

Why there might not be enough Raspberry Pi to go around - noonespecial
http://www.thesinglestep.org/thoughts/rspi/

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rc55
I have felt for a long time that Raspberry Pi would be something far beyond
the scope of education and could well be re-purposed as a super-economical
Arduino equivalent, complete with its own ecosystem of add-on boards,
enclosures, power supplies and applications.

Could I see myself getting at least one? Most definitely. I'd pay double for
what it offers, and all my hacker friends agree. There's so much we'd love to
dig into, set-top boxes, surveillance, emulation and gaming, jukeboxes, audio
synthesis, demoscene productions... it's just a fantastic platform I can't
wait to get my hands on.

I think they may well deliver on this regardless of any scepticism, although
over time it will be at least exciting to see what kind of community is
developed.

My only slight concern is whether it will encroach on Broadcom's business too
much, perhaps they will constrain orders to set amounts so commercial
applications are prohibited, or at least artificially constrained and referred
further up the supply chain. That said, it does open up the market more for a
similar device.

I do appreciate the fact it is a relatively static specification though -
write once, run everywhere is a great place to be.

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EwanToo
I'm not sure there's the absolutely massive untapped demand that is being
suggested from hobbyists, though it is going to sell a lot to them (in the
10,000s, maybe more).

I picked up a BeagleBone[1] last week, made by Texas Instruments for £60,
which has significantly more CPU power than the Raspberry, 256MB of RAM and
has embedded Ethernet (so is more comparable to the $35 model).

So while D-Link and Netgear aren't exploring this area, TI definitely are, and
are very much in a position to roll out millions of these devices if the
demand is there.

However I think the Raspberry Pi exists in it's current form to drive demand
for a bulk order from governments as an educational tool, and if someone
ordered either the BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi for every 10 year old child then
I think that would be a brilliant step.

[1] <http://beagleboard.org/bone>

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genbattle
Looking at the Beaglebone, it seems to have a very different target market to
the Raspberry Pi; judging from the single USB port, the lack of display
adapter and the large number of GPIO pins, one would say the Beaglebone is
primarily aimed at hackers, particularly hardware hackers. The Pi on the other
hand is aimed at getting people into programming and teaching general computer
skills to those who otherwise couldn't afford a computer.

I couldn't see my parents figuring out how to get a Beagleboard hooked up to
their TV and surfing the net, but I could definitely see them doing this with
a Raspberry Pi unit.

I'm sure I have heard of another board recently that was neither the Pi nor
the Beagleboard that had similar specs to the Pi in terms of design, but used
the same A8 as the beagleboard, clocked at 1.5GHz or something. But that
project was just in its infancy, so won't be available till next year. I'm
somewhat sceptical because they're throwing around specs like >1GB of NAND
flash, >1GB DDR3-800, etc. for 40% less cost than the Pi.

EDIT: Someone linked it below, Rhombus Tech, using some Chinese-manufactured
chip.

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Palomides
this seems rather pessimistic; while the initial run is 10,000 units, they
have said things like "We have a very low fixed-cost base, and will break even
when we reach sales of 20-30k units per year," which imply to me they have
much higher goals than just the first run. And unlike many of the open source
efforts around things like this in the past, it's being produced by
experienced engineers with close ties to a large electronics corporation.
Calling them "a non-profit from the UK focused on education" is pretty
misleading. To even consider selling to the government via the education
system suggests they're ready for serious scale.

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sireat
Sadly, I have been saying the same thing that there will be a big shortage of
Pis since I first heard about Pi and visited their forums this summer.

So far nothing has changed. Delayed production, initial production run of 10k.
It is being run as a hobbyist project(I am judging mostly from the Pi forums).
Hobbyist project is not a bad thing, just not what the market is asking of
this device.

At the moment, it seems like one mid-level guy at Broadcom, got some company
support and got volunteers to help out.

Only saving grace would be, if someone higher up in Broadcom gets behind the
project. The problem is that Broadcom does not want to really make these
devices, it wants to sell its chips to manufacturers (who are unlikely to see
much profit in making $25 devices when they can sell $100 devices)

Think Asus EEE line and how it trended upwards pricewise and netbooks in
general..

All that said, the future is a bit rosier. Once the initial fixed R&D costs
are amortized, we will see plenty of inexpensive devices like this in the next
2-3 years.

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kevinpet
I'd love to learn what the story is, but this is too painful to read in 12px
(i.e. 9pt) gray type.

Maybe, just maybe, if you're doing advertising, and you have a strong need for
some specific look, tiny low contrast type may be appropriate. For anyone
else, it only reduces the number of people who will read your content.

Would you go to a tech talk and do a mumbling Marlon Brando impersonation? I
didn't think so. Please don't do the same in print.

~~~
ph0rque
I used to complain about these things too, until I started using readability.
Now nary a blog post gets read by me before I readability that sucka...

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egypturnash
I really hope this guy is wrong, because, like him, I have a bunch of project
ideas kicking around that would be too frivolous for the time/money cost of an
Arduino and some shields, or a Beagleboard/Gumstix/etc. When the price of
doing something drops a zero, _things change_.

I mean, a hundred bucks and hours getting a rickety webserver stack to run is
a huge investment for "controlling some LED mood lighting in my living room
with my phone/pad/computer". But ~$30-40 for a Pi and a wifi dongle? That's
still a little frivolous but whipping up a bit of C and PHP on top of Apache
seems utterly trivial.

I want a handful of Pis SO BAD.

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justincormack
There are plans for other similar boards in the works eg

<http://rhombus-tech.net//allwinner_a10/orders/>

Which is higher spec, cheaper and has full source.

~~~
noonespecial
I saw that. I sure hope so. I'd feel a great deal better if the product was
more circuit board and less photoshop.

I'd say the Raspberry Pi folks have 6 months, maybe even a year on these guys.

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ChuckMcM
This is so true.

I could consume a million of these a month at that price point. Let that sink
in. One million a month, 12 million a year. Its not even difficult, there are
probably a half dozen ideas that can consume them in this quantity.

Why? Because I can put software on them and resell the package for $99. Going
through distribution and giving them 40 points of margin and I'm still making
better than 65% gross margins.

They are so not ready :-)

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Zuzz
how is not being able to serve everyone who wants to buy one a problem?

This is a charity with a very clear goal:

"promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at
school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing"

as long as they can achieve that they are a success and not being a business
means they can gladly "ignore" everyone else.

I really want one (or three) but if they are hit but astonishing demand and
decide to give priority to those who will serve they overall purpose the best
and not _me_ I'm fine with it. I will not start complaining all over the
interweb and accuse them of being a failure.

~~~
v21
Nothing would be better for the educational community than for there to be a
much larger community making cheap extensions, how-to guides, tutorials and
libraries for it.

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divtxt
Slightly off-topic: are there any Linux options between a $25 Raspberry Pi and
a $200-$300 Atom-based nettop?

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noonespecial
I'd go with a $149 BeagleBoard-XM if you want the DVI, or an $89 beaglebone if
you don't need video.

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lgeek
For $149 I'd rather get an i.MX53 Quick Start Board with Cortex-A8 @ 1 GHz /
1GB DDR3 RAM / SATA(!) / 1080p video decoder / VGA / Ethernet / USB.

I agree about BeagleBone, it's a great choice if you don't need video or too
much RAM, and it includes a JTAG adapter.

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joezydeco
Just a warning: the illustration on the page shows an attached display. You
don't get the LCD & touchscreen in the $149 price. That's another $199 for the
4.3" resistive, and _$499_ for the 10.1" procap. OUCH.

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obtu
Too much demand is a good problem to have. Raspberry Pi is certainly counting
on mass production to meet their target price; and if people still want more,
competitors will spring up.

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ChuckMcM
Not really, too much demand you can't respond to can ruin your reputation and
your customer base. Its ok if you've planned for it, not so much if you get
taken by surprise.

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gravitronic
I agree the demand will be high, and especially at release it will be
impossible to find a board.

However this group is tied tightly with Broadcom and are going to be able to
deal in high volume. Even if they end up wholesaling to digikey for $25, and
we pay a markup, it will still be a great deal and I have no doubt, a success.

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diminish
cheapness may open new frontiers. 10(or more)-pack raspis available at your
local store at the cash register next to the cigarettes may open new ways to
computing where hackers and admins may install to places previously unplanned.

for example, i may feed my cat remotely and get a mobile webcam at home to by
deploying several rasperries, some usb equipment and apt-get install and a
full linux, or create a videochat only computer for gtalk sticked to the
kitchen wall. instead of arduino, a standard pc, and usb may provide more
values. of course battery will be a problem.

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ndefinite
I was going to disagree with you but you might have a point, it's not open
source: <http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs#comment-2220>

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ndefinite
wait, is it? The link I pasted was them commenting about the GPU but I can't
find a reference anywhere saying whether or not the PCB design is open or
closed source

~~~
noonespecial
I can't find the link at the moment but they did release their previous micro-
controller based board but I also read that they would not be releasing the
design of the current model.

