size of first shipment

Some info for us all from the RaspberryPi website.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Delivery update from element14

We’re excited to report  that our next shipment of 4,000 Raspberry Pi’s has now left  our manufacturers in Asia and will be on their way to customers next week! We have a further 12,000 due to  arrive with us by the third week of May and regular volume shipments thereafter .

By early next week all 110,000 customers who have ordered with element14, wherever they are in the world, will receive a confirmed delivery date ( which, as previously communicated, will be no later than the end of June for those who ordered before April 18^th) .

Also, over the next 5 days, we will invite the 70,000  hopeful customers  who have already registered their interest in the Raspberry Pi to place their orders, with delivery expected in July/August, dependent on the place of that order in the queue.

Elsewhere I saw that RS have 250,000 but not sure if thats orders or registrations of interest.

At least the almost mythical Pi's are coming out into the light...

Great support and communication by Farnell, but then they are a reputable firm and it is great to see they take their reputation seriously.

I do still wonder about the 8,000 that the Foundation said were being made and shipped over. From Jenny's announcement, this seems very firmly a Farnell led build, so I'm still thinking those 8,000 were only ever in kit form when the Foundation 'had' them.

Well done to Farnell for pulling this out of a deep hole.

I'm hopefully getting mine the week after next and I'm fully expecting to see a silkscreen CE certification, which wouldn't have been possible if these had already been made, or is that incorrect ?

Great support and communication by Farnell, but then they are a reputable firm and it is great to see they take their reputation seriously.

I do still wonder about the 8,000 that the Foundation said were being made and shipped over. From Jenny's announcement, this seems very firmly a Farnell led build, so I'm still thinking those 8,000 were only ever in kit form when the Foundation 'had' them.

Well done to Farnell for pulling this out of a deep hole.

I'm hopefully getting mine the week after next and I'm fully expecting to see a silkscreen CE certification, which wouldn't have been possible if these had already been made, or is that incorrect ?

Steve,

  The timing certainly fits with your theory.  EMC testing finished on April 6,

and the paperwork was all signed off by April 13.  Production was said to

have begun after the EMC testing finished, and takes 2 weeks or so.

Even if it didn't get started until the paperwork was finished on April 13,

that is still 2 weeks to the 27th when the factory shipped them. 

The schedule for shipping the next batch the 3rd week of May is consistent

with the production schedule of around 2 weeks.

I think we can definitely rule out Abishur's theory stated in the "Status Updates"

that as of April 19th this batch was "en route".

Unless they were en route via Sherpas of course ? :-)

I know we have discussed it here before, but I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that the Foundation only had 2,000 built, these were the ones that had problems and the rest were never made, at least at that time. I got one comment that they were still having the jacks replaced, but in that time frame, I could have desoldered that many, and I'm only just learning which end of the soldering iron is the correct one to hold !

In theory, if this lot turn up without a silkscreen CE on them then I guess I am wrong, but if they do have a silkscreen on, then I think the mystery of the 8,000 might have been solved, they were never made under the auspices of the Foundation, but Farnell picked them up as part of the sales agreement.

We can only wait and see I guess. I'll post photos of mine when I get it.

Jenny Peters has issued the clearest statement yet on the mystery of the "missing 8000".

The pcb's for the 8000 had been made prior to the compliance delay, but

apparently the pcb's hadn't been populated from what I gather.  So no

resoldering of ethernet jacks, or shipments back to the factory, for the 8000.                  

JennyPeters on May 3, 2012 at 5:13 pm on the RPI.org forum wrote:

"Really no mystery here. The initial batch commissioned was for 10,000. the first 2,000 made by Raspberry Pi, the remaining 8000 by RS and element14 (4,000 of each). I can confirm that element14′s 4000 have been received and will be shipping out by end of business tonight so anyone with an order date of w/c 7th may is coming from that batch. The 8000 were delayed whilel we all waited to see if the Compliance testing necessitated hardware changes – it didnt so as soon as the compliance paperwork was finalised manufacturing continued. The pcb’s had already been received so the compliance markings will be the same in this next shipment as for the first 2000. From here on in we’re on our own ! Our next shipment will be for 12,000 and then we have another, even larger shipment at month end and 3 more volume shipments before the end of June……110,000 due to us before the end of June and all committed to people like you who’re keen to get their hands on them! Hope this clears up the mystery!"

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1134

I'm sure I have seen several times (but I could be wrong, i'm getting older and the memory is failing) the Foundation talking about the 10,000 boards being built, on way etc etc, so this was a little wide of the mark at best ?

There is a quote today that the initial production run was around 2000 pieces.

Sounds exactly right to me.

     "With the initial production run being something along the lines of 2,000 pieces,

     the volume wasn't there to make it practical to build in the West," Mike Buffham,

     global head of electronics design engineers at the UK distributor Premier Farnell plc

     (London: PFL.L), told us.

http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?section_id=1071&doc_id=250579