Anyone one received raspberry pi rev B 512MB  Made in China and how about its Production Quality?

If it wasn't for the fact it is an official board I'd have thought from those pictures it was a knock off.  Mind you I deal with power supplies for a commercial LCD monitors and the soldering work on them is often shoddy.

They could at least have cleaned the board.

Colin

Who you ordered the board from ?

On top of your findings add that it seems to be populated with knock off cheaper components like the voltage regulators that on the prototype boars and the ones produced in the UK are from ON Semiconductor, on the ones made in China are from some Chinese knock off company.

Also the detail of a piece of pcb cut to be put on top with the silk screen saying "Made in China" looks really ugly.

What about the hype, whistles and bells about producing the boards in the UK and now going back to a low quality product ?

-J

Hi, I just wanted to clarify a few things... Although the majority of our production is now in the UK, due to customer demand we still make a few Raspberry Pi’s in China. All board deliveries from our partner in China have Made in China printed on them so you know exactly where your Raspberry Pi has been made.

Hi, I recently received my Rev2 Raspberry Pi (RPi) from Newark/Element14.

Summary:

Firstly, I was disappointed that the board was not made in the UK, but in China, however, the board looks fine. I soon discovered that the RPi crashed shortly after every boot-up and the monitor went blank. After many hours of experimentation and Googling, I concluded that my RPi is heat-sensitive. On 25 Nov I requested an RMI to return my defective RPi for replacement. I haven't heard from Newark/Element14 since then.

Details:

Soon after the first boot with 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian, RPi crashed. Suspecting a corrupted SDCard image, I just continued to explore compatibility with my new USB Wireless Adapters, my new wireless keyboard/mouse combo, and a different powered USB hub. RPi crashes happened ever sooner and levelled out at about a minute after power-up. Now I knew I had a problem to solve.

I fetched my RPi-Rev1 that was running raspbmc as my TV Multimedia device, and made it the gold standard for testing the RPi-Rev2. In all subsequent testing, test configurations were verified with RPi-Rev1 and then repeated with RPi-Rev2. I rebuilt and configured the 2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian image on a new Transcend 8GB class 6 SDCard using RPi-Rev1, and used this SDCard for all subsequent testing on both boards.

I used the same USB keyboard and mouse, wired network connection, and monitor for all tests. Using the above configuration, I tested 2 powered USB hubs, I tested 2 walwarts that powered the hubs, and I tested 3 USB Type A to USB micro cables that powered the RPi boards. For each test, RPi-Rev1 was fine, and RPi-Rev2 crashed. During many of the tests, I observed the TP1/TP2 voltages with a new Digital Multimeter for both boards, and as a generalization I observed that the Rev2 board idling voltages were about 0.1 volt higher. However, alarmingly, voltages for both boards dipped below 4.7 VDC during boot-up (!!!); RPi-Rev2 crashed, but RPi-Rev1 didn't. I began to believe that it was 5V0 problem. That is, until I found that someone successfully ran his faulty RPi-Rev2 by cooling it with a fan!!!

I have no fan, so I used a bag of frozen Rhubarb to cool RPi-Rev2, and whada-ya-know, RPi-Rev2 ran perfectly for just short of two hours as I ran various utilities of the Desktop Environment. A few minutes after removing the frozen Rhubarb, RPi-Rev2 crashed and the monitor went blank. My RPi-Rev2 is temperature sensitive!!! Oops! Must be a soldering issue!

My RPi-Rev2 has the following attributes:

Sticker on bottom of board: FNXM121116732

Production Date: 1238

Made in China

Hardware revision: 000f

Serial Number: f30c7a74

Are there more people having this sort of problem? Should I nag Newark or Element14?

Interesting post, considering the fact that I'm living in the Philippines and most of the electronics I've purchased (made in China) have been exceptional quality. My Raspberry Pi board was "Made in UK" and its construction quality is equivalent to China-made Seeeduino 328.

Also, I must mention, a product like you've pictured would never be seen among the China-made electronic goods sold in the Philippines.

As for you case, I would go after the middleman you paid your money to. In my case, the middleman agency I used in Philippines, inspected the products at Customs before bringing it to my home.

As a sidenote, there has not been any fake Raspberry Pi boards appearing in local electronic stores in Philippines.

Ron, I will send you a private message to get your order details if you would like to return the Rasp Pi.

Just a quick note for people expecting theirs from RS.

My 512MB RS one came today, a long time arriving, but on-time based on their original estimate.

It shipped in a plastic reusable storage case, which was nice of them, plus a 1-sheet quick-start guide.

I've compared with a 256MB 'with 2 holes' version from Farnell and a 256MB 'forgot holes' version (original) from Tandy.

I'm guessing the wave solder screen includes the JTAG/test pins, but that is ok (I don't think anyone will have a

JTAG device that works with Broadcom). Or maybe different factories have different methods for the connectors, etc.

To summarize, they seem ok. The Farnell one did arrive quickly, but the RS one is fine too.

Pics of the RS one below.

Dave,

Just wanted to let you know that you got things moving quickly:

I was contacted by Newark/Element14 today & I already have a confirmation order number for my replacement RPi !! I also got instructions as to how to return the defective one.

Thanks for helping out!!

Ron

Hi,

I got a Chinese version as well.  I expected the UK version and like in the original post I'm not happy with the quality.

Apart form being produced in China are there any differences in terms of the hardware?

Is Newark/Element14 going to sell the UK version any time soon?

Thanks.

Chris

I got mine in the purple box from RS

Ordered in August. Look exactly like zidane ma's (first pictures) with the soldered holes

Are the soldered holes normal?