Raspberry hit by manufacturing error

[Galaxis]

Seems like the Pandora guys are not alone with their learning experience...


http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/781


I assume that "[..] because of a hardware parts substitution that was made in the factory by accident" is worded rather cautious, and in reality the manufacturer was trying to save some money...

 

[theshining]

Just read about this on "el reg", perhaps somebody from theOP team should point them at your new supplier in Germany

 

[gadgetoid]

the manufacturer was trying to save some money...

Sounds about right, although saving money is pretty much the goal of the Pi, and they were probably under pressure to obtain parts cheaply.

 

[iprice]

Ouch! My order was expected in early May - hope this hasn't affected it too much.

 

[theshining]

Iprice, how do you know your pi was coming in May?, all I've had so far is an e-mail from Farnell thanking me for my interest, and another from RS components saying they'll contact me within seven days which they haven't, I'm betting I'll get my Pandora, before one of these babies shows up.


Also at this point I wish to point out to Mr Upton, that the OPT own the copyright on "two months", or at least they have "prior art" over it.

 

[iprice]

I got two emails confirming delivery date as 14th May from Farnell.

 

[Prometheus]

I should mention that there is a dedicated Raspberry Pi thread in the Other Consoles section, but I'll leave this topic be, due to its relation to the matter of these sorts of hiccups hitting more companies and products than most people would think, including the Pandora.


Anyway, I'm unsurprised - we all already know that these hitches happen, but don't get mentioned by most companies, since you rarely hear about their products before they're damn near ready to go.


I found the first comment on the news article to be hilarious, incidentally;

No worries…sh*t happens and this is a minor poo

the manufacturer was trying to save some money...

Sounds about right, although saving money is pretty much the goal of the Pi, and they were probably under pressure to obtain parts cheaply.

But it was the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves who sourced those parts. It even gets mentioned in the article.

Ouch! My order was expected in early May - hope this hasn't affected it too much.

Mine was slated for April 30th, but it's not a big deal - I still need to get some stuff together in order to use it, and build the final version of my Lego housing for it, anyway.

 

[Wilhood]

I should mention that there is a dedicated Raspberry Pi thread in the Other Consoles section, but I'll leave this topic be, due to its relation to the matter of these sorts of hiccups hitting more companies and products than most people would think, including the Pandora.


Anyway, I'm unsurprised - we all already know that these hitches happen, but don't get mentioned by most companies, since you rarely hear about their products before they're damn near ready to go.


I found the first comment on the news article to be hilarious, incidentally;

No worries…sh*t happens and this is a minor poo

the manufacturer was trying to save some money...

Sounds about right, although saving money is pretty much the goal of the Pi, and they were probably under pressure to obtain parts cheaply.

But it was the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves who sourced those parts. It even gets mentioned in the article.

Ouch! My order was expected in early May - hope this hasn't affected it too much.

Mine was slated for April 30th, but it's not a big deal - I still need to get some stuff together in order to use it, and build the final version of my Lego housing for it, anyway.

 

[Neelix]

the manufacturer was trying to save some money...

Sounds about right, although saving money is pretty much the goal of the Pi, and they were probably under pressure to obtain parts cheaply.

But it was the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves who sourced those parts. It even gets mentioned in the article.

Where? I can't find anywhere in the article itself where it specifies who sourced the parts. The comments section does contain the following quote from Liz though: (the emphasis is mine)

Well, we do have to make it clear that this could very well cause a delay – we still aren’t clear on whether it’ll be possible to get the parts we need for the huge numbers of orders we have in time now, because all the sourcing the factory had done for us was on the wrong part. Like you, I hope like hell it *doesn’t*, but we have to be realistic.

- Neelix

 

[Prometheus]

Where? I can't find anywhere in the article itself where it specifies who sourced the parts. The comments section does contain the following quote from Liz though: (the emphasis is mine)

Well, we do have to make it clear that this could very well cause a delay – we still aren’t clear on whether it’ll be possible to get the parts we need for the huge numbers of orders we have in time now, because all the sourcing the factory had done for us was on the wrong part. Like you, I hope like hell it *doesn’t*, but we have to be realistic.

- Neelix

Here;

all the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out not to be the correct part, so we’re having to start again and move through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can.

^ It's this bit, in combination with the fact that they've mentioned quite a number of times previously that they'd already sourced the parts and had them warehoused, back when the Raspberry Pi Foundation was dealing with this stuff themselves, rather than via Farnell and RS Components.

 

[gadgetoid]

I don't think Raspberry Pi ever had boxes of ethernet jacks sitting around their office. The parts would have been sourced locally to the factory, by the manufacturers... after all, all of this crap is made in China anyway.


I haven't been following closely, but I don't believe Raspberry Pi switched manufacturers between then and their dealings with Farnell/RS... which is half the reason why capacity is so low. Their purported new "manufacturing" partners are currently simply just pseudo investors who are placing orders directly with the factory.


It'll probably pan out to have been a good idea, but in the short run it hasn't made a damned bit of difference in terms of supply. Still the one bottleneck, and now the wrong ethernet jacks to compound the issue.


This really does demonstrate quite effectively how difficult getting this stuff together is, but it's only a small example of the pain the Pandora team went through.

 

[ZXDunny]

I still need to [...] build the final version of my Lego housing for it, anyway.

http://hairydalek.posterous.com/?tag=zxspectrum


D.

 

[Prometheus]

I still need to [...] build the final version of my Lego housing for it, anyway.

http://hairydalek.po...?tag=zxspectrum


D.

Ooh, love it. Alas, my casing is more likely to look like a rainbow threw up on it.

 

[slaeshjag]

I still need to [...] build the final version of my Lego housing for it, anyway.

http://hairydalek.po...?tag=zxspectrum


D.

Ooh, love it. Alas, my casing is more likely to look like a rainbow threw up on it.

Is that just another way of saying that your lego collection has a very limited amount of same coloured bricks?

 

[Prometheus]

^ Essentially. :lol: My Lego collection is not enormous.

 

[theshining]

cheers iprice, looks like I didn't get up early enough on the day, (DAMN YOU WORK) still desperatly want a few Pi's though.


anyone else get a reply from RS Components?.

 

[DaMummy]

yes, everyone received an "interested in" email from RS today