so that you can connect sensors and motors... very similar to the USR port on the BBC B !!!
Time to dig out that robot i built for my BBC B when I was still at school, Its still in the attic at my parents home !!
From the looks of it, yes, you will be able to attach motors and sensors and so on, though it won't be as straightforward (in hardware or in software) as an Arduino.
If your goal is to run motors and such from an embedded system with very little in the way of time or effort, an Arduino will probably get you there faster. However, the Raspberry Pi is a much more sophisticated platform; if you want something that has a lot more grunt, or you want to run code from a full-fledged computer rather than a microcontroller with no keyboard or video, the Raspberry Pi is definitely the way to go.
I very much want to get my hands on one of these, though I don't anticipate it will replace my Arduino boards.
Yes.
I am going to get one in in a few months to evaluate with a view to getting a dozen to complement our Arduinos in our computational media lab. Probably with GertBoards or equivalent.
Furrows brow.....
Of course, yes.....furrows - farm - make my own server farm.
At that sort of price it's a natural for hosting game servers et al to run COD sessions etc etc... and in their spare time it's a stack of World Community Grid cores.....should boost me in the Vulture Central rankings
Can't wait until these have Linux distros to install. I'm not a hardware hacker, but would love a media streamer running Myth or whatever to play with.
Expectations
I suspect a lot of the "why doesn't it have...?" crowd are the same that expected a low-cost Linux netbook to be capable of everything that a top spec desktop machine running Windows would do, totally missing the point that it's intended for a different job.
In this case, I suspect the Pi will be used for all sort of little jobs, at which it will excel compared to a desktop PC running Windows.
Don't run them continuously though, they're obviously intended to be run at approximately 22/7, not 24/7...
Ha!
Probably only old farts like me would actually get the joke, but good effort.
Actually, I built a crystal set(!) when I was about 10 yrs old, and fitted it in a large plastic bowl about 20 sizes too big for it. I could get the BBC light programme and even Radio Luxembourg. The best bit was my step-father trying to teach me to speak morse code (dit-dah) in the same way that he did during his National Service training as a signaller.
Kids today don't know what fun is!
Re: Expectations
"Don't run them continuously though, they're obviously intended to be run at approximately 22/7, not 24/7..."
I stared at that line for a while before it suddenly hit me.
Well played.
Ace....
... makes me wonder if you mounted two together would you have made a Raspberry Tau?
Wahey!
Several of these, a few freecycle tellies, myth tv and/or Synergy and I'll have a lovely wall at last!
If RaspberryPI can do this for the price why do I have to pay considerably more for mass produced devices? 4 off these costs less than a ton yet has more processing power of a £500 'phone'.
Is it too late to change the name?
As soon as anyone builds a pi-Phone (or any kind of a pi-app), Apple will sue their @sses off.
pi-Phone
"As soon as anyone builds a pi-Phone"
Err, I think you mean a raspberry-blower.
[For the non-natives, 'blower' can mean 'phone', and blowing a raspberry should be obvious]
Screen (biggie), extra memory, patent/ license fees for various things, telephony chips and radios, battery, integration costs and testing.
I can't imagine the processor is actually that big a cost out of the £500, although a modern armv7 will be quite a bit more than the armv5 they are using here.
I believe that one of the things keeping the costs of these down are that a couple of the broadcom chips that power the device are being sold to the project at manufacturing cost, as an employee or two of broadcom are working on the project.
I do wonder if this could be adapted into a basic android phone somehow. Anyone know how expensive telephony radios/ processors are?
"a basic android phone"
I think there's more to making a GSM/PCN/3G/etc phone than just the chippery, which isn't available to Joe Public (or even via normal commercial channels such as RS, Farnell, Digi-Key, etc) anyway. The RF side of things isn't simple, and afaik there's the small matter of product certification. Just a guess though. Better buying a PAYG phone for something to play with. For now anyway.
On the other hand, a Gert-board or similar RF addon for an unlicensed or permissively-licenced waveband (is that still the expression) might be interesting. What's the state of play of 433MHz low power radio these days? Is it still usable in urban areas with all this powerline Ethernet kit splatting everywhere?
Price slowly increasing
I love how all the fanbois kept shouting that the price wont increase and this will be the real final price blah blah. And then gradually they've worked in extortionate shipping prices and then 'oh and remember that doesn't include tax' and 'oh remember that doesn't include blah blah blah'.
By the time they've finished all the 'oh and don't forget' costs, we'll be paying 2-3 times the original quoted price.
Oh and thanks for the update which pretty much repeats what was said in the previous story about this equipment :)
Remember -
The Raspberry Foundation is a not-for-profit charity, so don't bleat on about price gouging. Shipping prices will be kept down, tax is unavoidable, and the Foundation discovered that importing the components and assembling in the UK would attract a lot of import tax. That's why the manufacture has been moved overseas, to keep costs down.
Would you rather they said £99 up front and stuck to it? At £99 it would still be a remarkable achievement.
99 would be silly
Intel D410/425 can be had for £50/£60. Add memory and you are at the same place. Sure the board is physically bigger but not by much but you get sata. You will still need an external PSU with both solutions.
The 425 will run XBMC 720p too (not 1080 though).
At which point did the price start gradually rising? Original price $25/$35. Current price $25/$35.
Of course, you do need to add postage and local taxes since, as it's is being sold worldwide, you cannot quote those of the website and cover everyone.
> By the time they've finished all the 'oh and don't forget' costs, we'll be paying
> 2-3 times the original quoted price.
ODFO.
Vic.
Back-of-envelope calc for Model B - approx. £30 delivered to UK
Unit: $35 = £22.84 to £23.36*
VAT @ 20%: £4.57 to £4.62
Postage: £1.58 (1st class) or £2.35 (1st class tracked)**
Handling (eg CC fee, box): £1 (estimate)
Total: £29.99 to £31.38
*Today's XE and Post Office rates.
**From the Post Office - anywhere in the UK, including the Highlands and Islands, Scilly Isles, and the Isle of Man.
To those moaning about PSU, SD Card, mouse, keyboard & display - at no point did the "quote" ever even hint at including any of those.
Like the man says.....
If you can't think of a dozen uses for it as it stands, its not for you. I've may have hacked my last NAS box......
It'll be pants as a server.
Not gigabit, and the ethernet/USB chip is a hub all sharing one port. I'll be buying one (or two...) but stick with your NAS boxes as well.
Tax Laws
If you follow the link to the Raspberry Pi site, one of the main reasons they can't produce it in the UK are the tax laws, that charge for importing components and building here, but not for assembling the entire thing elsewhere and importing it. This is madness, it's preventing them from keeping the jobs in the UK. There's a bit of a campaign starting on their blog posts to highlight this to the government and try to get it changed. I think it's something The Register should get behind.
Relevant Links:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 - the blog post detailing the tax problem
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/27158 - Government E-Petition
Petition signed.
Ridiculous situation that I can import British designed equipment that's been manufactured abroad for less than I can import the components to make it myself.
Perhaps El Reg should publicise this and get a few more signatures on that petition?
Why you no use correct pic??
Here's what the board ACTUALLY looks like:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/PC236526-1024x768.jpg
Anyhoo
I can't wait to get my hands on one and set up a tiny low powered XBMC system.
'What can one do with this piece of motherboard? I mean really !'
Were you taking bets on troll-count?
British Manufacturing
I wonder how much they would cost if they had decided to manufacture in the UK. I can (kind of) understand Dyson's POV where a 20% increase in costs would add to an already expensive product, but the same kind of percentage increase here would make a much smaller total difference.
I know they are going for cheap-cheap-cheap, but I can't help thinking that it would have been much better if the board that was designed in Britain, and will be used by a generation of British kids was actually built and engineered in Britain too - something to be a little bit proud of, perhaps.
Bad form to repy to one's own post, I know. But as the commenter below me, and a very enlightening article on the RaspPi website says, there seems to be a typically British tax law that penalises anyone wanting to manufacture electronic systems in the UK. I would encourage anyone that has the slightest interest re-igniting Britain's once world-class manufacturing industry to sign the petition in the post below.
UK Manufacturing Costs
Looking at the threads on the Pi forum it seems they are claiming it would cost around £5 more per board to produce in the UK but that doesn't seem to be entirely due to tax and/or duty as that's cited as 2.5% which would be less than 40p per board ( model A ).
The real problem looks to be UK assemblers charging £4.60+ more per board than far eastern counterparts.
Lead time was the other major factor. Three months from UK manufacturers as opposed to three weeks in Asia.
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