Huge thank you to Element 14 staff and Members!
Time for a quick update and starting forward movement on Project Loki!
Earlier I expressed my intent to enter in the Blue Tooth Unleashed Challenge as a Un-Sponsored Challenger.
One of my concerns had been the fact that Element 14 had ran out of Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards for purchase in the U.S.
As such I had asked if perhaps some boards had been set aside for potential Challengers to purchase the board and be able to participate.
Sadly this was not an option available and it looked like the best way was for me to go outside of Element 14 and purchase the new Raspberry Pi 3B+ board.
I had looked around my local area to see if there was one quickly available. The only place being the local Target store and they not only had no idea what I was talking about, but when I did hunt down the area they did not have any in stock either. Just too hot of an item to keep on the shelves at that time in the United States I guess!
e14phil Phil Hutchinson was so kind as to say that I could use the model prior (non +) since that was the one originally intended for the challenge and it was only upgraded as they became available. This was a great allowance and of course would let me swap out later to the newer board if I were able to get one!
At the same time mcb1 Mark Beckett had shared that over in New Zealand they had:
So the items were out there!
Mark even ordered another one and asked E14 if he could have it rerouted to me in the US and danzima Daniel Zima was able to work magic with shipping and not to much later one arrived in Western Colorado. Meanwhile local supplies and the US E14 store was still out.
So I wanted to saw Wow, and thank you to E14 for not only flexing to allow challengers to work with limited supplies but also a huge Thank you to mcb1 Mark for sending a board my way! Element 14 is such a great community!
I have just returned from some out of state training for work and I even kept my eye open to see if I could come across any in my travels. None were found until before Memorial Day then I found 3 at a Target 200 miles away:
And then while wandering through MicroCenter in Denver (250 miles away) I came across this treasure trove:
To top it all off I received an email alert telling me the US E14 store has the items now back in stock!
I wonder if New Zealand finally shared some of those almost 2,000 they had laying around.... ;-)
So to end tonight's blog I think it shows that the Element 14 Community is a strong supporter of Makers and for any of you thinking of entering Un-Sponsored, do so!
THANK YOU!
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