Ship dates?

My Newark (US) order just got bumped from 2 Apr to 16 Aug. :'-(

Hi there - we found out the cause for this jump to August - it was a system auto-generated error from our website to Newark element14 customers.  So sorry for this confusing messaging.   We've recently posted a discussion regarding the specifics of the issue here: http://www.element14.com/community/thread/17532. 

Additionally, Raspberry Pi Foundation has communicated about this issue as well:

https://twitter.com/#!/Raspberry_Pi/status/185128191529193473

Thanks,

Nicole

Thank you for your responses and updates, Nicole.

It's a breath of fresh air in a project that is suffering greatly from lack of official communications.  Given good information, communities are generally very tolerant and understanding of delays, so this helps a lot.

Morgaine.

I noted that the "lead time" estimate on the RPi item page at Newark has reverted to Aug 17th again.  Moreover, it used to have "stock arriving" in April and "additional stock" in August.  Now both dates are in August.

It appears more and more that even the lucky few in the first 10k probably won't see theirs until August.  So where does that leave the other 100k+ people who want one?

I'm becoming less and less enthusiastic when I hear that the first 2k just arrived in the UK and that the other 8k (remainder of the 10k) are just finishing production. I'm sure I'm not the only one that understood that around 29 Feb 10k RPi had been built.  Now we hear that only around 2k had been completed.

Why can't we hear what the "big plan" is?  We all know that there have been issues...ethernet port...compliance testing...but someone at the two companies must have some plan.  Negotiations for future orders, packaging and shipping, redistribution through their reseller chains, etc.  According the the compliance testing post at the RaspberryPi.org site, RS has people on site in China to watch the production and testing.  I can't believe that a UK company would have people travel to China (can't be cheap) without a firm plan on how they will procure and sell this product. 

For the sake of our sanity, can't someone "official" provide a real update laying out the whole plan?

Rather colourfully, it's called mushroom management, a very well known principle:  "Keep them in the dark, feed them ***, and watch them grow."  The Foundation is proving really proficient at it, and the fanbois don't even realize how they're being farmed.  It's really rather funny to watch, but I'd much prefer open and honest information and a professional relationship with the community than comedy.

So unfortunately, no "Big Plan" for you, that would conflict with the key tenets of mushroom management.

Leaving the Foundation's silliness aside, it's pretty easy to guess what Farnell and RS's "Big Plan" is though, now that we know that they've demanded full certification:  They want to manufacture the boards in large volume and take our money as fast as possible.  They're taking a professional approach by insisting on certification, since these boards will end up in normal consumer homes and that's the law in both EU and US.  The fact that the Foundation is blaming the companies for the delay when they're acting more professionally than they is really quite mind-boggling, but par for the course where the Foundation is concerned.  They blame everyone except themselves.

It does make for amusing threads though.

And a more or less instant ban if you mention it anywhere near the Foundation's forums.

I am no expert in this, you and others seem to have a lot more knowledge and experience than me, but just applying some common sense, I can't understand how certification wasn't done when it is / was obvious these were going into normal homes and schools.

Surely the Foundation must have realised this, with the people they have on board, after all we have been assured several times that they 'know what they are doing'

Please keep up. The issue was that at this stage the Pi was considered a development board for geeks and nerds. The certification would have come later with the cased, boxed model for consumers

Please keep up. The issue was that at this stage the Pi was considered a development board for geeks and nerds. The certification would have come later with the cased, boxed model for consumers

@bob: Don't fall for that Foundation excuse, it makes zero sense.  The 10k of the first batch is a lot of boards, and a large proportion of them are going into normal homes as consumer devices, not restricted to electronics engineers or radio amateurs.  And these boards are being SOLD, not handed out to testers for pre-release checking.  The odd dozen boards might be able to escape consumer regulations on the grounds of being prototypes, but not 10k, that's a full production release.  The community is being sold a bridge there.

PS.  I have loads of microcontroller development boards here, purchased as products.  They're all fully certified.