1. Raspberry Pi Trading use UK based manufacturing facilities, so yes, it costs a little extra to ship outside of the UK.
2. Raspberry Pi Trading do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront. So supply will always be limited for devices like the Zero, while demand is high.
3. The profits from the sales of all Raspberry Pi devices are used to fund the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We do charitable work to further Computer Science education around the world. The target audience is educators and children, and that will always be the focus. That it happens there are hackers out there that want to use the device is great, but not the priority.
4. The popularity of the Raspberry Pi range is mainly down to the amazing community we have and the huge support available from that community.
#2. Sadly this fact undermines the real utility of RPI for development.
Its virtually impossible to find any of these "$5 computers" in quantities greater than 1.
Why develop on a platform that you can never put into production? I don't even mean producing "x million units", I'm saying you won't even be able to buy 30 of them for an internal company project.
I understand that RPI mission is education and thats admirable - however they should be completely upfront on their product pages about this....each should state "DON'T USE THIS IN A PRODUCT" across the top.
>2. Raspberry Pi Trading do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront. So supply will always be limited for devices like the Zero, while demand is high. [emphasis added]
This is not true. If it were true, they would welcome a mass payment up-front as this would solve their "do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront" issues which you cite. Instead, I was banned from their forum (forever) despite being a contributor in good standing, for wanting to arrange such an up-front payment with others who were interested, even though I already removed any Raspberry Pi branding from my bid (i.e. the bid would be in generic terms), meaning they would be free to consider the bid but do not have to accept, and even though I greatly limited discussion to just a few posts in their off-topic forum and was clear that they did not officially sanction such a bid from us. (My bid also would have been for lower specifications and a higher per-unit price than the official raspberry pi zero specifications and price, to further make fulfilling it easy.) Their official reason was that I was generating too much mod mail for them to deal with (even though throughout the site they encourage people to message the mods about anything and everything), since hundreds of people were extremely interested in ordering mass quantities. I feel I went out of my way to be extremely fair and transparent, did not make any sort of misrepresentations, or imply they supported me, etc. I went out of my way not to talk in terms of their competitors as well but to support Raspberry Pi in every way possible.
So there is huge demand, but, no, capital constraints are not the reason that the Raspberry Pi Trading foundation does not wish to make x million raspberry pi zero type devices upfront - even if it would further their cause.
I don't have additional visibility than the above and have shared what I know.
I have to say, somewhere industry must have dropped the ball if a small company whose focus isn't even consumers makes such an impact.
Where are the commercial offerings?
Maybe CHIP will take this space, but electronics industry has really neglected hobbyist electronics. Maybe there's a reason, e.g hostility to the idea of hobby electronics disrupting industry?
That will be perfectly fine just as soon as I can buy more than one at a time.
As long as the sales are one offs, its not a $10 device yet. I hope it will be. There was something decidedly fishy about the "$5" Zero that has never ever been available more than one at a time.
I'm not saying that there was a secret conspiracy, but if you happen to be a distributer who makes his margin on each transaction, not each unit, and your source is chronically short, a de facto Zero situation emerges where you make far more on the limited supply available by forcing extra transactions. Sadly this largely negates the purpose of offering an ultra-cheap item in the first place.
Marc - I've had so much fun with Raspberry Pis! Really appreciate the work you do. Have you considered setting up a kickstarter-style pre-order system? I think a lot of people would sign up and it might give you guys more predictability.
> 2. Raspberry Pi Trading do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront. So supply will always be limited for devices like the Zero, while demand is high.
It is too bad that this can not be partially remedied in some fashion. Of course you need to ensure you do not over estimate demand, but if you can sell for sure X number of devices in the launch period, you should be able to find capital somehow to be able to pre-made them to ensure reach your potential.
I just finished a project where this would have been perfect.
You can do wireless keyboardless headless setup. You can do it without connecting anything but power.
On the SD card, place a file called "ssh" (no extension) so SSH is enabled, and configure wpa_supplicant with your wifi details. I found this on the RPi Stack Exchange [1](thanks scruss)
...On the full up-to-date Raspbian...
>If a wpa_supplicant.conf file is placed into the /boot/ directory, this will be moved to the /etc/wpa_supplicant/ directory the next time the system is booted, overwriting the network settings; this allows a Wifi configuration to be preloaded onto a card from a Windows or other machine that can only see the boot partition.
>Since the /boot partition is accessible by any computer with an SD card reader, wifi configuration is now much simpler.
>A skeleton wpa_supplicant.conf file can be as little as:
This is a great feature to get started, but it's unfortunate that the "ssh" file hack doesn't set up SSH keys and disable password auth, or at least change the default password. That must be done manually. I dread to think how many Pis are out there in this configuration.
I hope that in future, a proper/official headless image will be provided, to provide more sensible defaults. Until then, I made a little tool to patch the Raspbian images to set things up this way:
My biggest problem with the Raspberry Pis is not having enough time. I'm serious. The ultra low price point makes it very easy to go out and buy one (thanks MicroCenter) but then finding time and energy to complete a project from start to finish is currently my biggest challenge.
I have several at home "in production" doing things like Z-Wave home automation, Proliphix thermostat chat-ops, wifi AP, some web scraping scripts...
But, at the same time I have a bunch of other ideas that I have a hard time finding time for.
My next project will be setting up Pi Cameras for home security and this new platform is looking very promising for that. Very exciting, but I'm dreading not finding time for it.
Shipping is 15€ in EU, so still more expensive than Pi itself. It's a shame that they overprice shipping so much, it shouldn't cost more than few € (according to other similar size items I order from Internet on regular basis).
One of the best things about rPi products is that for $10 not only do you get the computer, but you are also able to tap into the huge community support behind it.
Folks at rPi Foundation are doing some really amazing work. Congrats!
Hold on there landlubber!
When we said one Pi Zero per order we meant it!
Since we're not completely heartless pirates,
just firm on our policies, we'll let you go
back to your cart and fix this "unfortunate
oversight".
We won't tell anyone if you don't.
- the Pimoroni Crew
p.s. We always announce new Pi Zero stock on
Twitter so it may be worth following for the
latest information!
How robust and dependable is the Raspberry Pi? I've been looking at Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems recently, and as far as I can tell, they're third rate hardware loaded up with fourth rate software selling at first rate premiums.
I've been considering rolling my own around a Raspberry Pi, but I'm not sure how dependable they are. Does anyone have any advice on that front?
Sadly its extremely hard to buy any Pi Zero at the sticker price. Its always out or not available - and even if you can get em you only can order a limited amount (in the case were I got lucky it was 1).
The Pi Zero W seems to continue the trend as far as my local distributor is concerned. I get the overpriced USB hubs its where the profit is at but MAN stop frigging teasing its annoying if you can't buy it at that price.
I don't want the adapters - I solder to the board directly and while the sandisk sd card is not terrible its far from the fastest you can get for a similar price.
I disagree with parts of this. Geographical limits do mean some places end up paying more, and some scummy distributors only stock the packs with a higher markup, but on the whole, the boards are available on their own at the right price.
Your real problem is availability. You see a product launch, want 10, 100, 1000 to use in everything from the sprinklers to the toaster and then hit a website where 200,000 other hackers have had exactly the same thought. They're ferociously popular...
So what would you rather? They hold off sales and announcement until they have a million units rotting in warehouses around the world (like a console release)? Perhaps they should spend twice as much ramping up production to burst in the first month (and charge more). Or pre-orders? Kickstarter? Serious here, what option is better (on price, fairness and convenience to you) than what they're currently doing?
In a month or two you'll (again, slightly dependant on geography) be able to order a hundred of these without an issue. If you really are putting in a big order, talk direct to the distributor and they can adjust their order (and maybe their price to you).
Ultimately you don't have to pay more, you just have to be patient.
I bought a Pi Zero last week from The Pi Hut, arrived in two days, they had loads in stock. Might be a problem with your local distributor? I'm in the UK so supply may well be better here than elsewhere.
I did get tripped up with the camera connector being a different size to normal Pis though, darn it.
[1] www.thepihut.com (I am not affiliated with them in any way)
Same situation as you - pi zero is always out of stock. But in the video included in the post they are saying they will manufacture a lot more quantities of this compared to pi zero so fingers crossed.
This brings up a question I've been meaning to ask: how hard is it to solder a 40 pin connector to a Pi Zero. Do you need a temperature controlled soldering iron?
I bought one PI Zero W from the Dutch distributor a few minutes ago. It's linked in the blog post. I didn't have to buy anything else and I couldn't buy more than one item.
The German distributor seems to be selling only 30x items and the French one doesn't have an Add to cart button for the W, maybe still out of stock. It's in stock at Pimoroni. I didn't check any distributor outside EU.
I've been happy with SanDisk microSDHC UHS-I 8 GB cards so far. They are cat 10, advertised up to 48 MB/s. Which SD cards do you recommend?
I bought two Zeros for $5 and <$5 of shipping earlier this month. I still had to go to two different distributors, but Canakit and Adafruit were in stock in the US.
$10 is an awesome price point. I've never toyed with any of these, but i think i'll pick one up!
How long do you think it'll be before i can safely hook up powered electronics into a system like RasPi? I'd like to make my home "smart", but i don't want to have random IoT vulnerabilities in my home. So a simple network of tiny linux machines powering desk lights/etc will be plenty for me. However, hooking electronics up is dangerous, so i'd rather wait until a professional makes it accessible to someone like me.
Look into a protocol like z-wave - you can already get switches, outlets, heating controllers etc and it can be done without an internet connection. You can get a USB Z-Wave dongle[0] and then use Home Assistant [1] on a Pi to control everything.
Something like https://www.adafruit.com/products/2935 combined with a flavor of raspberry pi then. The linked product is barebones but the actually dangerous part has already been done for you.
I would get a Z-Wave daughter board and use Z-Wave devices for controlling the electronics. Z-wave devices aren't Internet connected so you only have to worry about locking down the Pi.
Apparently there's already an open source project called Home Assistant for this purpose.
Didn't see info on power consumption. Has anyone run zeroes completely wireless using a battery and Bluetooth LE or something or should I be looking elsewhere.
Guess they were feeling some heat from the new Orange Pi Zero and possibly the C.H.I.P too. The omission of WiFi from the Pi Zero was a massive pain because there just wasn't the USB connectors to add it easily.
That's great, recently I ported Redis to the Pi, and the most exciting device for IoT applications looked to be definitely the Pi zero, but the lack of built-in wireless networking was a big limit. At the same time the doubled price tag of the "W" version does not easily allow to use the zero directly as a building block of certain IoT devices or consumer products. What I hope is they'll be able to retain the features and lower the price at the same time.
This is perfect. I bought two Zeros a few months back and my ONLY issue with them was how cumbersome having to use a USB hub was for wireless and keyboard connectivity. Looks like this may still require that for initial setup, but it makes discrete placement behind a TV much easier once that's taken care of.
I, for one, welcome the $99 soapbar computer war that's about to unleash.
It is unbelievable how Apple is missing this train. They could put 100 million soapbars in all homes in the world without even making a dent in their main products. All aluminum case, just like an Apple TV.
I just hope the will produce enough of them. For a project I was looking to buy 5-25 of the 'normal' Raspberry pi Zero, and no supplier had them in stock. We had to go with the normal Rpi 3, which (besides being more expensive) is a lot bulkier.
[+] [-] MarcScott|9 years ago|reply
1. Raspberry Pi Trading use UK based manufacturing facilities, so yes, it costs a little extra to ship outside of the UK.
2. Raspberry Pi Trading do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront. So supply will always be limited for devices like the Zero, while demand is high.
3. The profits from the sales of all Raspberry Pi devices are used to fund the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We do charitable work to further Computer Science education around the world. The target audience is educators and children, and that will always be the focus. That it happens there are hackers out there that want to use the device is great, but not the priority.
4. The popularity of the Raspberry Pi range is mainly down to the amazing community we have and the huge support available from that community.
[+] [-] _red|9 years ago|reply
Its virtually impossible to find any of these "$5 computers" in quantities greater than 1.
Why develop on a platform that you can never put into production? I don't even mean producing "x million units", I'm saying you won't even be able to buy 30 of them for an internal company project.
I understand that RPI mission is education and thats admirable - however they should be completely upfront on their product pages about this....each should state "DON'T USE THIS IN A PRODUCT" across the top.
[+] [-] throwawayiii141|9 years ago|reply
This is not true. If it were true, they would welcome a mass payment up-front as this would solve their "do not have the capital to make x million devices upfront" issues which you cite. Instead, I was banned from their forum (forever) despite being a contributor in good standing, for wanting to arrange such an up-front payment with others who were interested, even though I already removed any Raspberry Pi branding from my bid (i.e. the bid would be in generic terms), meaning they would be free to consider the bid but do not have to accept, and even though I greatly limited discussion to just a few posts in their off-topic forum and was clear that they did not officially sanction such a bid from us. (My bid also would have been for lower specifications and a higher per-unit price than the official raspberry pi zero specifications and price, to further make fulfilling it easy.) Their official reason was that I was generating too much mod mail for them to deal with (even though throughout the site they encourage people to message the mods about anything and everything), since hundreds of people were extremely interested in ordering mass quantities. I feel I went out of my way to be extremely fair and transparent, did not make any sort of misrepresentations, or imply they supported me, etc. I went out of my way not to talk in terms of their competitors as well but to support Raspberry Pi in every way possible.
So there is huge demand, but, no, capital constraints are not the reason that the Raspberry Pi Trading foundation does not wish to make x million raspberry pi zero type devices upfront - even if it would further their cause.
I don't have additional visibility than the above and have shared what I know.
[+] [-] Chris2048|9 years ago|reply
I have to say, somewhere industry must have dropped the ball if a small company whose focus isn't even consumers makes such an impact.
Where are the commercial offerings?
Maybe CHIP will take this space, but electronics industry has really neglected hobbyist electronics. Maybe there's a reason, e.g hostility to the idea of hobby electronics disrupting industry?
[+] [-] Retric|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|9 years ago|reply
As long as the sales are one offs, its not a $10 device yet. I hope it will be. There was something decidedly fishy about the "$5" Zero that has never ever been available more than one at a time.
I'm not saying that there was a secret conspiracy, but if you happen to be a distributer who makes his margin on each transaction, not each unit, and your source is chronically short, a de facto Zero situation emerges where you make far more on the limited supply available by forcing extra transactions. Sadly this largely negates the purpose of offering an ultra-cheap item in the first place.
[+] [-] lukas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|9 years ago|reply
It is too bad that this can not be partially remedied in some fashion. Of course you need to ensure you do not over estimate demand, but if you can sell for sure X number of devices in the launch period, you should be able to find capital somehow to be able to pre-made them to ensure reach your potential.
[+] [-] johansch|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Nexxxeh|9 years ago|reply
You can do wireless keyboardless headless setup. You can do it without connecting anything but power.
On the SD card, place a file called "ssh" (no extension) so SSH is enabled, and configure wpa_supplicant with your wifi details. I found this on the RPi Stack Exchange [1](thanks scruss)
...On the full up-to-date Raspbian...
>If a wpa_supplicant.conf file is placed into the /boot/ directory, this will be moved to the /etc/wpa_supplicant/ directory the next time the system is booted, overwriting the network settings; this allows a Wifi configuration to be preloaded onto a card from a Windows or other machine that can only see the boot partition.
>Since the /boot partition is accessible by any computer with an SD card reader, wifi configuration is now much simpler.
>A skeleton wpa_supplicant.conf file can be as little as:
It needs to be Linux style line endings [according to user2154065] but I used Notepad++ on Windows to do that.--- [1] http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/10251/prepare...
[+] [-] adammck|9 years ago|reply
I hope that in future, a proper/official headless image will be provided, to provide more sensible defaults. Until then, I made a little tool to patch the Raspbian images to set things up this way:
https://github.com/adammck/headless-raspbian
[+] [-] Havoc|9 years ago|reply
Awesome thanks
[+] [-] antongribok|9 years ago|reply
I have several at home "in production" doing things like Z-Wave home automation, Proliphix thermostat chat-ops, wifi AP, some web scraping scripts...
But, at the same time I have a bunch of other ideas that I have a hard time finding time for.
My next project will be setting up Pi Cameras for home security and this new platform is looking very promising for that. Very exciting, but I'm dreading not finding time for it.
[+] [-] curiousgal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbart|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forinti|9 years ago|reply
Adafruit has lots of cool stuff, but it charges at least $40 for shipping. Not worth it for a casual buyer.
[+] [-] christogreeff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nattmat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pulse7|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crypt1d|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schappim|9 years ago|reply
- 1GHz, single-core CPU
- 512MB RAM
- Mini-HDMI port
- Micro-USB On-The-Go port
- Micro-USB power
- HAT-compatible 40-pin header
- Composite video and reset headers
- CSI camera connector
- 802.11n wireless LAN
- Bluetooth 4.0
Source: http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-ze...
[+] [-] pawadu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomelders|9 years ago|reply
I've been considering rolling my own around a Raspberry Pi, but I'm not sure how dependable they are. Does anyone have any advice on that front?
[+] [-] blkhawk|9 years ago|reply
Sadly its extremely hard to buy any Pi Zero at the sticker price. Its always out or not available - and even if you can get em you only can order a limited amount (in the case were I got lucky it was 1).
The Pi Zero W seems to continue the trend as far as my local distributor is concerned. I get the overpriced USB hubs its where the profit is at but MAN stop frigging teasing its annoying if you can't buy it at that price.
I don't want the adapters - I solder to the board directly and while the sandisk sd card is not terrible its far from the fastest you can get for a similar price.
</rant>
sorry about that I am calm now.
[+] [-] benn_88|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliwarner|9 years ago|reply
Your real problem is availability. You see a product launch, want 10, 100, 1000 to use in everything from the sprinklers to the toaster and then hit a website where 200,000 other hackers have had exactly the same thought. They're ferociously popular...
So what would you rather? They hold off sales and announcement until they have a million units rotting in warehouses around the world (like a console release)? Perhaps they should spend twice as much ramping up production to burst in the first month (and charge more). Or pre-orders? Kickstarter? Serious here, what option is better (on price, fairness and convenience to you) than what they're currently doing?
In a month or two you'll (again, slightly dependant on geography) be able to order a hundred of these without an issue. If you really are putting in a big order, talk direct to the distributor and they can adjust their order (and maybe their price to you).
Ultimately you don't have to pay more, you just have to be patient.
[+] [-] jamesfmilne|9 years ago|reply
I did get tripped up with the camera connector being a different size to normal Pis though, darn it.
[1] www.thepihut.com (I am not affiliated with them in any way)
[+] [-] itsfrosty|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2sk21|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|9 years ago|reply
The German distributor seems to be selling only 30x items and the French one doesn't have an Add to cart button for the W, maybe still out of stock. It's in stock at Pimoroni. I didn't check any distributor outside EU.
I've been happy with SanDisk microSDHC UHS-I 8 GB cards so far. They are cat 10, advertised up to 48 MB/s. Which SD cards do you recommend?
[+] [-] laxentasken|9 years ago|reply
Only covers regular pi zero though.
[+] [-] bitshiffed|9 years ago|reply
If they're already for sale at brick-and-mortars then the listings won't be far behind (I don't see any yet, though).
[+] [-] undersuit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] column|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notheguyouthink|9 years ago|reply
How long do you think it'll be before i can safely hook up powered electronics into a system like RasPi? I'd like to make my home "smart", but i don't want to have random IoT vulnerabilities in my home. So a simple network of tiny linux machines powering desk lights/etc will be plenty for me. However, hooking electronics up is dangerous, so i'd rather wait until a professional makes it accessible to someone like me.
Thoughts?
[+] [-] lucaspiller|9 years ago|reply
[0] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/AEON-AEOEZW090-C-Z-Stick-Gen5/dp/B0... [1] - https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant
[+] [-] fragmede|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmoritz|9 years ago|reply
Apparently there's already an open source project called Home Assistant for this purpose.
https://home-assistant.io/
[+] [-] arjie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redsummer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloydsparkes|9 years ago|reply
It was such a pain to do USB networking on the old zero. But its a great size and form factor for projects
Adding in Bluetooth and Wifi will make it much easier to work with
[+] [-] makomk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aargh_aargh|9 years ago|reply
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/28/10-raspberry-pi-zero-w-the-w-...
[+] [-] antirez|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrillgore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toxican|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Entangled|9 years ago|reply
It is unbelievable how Apple is missing this train. They could put 100 million soapbars in all homes in the world without even making a dent in their main products. All aluminum case, just like an Apple TV.
[+] [-] oceanswave|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PanMan|9 years ago|reply