Order Limit On Raspberry Pi Lifted 204
hypnosec writes "Raspberry Pi, the small $35 ARM-based computer system capable of running Linux that took the world of technology by storm just a few months back, has its order limit shackles removed as it has been revealed that manufacturers are now producing 4000 units per day. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the tiny computer, has said that RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell have started producing enough units to allow them to scrap the order limit on Raspberry Pi. In a blog post, the foundation made the announcement. Initially the limit of one unit per customer was placed in the light of limited stocks. Despite these limits, there was always a shortage and people had to wait for long time to get their hands on one of these credit card sized computers."
Re:Could someone please explain to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Still waiting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I ordered mine a while ago. Credit card was charged about 3 weeks ago. Still waiting on shipping information. :-(
Not that I'm upset. It's obviously a toy computer for me. But it's Summer, and I want to play with my toy!
(Planning on hooking up a couple external USB hard drives and using it as a low power NAS.)
Re:Could someone please explain to me (Score:4, Interesting)
I was luck enough to get in on the first round of availabilty, and only had to wait 10 weeks to get it (only mostly sarcastic), and it's been a great unit. It's given me a platform to work on and learn far more about cross-compiling, working in a small(er) footprint, and generally programming in general.
Currently, I'm working to make it the core of a computer concept for my car. Will it be as good as stuff "off the shelf?" ~Really~ unlikely. Will it be a whole lotta fun getting it going? You betcha! And so far, I've only shelled out about US$45 for the Raspberry Pi and some wiring to get started on this project.
Speculation: Will somebody do an "EeePC"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Already here? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just saw something that fits the small Android PC slot perfectly:
http://www.fanlesstech.com/2012/07/minix-tv-box-h24.html
Its an Android PC designed for TVs, but maybe ideal for my small PC needs, already can run Ubuntu, but I want it for Android.
Or perhaps these will start appearing in boxes:
http://www.fanlesstech.com/2012/07/worlds-first-tegra-3-mini-itx.html
Mini format PC style motherboard, with PC spec, but Quad core Arm, running Android, supports up to 3 screens, HDMI, cheap.
Re:Speculation: Will somebody do an "EeePC"? (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the big pushes by vendors have been the HTPC segment. By the time you actually get a working rPi, with case and power supply, you've already matched prices with many of the Allwinner A10 based solutions. Not to mention, NO ONE gets an rPi for $35. Turns out $35 actually translates into $55 + $10 power + $15 case, for a total of roughly $85. You can get a superior solution for up to $20 less than that, delivered. On top of that, the A10 solutions frequently have real SATA, builtin in WIFI, a faster CPU (up to a hair more than twice as fast), more RAM (sometimes 4x as much), is very hackable (like the rPi), and sports GPIOs (including TWI, SPI, I2C). In addition to that, many are coming with multimedia remotes (bluetooth, ir, and even 802.11[bgn]). Plus, they come with Android 2.x and/or 4.x and usually hackable with various Linux distributions. Not that I'm an Android fan in this space, but it does open the door for far more possibilities [slashdot.org]. Plus, these usually have hardware floating point support. Not to mention, many of the devices sport the Mali 400 GPU, which it itself one upped the rPi.
In short, it looks like rPI did create a wave of newer devices and equipment and the current generation of what's available is already a better buy than an rPi for most people.
The sad thing is, it looks like rPi so poorly handled the release of a new class of device, they've already lost the market to emerging competition.
Piling on Some More Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the issue explained
To go a little further, I'd like to remind everyone that it was developed and pitched as an educational tool in the UK [slashdot.org] with some big backers [slashdot.org].
I now have five of these in my possession with one lent to a friend whose wife keeps him on a very short leash financially. And I had one arduino that was fun to tinker with but I'm more excited about these just because of the prospect of the numbers. Even if I never write one line of code that utilizes this board specifically, there are going to be hundreds of projects developed by hobbyists, teachers, students, etc that are going to target this particular chipset more than any other just based purely on the numbers game. And, I must admit jealously as an American, many UK students that take CS courses are going to come out of high school fully versed in this particular chipset with free time and college and on their hands to make exciting or entertaining projects with it. And the $25/$35 price point really enables that. I'm much more daring with these boards because I have five of them (if I burned out my arduino mega that'd be a painful learning experience). And since I have five, one is hooked up to a USB drive with all my movies and music to my TV. Another is permanently attached to a monitor with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Another is simply on the network and I can SSH into it and run code on it.
Lastly I'd add that they are simple. Buy a $300 machine from Dell and watch something go bad on it at some point in time. There's not a lot to go bad on these devices but they haven't been around long enough to test their reliability of MTTF in the wild. So I could eat my words on that point but so far they run like a champ for me with no defects.
Frankly put, the pervasive nature of this product is going to make any code you write for it consumable by many people -- the demand is so high one can only speculate on how high that number will become. I'm definitely sending some of these to my younger cousins that have shown an interest in computer science and I hope the schools in the US make an effort to leverage these devices.
Speaking of RaspberryPi... NetBSD support (Score:4, Interesting)
Since we're on the subject -- NetBSD is being ported to the RaspberryPi, despite all the roadblocks in place to do so. (RPi is not an open platform) It is booting to multiuser in test code. See hubertf's post [feyrer.de] on the subject. I intend to help test as soon as my unit arrives.
Re:Piling on Some More Reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually.... overall I prefer the aduino. The price on these is great for what you get but, as an educational/devel platform.... the issues with broadcom that are evident int he FAQ make this very unattractive.
The arduino is, at its heart, just a breakout for the atmega with a nice boot loader pre-burned. I can work up a design, then if I want to go into some manner of production and make alot...I can incorperate the atmega directly into my design, and go from a $30 part "development platform" to a $3 part with a few bits of support (crystal, voltage regulator...)
I can't do that with pi. I am stuck with a pi. I can develop on a pi but then, every time I want to replicate the design, its another pi.
Its great for what it is, and it may lead to the development of more fully open platforms but, for what I am looking at, I see little advantage over just getting a linux capable wifi router and starting from there. In fact, the wifi itself makes it even better.
But overall, for what I need, I also don't need much more than an atmega.
Re:Still waiting... (Score:4, Interesting)
The RaspberryPi actually seems to max at about 2MB/s per my tests at a 1500MTU, and over 4.4MB/s at 1492MTU.
Many protocols such as SSH have high overhead, but a low-overhead protocol can expect these numbers.
Re:Could someone please explain to me (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you can later learn to code in C, your project may not even need an ATmega328. As an example, the ATtiny13A is only 1.06$CAD at Digi-Key.ca.
Re:Piling on Some More Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
The Arduino and RPi are fundamentally two different kinds of device, and aren't really comparable other than both being low cost and both having GPIO pins. The RPi really is more low cost personal computer with easy to access GPIO, rather than a microcontroller development board. They both have their place.
The Broadcom issue (which although I like the RPi, grates with me) is lack of public documentation on the GPU. Having said that it is already known how to get a plain simple frame buffer and get it to boot into a roll-your-own-kernel of your own design (i.e. not a linux kernel) if you're not looking to use the advanced GPU features, so the situation is better than it was a while ago.