Raspberry Pi supplier coughs to ship date delay glitch
CE testing demand holding up supply
A "system auto-generated error" left hundreds of eager would-be Raspberry Pi owners fuming yesterday after they were told their prized micro-computer boards wouldn't arrive until the summer.
The notification was made by Element 14, one of Raspberry Pi's two suppliers.
Punters access the firm's website to check on the status of their orders were told shipments had been pushed back to August.
Both hardware developer and distributor were quick to acknowledge the glitch.
Pi trays
Element 14 said: "All deliveries are on hold awaiting the outcome of the compliance testing currently taking place.
"To avoid misleading people while the compliance testing takes place, our system auto-generated the August date, which has clearly caused confusion."
Apologising for the mistake, Element 14 added: "We can absolutely commit that our orders will be shipped in the order they were originally received and that no one has lost their place in the ‘queue’ as a result of this latest change."
The reference to "compliance testing" centres on CE certification, which Element 14 and fellow distributor RS Components are insisting upon before they will ship product, Raspberry Pi claimed.
The organisation said it has received 2000 of the tiny, ARM-based boards this week. "We are working to get them CE marked as soon as is humanly possible," it said.
It is also in talks with the UK government to discuss the rules that regulate shipment of kit like the Pi to consumers here.
"All this means that we’re waiting on one of two things - the results of further EMC tests, and whatever the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills comes back to us with – before RS and [Element 14] can give you any firm delivery dates," RP told us.
The wait continues. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Bureaucracy
To be honest, checking that the device doesn't screw up other system seems perfectly sensible to me. Were RPi unaware of this before they started shipment?
Bureaucracy
The grit in the cogs of humanity since time immemorial
Marketting
It's interesting what you say about marketing, because apart from blog posts on the website and occasional press releases, very little actual direct marketing was done. It was almost all word of mouth organic stuff. Which is very difficult to turn off - do you a) Take a call from the BBC wanting to talk about it b) Not take a call from the BBC?
Certificate of Incorporation
They could have probably argued that as this is not 'Finished Equipment' but a component, they could cover CE requirements with a Certificate of Incorporation, rather than conformance?? (is a graphics card conformant to I.T radiated emissions levels if it is run outside of a nice metal grounded case)?
Re: A level playing field for developers
It's not 500, it's about 50 alpha boards. And a prototype Linux was already running as that was done by the SoC supplier, so it wasn't a standing start.
All the mag jack problems have been fixed - the boards are done with the first 2k already on UK soil. The remaining problem is the CE compliance for the rest of the first 10k. That's almost complete. Parts stock is ready for mass production as soon as CE confirmed.
Although its thoroughly explained on the Foundation website, for those hard of reading, the original plan was to sell devices as Dev boards ready for the educational release,in a case, with all the required certificates, later in the year. Dev boards don't need CE marks. However, the massive demand means that really the dev board moniker is no longer applicable. Hence the delay whilst it is being gained for the first 10k batch (well most off, 2k still are dev boards)
