5 ms·

Parallella Pre-Order Shipping Update

38 points by matt42 12y ago

lutusp 12y ago
> We are happy to announce that after an endless string of challenges and unlucky events, the Parallella board is finally moving into production! Really, this is the sales pitch? Moral: don't let engineers write your marketing copy. Customers don't need to hear how close to disaster the transition to production was -- it reflects poorly on the end product. I would have said, "We're now about to ship a product that meets our own high expectations, and we're ready to share it with you." You know, something encouraging.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  This is "E2E": If you're not an specialist engineer, you will have no idea what to do with a Parallella - and if you are, you'll know you want one from the description and the specs, not vapid marketing copy.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > This is "E2E" Yes, that may be the intent, but not all buyers of such products are engineers themselves. Some of them are nontechnical and know what to look for, but have to make snap judgments based on the minimum of information. > ... not vapid marketing copy. The author of the linked article certainly succeeded in avoiding vapid marketing copy. :)
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      >not all buyers of such products are engineers themselves I'm guessing this is especially true with this board because of Kickstarter exposure and coverage. I think that the ones bought by the non-engineers will end up dusty in desk drawers next to a thousand Raspberry Pis.
- JeremyMorgan 12y ago
  I disagree. As a backer I'm glad to know WHY I didn't receive my board months ago. Getting canned marketing messages would have just pissed me off. It does seem like there have been some unfortunate events but I honestly believe the team is putting in their best effort to get this thing off the ground. They've had some hangups, and some preventable mistakes. It's the nature of innovation, and nothing they should be ashamed of or try to hide.
  - ranit 12y ago
    I agree with your disagreement :-). As a backer (and a customer), I prefer the clear picture of the events. They have been sending messages about their difficulties which I find informative and useful. Backing a project is riskier (and should be riskier) than just buying an already financed and ready product. There have been more unfortunate kickstarter projects that could not deliver (like a measurement tool from senic). I don’t mind their honesty either and also think I learned something from their struggle. All the best to their future initiatives. Isn’t that what kickstarter is for?
- primitivesuave 12y ago
  After you experience Kickstarter projects which fail to materialize (sometimes taking your money with them), you'll come to appreciate the honest and brutal reality behind putting things into production.
SeanKilleen 12y ago
Anyone else think they're missing a bit of an opportunity by not calling these messages "parallella-grams"? I'll show myself out.
PaulKeeble 12y ago
Up until November 2013 all the news was of technical difficulties in the board causing delays. Repeated redesigns and fixes. However in November 2013 we finally got told the reason why we really didn't have boards, 10 months after the due delivery date was they didn't have the money. Worse than that the Kickstarter had never been enough money to make the boards, they always needed external funding that they had no idea they would get. In the Kickstarter this was never mentioned and it wasn't mentioned until November 2013 to the backers. That is not the way business is done. They should have either made the kickstarter price higher or more backers or they been honest upfront in that pitch that the product needed additional seed money not coming from kickstarter. Rather than lying to your backers for over a year about the nature of the delays. None of this is how you make friends and I wont deal with them again. They offered me a refund in November which I never got but at least they finally shipped my boards. This is one kickstarter backing I regret, not because I don't want the product but I don't want the guys who make it in business anymore. I don't want companies that behave this way to be rewarded, such levels of dishonesty (and potentially IMO criminal activity and certainly a breach of Kickstarters conditions) just should not be rewarded with success.
- wmf 12y ago
  This sounds par for the course for the Bitcoin world; maybe they should move into that market.
CraigJPerry 12y ago
Looks like later buyers are shipping first? On the forums it's posters with 1 post who are reporting they now have shipping numbers / delivery dates. None of them have turned up on the "show us your parallela" thread yet unfortunately.
- mrbrowning 12y ago
  They might be people who ordered boards with the Zynq 7020 SoC, which is shipping either first or more quickly for some reason.
jwise0 12y ago
It is in fact the case that they're shipping; I've had one arrive in the mail. My first impression (from just looking at it and not powering it on yet ...) is that the board feels like what Raspberry Pi should have been. The Z7020 is a pretty serious chunk of FPGA. I'm not convinced that I believe that their ASIC is any more powerful than the big chunk of programmable logic that's sitting right next to it, though I suppose that for some DSP-like applications, there could be a pretty clear win. On the other hand, I supported it because I like the idea of a crowd-funded tapeout, and wanted mostly just to help prove that that would be a successful strategy. It's not clear to me that I'll ever have time to actually power one on, let alone do much playing with it... Has anyone written any code for it yet? How would you describe the experience of programming for it?
rurban 12y ago
Pathetic. Still waiting for one and a half year.

38 points by matt42 12y ago

> We are happy to announce that after an endless string of challenges and unlucky events, the Parallella board is finally moving into production! Really, this is the sales pitch? Moral: don't let engineers write your marketing copy. Customers don't need to hear how close to disaster the transition to production was -- it reflects poorly on the end product. I would have said, "We're now about to ship a product that meets our own high expectations, and we're ready to share it with you." You know, something encouraging.

pessimizer 12y ago
This is "E2E": If you're not an specialist engineer, you will have no idea what to do with a Parallella - and if you are, you'll know you want one from the description and the specs, not vapid marketing copy.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > This is "E2E" Yes, that may be the intent, but not all buyers of such products are engineers themselves. Some of them are nontechnical and know what to look for, but have to make snap judgments based on the minimum of information. > ... not vapid marketing copy. The author of the linked article certainly succeeded in avoiding vapid marketing copy. :)
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >not all buyers of such products are engineers themselves I'm guessing this is especially true with this board because of Kickstarter exposure and coverage. I think that the ones bought by the non-engineers will end up dusty in desk drawers next to a thousand Raspberry Pis.
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
I disagree. As a backer I'm glad to know WHY I didn't receive my board months ago. Getting canned marketing messages would have just pissed me off. It does seem like there have been some unfortunate events but I honestly believe the team is putting in their best effort to get this thing off the ground. They've had some hangups, and some preventable mistakes. It's the nature of innovation, and nothing they should be ashamed of or try to hide.
- ranit 12y ago
  I agree with your disagreement :-). As a backer (and a customer), I prefer the clear picture of the events. They have been sending messages about their difficulties which I find informative and useful. Backing a project is riskier (and should be riskier) than just buying an already financed and ready product. There have been more unfortunate kickstarter projects that could not deliver (like a measurement tool from senic). I don’t mind their honesty either and also think I learned something from their struggle. All the best to their future initiatives. Isn’t that what kickstarter is for?
primitivesuave 12y ago
After you experience Kickstarter projects which fail to materialize (sometimes taking your money with them), you'll come to appreciate the honest and brutal reality behind putting things into production.

SeanKilleen 12y ago

Anyone else think they're missing a bit of an opportunity by not calling these messages "parallella-grams"? I'll show myself out.

PaulKeeble 12y ago

Up until November 2013 all the news was of technical difficulties in the board causing delays. Repeated redesigns and fixes. However in November 2013 we finally got told the reason why we really didn't have boards, 10 months after the due delivery date was they didn't have the money. Worse than that the Kickstarter had never been enough money to make the boards, they always needed external funding that they had no idea they would get. In the Kickstarter this was never mentioned and it wasn't mentioned until November 2013 to the backers. That is not the way business is done. They should have either made the kickstarter price higher or more backers or they been honest upfront in that pitch that the product needed additional seed money not coming from kickstarter. Rather than lying to your backers for over a year about the nature of the delays. None of this is how you make friends and I wont deal with them again. They offered me a refund in November which I never got but at least they finally shipped my boards. This is one kickstarter backing I regret, not because I don't want the product but I don't want the guys who make it in business anymore. I don't want companies that behave this way to be rewarded, such levels of dishonesty (and potentially IMO criminal activity and certainly a breach of Kickstarters conditions) just should not be rewarded with success.

wmf 12y ago
This sounds par for the course for the Bitcoin world; maybe they should move into that market.

CraigJPerry 12y ago

Looks like later buyers are shipping first? On the forums it's posters with 1 post who are reporting they now have shipping numbers / delivery dates. None of them have turned up on the "show us your parallela" thread yet unfortunately.

mrbrowning 12y ago
They might be people who ordered boards with the Zynq 7020 SoC, which is shipping either first or more quickly for some reason.

jwise0 12y ago

It is in fact the case that they're shipping; I've had one arrive in the mail. My first impression (from just looking at it and not powering it on yet ...) is that the board feels like what Raspberry Pi should have been. The Z7020 is a pretty serious chunk of FPGA. I'm not convinced that I believe that their ASIC is any more powerful than the big chunk of programmable logic that's sitting right next to it, though I suppose that for some DSP-like applications, there could be a pretty clear win. On the other hand, I supported it because I like the idea of a crowd-funded tapeout, and wanted mostly just to help prove that that would be a successful strategy. It's not clear to me that I'll ever have time to actually power one on, let alone do much playing with it... Has anyone written any code for it yet? How would you describe the experience of programming for it?

rurban 12y ago

Pathetic. Still waiting for one and a half year.