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#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

• ethbro 10y ago
  Also, why for the love of god can't they just license the name to some secondary source w/ quality control stipulations? Mandate a slightly higher cost-per-unit (5% or somesuch) and sell it as the Raspberry Pi Zero Commercial. With (critically) guaranteed compatibility with the consumer model. I can't imagine there wouldn't be Chinese factories lining up for the opportunity. Then use the licensing revenue to help fund Raspberry Pi's mission.
  • rkangel 10y ago
    You are dramatically underestimating the complexity and difficulty of "w/ quality control stipulations". I work in electronic device design. On a good project designing a complex device, 2/3 of the work will be iterations of design (software, electronic, mechanical, industrial). When you've finished designing it you've then got another 1/3 of getting it manufactured at a decent cost with a decent yield. And that's assuming that you have an existing relationship in China with a high end manufacturer. Weeks and weeks of trips out, production runs, implementation of QA. Given that, how would you go about ensuring that what's coming out of a factory in China is actually up to scratch? And even if you did, the processor on the Pi uses an unusual chip-on-chip technology that most board makers don't have the capability to build.
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
      > I work in electronic device design. Why?
      • zild3d 10y ago
        Is it hard to guess why designing electronics could possibly be good/interesting work? It involves programming, design, physics, math, and making real things we use everyday - medical devices, cars, satellites, cameras, etc
        • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
          It sounded like no upside existed from his description.
          • khedoros1 10y ago
            They weren't trying to convince you that it's a pleasant occupation. I'm sure that the content of the comment would have a different emphasis if they were.
            • 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
              Then the question still stands. What I'm getting at is, while QA might be hard I'm sure doing hard things might pay off some way instead of no way at all.
              • khedoros1 10y ago
                They weren't trying to describe the payoff, just the process...although the description did have some things that sound rewarding to me. - Iterating through a project and seeing new functionality implemented can be rewarding - The chase of business negotiations and inter-personal problem-solving can be rewarding "Why" just strikes me as an off-topic, unspecific, and weird question to ask.
                • deleted 10y ago
    • ethbro 10y ago
      > When you've finished designing it you've then got another 1/3 of getting it manufactured at a decent cost with a decent yield. The difference here is that this is an already proven design? Have a competitive bid process for the right to market under the trademark, eliminate factories you flat out don't trust, then require ability to randomly sample and test on Pi's side. If pass rate drops below agreed parameters, revoke the trademark and pick another factory. Then let the factory self-QA or face the consequences. I can't imagine there are no factories in China that can make a profit on a chip that's being made profitably in the UK. The only argument I can see against it would be that a commercial market doesn't exist in any volume. But I can't imagine there wouldn't be decent profit vs {insert lower priced Pi clone here}. ... The other argument would be if Pi has an exclusivity agreement with Sony UK (who I believe is the majority manufacturer) that precludes this kind of deal in exchange for pricing? > "unusual chip-on-chip technology" You mean the package-on-package mounting of the SDRAM on top of the BCM2835? Defer to your experience, but if Raspberry Pi is doing this then how expensive/rare is the investment? I'm honestly trying to reconcile the following statements: "They're hard to manufacture" + "We make a profit on each one sold" + "We can't afford to make them at commercial scale"
      • IanCal 10y ago
        > I can't imagine there are no factories in China that can make a profit on a chip that's being made profitably in the UK. One of their aims was to produce things in the UK. They didn't meet this initially, but with scale managed to bring production at least largely within the UK.
        • ethbro 10y ago
          Isn't the entire reason we're having the "Pi can't / won't sell in industrial quantities" conversation because they can't scale production?
          • IanCal 10y ago
            Their initial scale at the first launch was too small to work with UK manufacturers, a bit later with the first version they were able to order large enough runs to have production in Wales iirc.
• JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  You can make your own circuit board with the same layout. Anyone can put it into production? Yes the limited sample quantity is a problem.
  • wolfgke 10y ago
    It is nearly impossible to buy Broadcom chips in small quantities (or even buy them if you are not a large company).
    • viewer5 10y ago
      > or even buy them if you are not a large company Because of the cost? Or do they refuse to deal with small companies?
      • xienze 10y ago
        They normally deal in massive quantities. Asking for a couple thousand units just isn't worth the effort. That's what makes the RPi Foundation unique -- Broadcom _does_ deal in small quantities for them in support of the mission.
        • wolfgke 10y ago
          > Broadcom _does_ deal in small quantities for them in support of the mission. Rather: originally in support of the mission. :-)
      • 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
        The latter. Their chips aren't sold through distributors, and they'll pretty much only give the time of day to high-volume OEMs. They stonewall companies that are big enough to get in-person visits from sales engineers from other major vendors (TI, Freescale, Xilinx). Raspberry Pi cofounder Eben Upton was a technical director at Broadcom, so he had inside connections.
    • cillian64 10y ago
      Look into the Next Thing Co GR8 -- it's a vaguely similar SOC (the thing in the Chip Pro) but is (in theory - I haven't investigated) available in small quantities and with an accessible datasheet.
• wolfgke 10y ago
  > Its virtually impossible to find any of these "$5 computers" in quantities greater than 1. It's quite possible to get more, if you need to (though probably not multiple ones at the same time). Just use the shops the the RPi foundations recommends and choose to be informed via email when this shop again has some in stock. Then as soon as possible buy one.
  • joshvm 10y ago
    But the problem is you can only buy one. We use Pi 2Bs for some commercial projects and it's ok because in principle we could order in 1000 next-day from RS (currently 12k in stock) or Farnell without restrictions. Practically the Pi Zero-W would fulfil all our system requirements, it'd probably be better because it's smaller. However, we can't risk it because the supply chain isn't there yet.
    • sswaner 10y ago
      You are lamenting that a product released today is not available in sufficient quantities to be used in your commercial product? Sounds like an unreasonable expectation.
      • Dylan16807 10y ago
        No, he's saying that if the W is unavailable the same way the Zero historically has been then it's a problem. The Zero has been out for a good while.
      • joshvm 10y ago
        To counter: the Pi Zero is coming on for 18 months and is still regularly sold out. I'm not expecting mass quantities on release, but the problem is that you can only buy one which makes development difficult. And if it's anything like the original zero, we'd have no idea when it will be available in quantity. Often it's useful to have more than one board e.g. one bare dev board, one in an enclosure/prototype. Having a month or more lead time for a replacement isn't practical.
• cillian64 10y ago
  Farnell UK has 18,230 Raspberry Pi 3Bs in stock. Between Farnell and RS most of the boards are available in many hundreds within a few days.
  • squeaky-clean 10y ago
    You still can't buy more than a single Pi Zero anywhere. Technically the Pi 3B is 7x more expensive. Edit: Looks like Farnell UK doesn't sell the Zero or Zero W, and any store that does is limiting themselves to 1 per customer.
    • Declanomous 10y ago
      I could walk in to Microcenter right now and pick up basically as many as I wanted. I know everyone doesn't have a Microcenter within a few miles of them, but they've had them in stock continually since about three months after the release. It might be different in other countries, but I have to imagine that anyone in the US could get their hands on a Zero if they wanted one.
      • samstave 10y ago
        Gosh - I thought microcenter went OOB in 1998 (at least in San Jose, Ca)
        • Declanomous 10y ago
          Their design aesthetic kind of looks like they did, what with the weird grey stucco and the blue and white blocky font.
          • nkristoffersen 10y ago
            In Texas, each microcenter has their own theme. It's actually pretty cool! One is a space station. Another is an oil field :-)
        • 10y ago
• KaiserPro 10y ago
  have you talked to the foundation about this? because what your saying isn't actually true: https://www.nec-display-solutions.com/p/hq/en/news/dp/Products/Shared/News/2016/PressReleases/Company/RaspberryPi/RaspberryPi.xhtml https://www.nec-display-solutions.com/p/hq/en/news/dp/Produc... but they aren't the only people Secondly, have you placed an order with them directly? Have you talked to a reseller?
  • 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    That article is about the compute module; parent is talking about the Pi Zero ("$5 computers"). They're substantially different products.
    • KaiserPro 10y ago
      sigh yes, and the OP also states that the rpi foundation is anti business. the point still stands, have they talked to the rpi foundation about it?
• pjc50 10y ago
  The productisable Pi is the "compute module". Complaining on HN is not the right solution here; if you genuinely want to fill a production run of thousands of devices with embedded Pi, speak to the foundation directly.
  • sperglord 10y ago
    He's not talking about creating a commercial venture that would necessitate thousands of devices. He's talking about an in-house project on the scale of dozens. Would contacting them directly get me that quantity at that price?
  • astrodust 10y ago
    If you're producing a product where you need thousands of something maybe getting a custom-built ARM board is a better plan than using a Raspberry Pi. Making your own ARM board is fairly expensive for one-off things, but for volume it's not a huge obstacle. There are any number of vendors capable of producing these for you to almost any specification.
  • candiodari 10y ago
    Nope. I think when people want to design stuff with a $5 computer, a $40 ($30 in bulk) module probably won't cut it. The difference is too great.
• tupshin 10y ago
  Have you considered https://getchip.com/pages/chippro https://getchip.com/pages/chippro ?
• sosborn 10y ago
  > Why develop on a platform that you can never put into production? Have you considered that the foundation's goals don't necessarily mirror yours?
• 69mlgsniperdad 10y ago
  The pi zero was sold at a loss... It is/was a marketing manuever to absorb more of the diy iot market share; which is the reason there is a 1 per customer limit. As well as the reason microcenter requires in person purchase and not online. Secondly the pi line, like the Arduino line, along with everything else of that nature, are 'development platforms.' You don't buy a developer kit in mass intending to resell as an end product... The pi, Arduino, beagle, etc have an excessive number of Io pins, often a variety of sensors, multiple options for power source and corresponding voltage regulators and other features useful for development. When you take your design to market, you simply draw your own schematic/PCB layout and place an order for a board without the unused sensors, io's, regulators, etc. The schematics provided for the pi and other platforms are quite modular and easy to understand. One can simply remove all the io's, accessories from busses, regulators, clocks, and whatever else isn't required. One can then tweak the PCB layout to fit their form factor, power requirements, component tolerances and whatever else to suit their exact use case, to minimize cost.
  • codys 10y ago
    > You don't buy a developer kit in mass intending to resell as an end product Beaglebone black-like system boards are used for both development & production. I almost shipped a system like this personally. With the BBB, you can get slightly modified versions, in bulk, and with enough availability to satisfy purchasing. Even if you couldn't, the SoC on the BBB can be bought from TI. I imagine there are similar things for more modern, powerful SoCs. Many companies like isolating the complicated timing sensitive board design (as needed for NAND and off chip memory) from the rest of their design, and don't necessarily have the skills in house to do that type of layout. Pre-made boards like the BBB provide a lower cost option than a completely custom board. With the RPis, you can't even buy the SoC. I'm not aware of anyone you can buy slightly modified (ie: unneeded components pulled) boards from in bulk.
    • delhanty 10y ago
      >Beaglebone black-like system boards are used for both development & production. That's correct. Autodesk uses a modified Beaglebone Black for its reference "open" * 3D printer design Ember: https://beagleboard.org/blog/2015-09-29-autodesk-ember/ https://beagleboard.org/blog/2015-09-29-autodesk-ember/ The Ember retails at $7495, but one can experiment with the modifying firmware with a standard Beaglebone Black. * "open" as defined by Autodesk.
• VLM 10y ago
  "Its virtually impossible to find any of these "$5 computers" in quantities greater than 1." Only true for Pi products. If you're willing to spend $7 you can get esp8266 nodemcu hardware delivered from amazon prime in arbitrary quantity. Theres a problem where no matter how many times its stated, "you can buy ONE if you pay six times MSRP or live within driving range of the one retail store on the continent selling them or if you import from the UK or eastern europe" vs I need six for an IoT experiment involving micropython and I2C environmental sensors. I can't buy six $5 pi or even six $10 pi but I can have six ESP8266 boards by thursday afternoon for $35 total. Which is less than single pi zero plus "development kit of parts" costs, ironically. A $5 computer that's impossible to actually purchase is much less useful in practice than a $7 computer delivered in two days by amazon prime in any quantity I'm willing to pay for. Its interesting that above $40 or so there is an infinite supply of rasp pi 3 and beaglebone blacks. Everything is widely available except for cheap pi.
  • imaginenore 10y ago
    esp8266 is not even close to being a replacement for rPi. The specs are orders of magnitude worse. 160KB RAM, 1MB flash, 80MHz CPU, no GPU. None of the builtin modules for networking, wifi, etc.
    • hgchoi 10y ago
      I think I agree that there really isn't a comparable competitor to rpi .. rpiZero W offers a lot for an iot module at such a great cost. maybe something like the CHIP, but not even? I'm currently working on an agriculture sensing iot platform and going to try to use rpiZero W with the current spectrum sensor from nanolambda. http://www.nanolambda.net http://www.nanolambda.net . luckily they have the rPi api,sdk already.
      • imaginenore 10y ago
        What do you mean? There are tons of rPi alternatives. https://www.board-db.org/ https://www.board-db.org/
      • 10y ago
• snappy173 10y ago
  and #3 explains why they are OK with that. they've always been up front about that.
• mfrykman 10y ago
  When the biggest customer complaint is that people can't buy enough of your product, you know you're doing something right.