Raspberry Pi Store opens in the UK

This looks pretty awesome, considering Maplin, Tandy and similar have shut down these days along with a bunch of trade counters, there aren't many places for people to go for something like this.

This is a very fun discussion.  It reminds me of the early days of Raspberry Pi, when any criticism of RasPi at the official site would get you banned with Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" playing in the background.

I particularly remember when alert element14 members were diagnosing a heat problem with the original RasPi Model B caused by a design defect, where the outputs of the large 1.8V regulator and the USB network chip's internal 1.8V regulator were shorted together.  On some RasPi boards this would cause the USB chip to provide all the 1.8V power, which overheated that chip.  On other boards the 1.8V regulator worked fine and there was no overheating.

Here's one discussion on the topic: More power/heat related problems ...

Here's another: RG1 1.8v regulator

The RasPi people didn't want to hear about this defect and people who talked about it at the official site got the ban hammer.  Around here it became a badge of honor to be banned chez RasPi.  They did fix the bug in the next version of the Model B.

Is there much kudos in being banned from the shop, I'll be going past Cambridge on Thursday.

MK

The fact that you consider this a badge of honor (hopefully leads to an arrest) and will, as I suspect. will be greatly applauded by others on this site is indicative of how the validity and usefulness of this site and forum has been diminished to near nil. Frankly, I would not be surprised and would not fault the Raspberry Pi Foundation, or other vendors like them, to pull all support and products from any RoadTest or Project competition on this site or even pull all products from element14 in general.   Seriously, how can you or anyone else here think that these type of posts or posting some unrelated images or old posts can be considered productive? 

Very sad.

It's clearly just humour.

You're deliberately choosing to translate people's words into something you can argue with..

If I caused this thread to derail, I offer my apologies. I have no goal to turn e14 into a place where designers don't feel welcome.

Oh Jon,

I'm so sorry that I seem to have offended you.

Sometimes on E14 we like to have a little laugh.

Actually I have never been banned from a shop or (as far as I know) any other establishment of any kind.

But you have missed the point of the comments on this thread (not just the ones intended to be funny).

The RPi Org is a mega corporation (sold more than $250M worth of Pies) - it can handle a little criticism, and ours, here is mostly that it offers a rather closed box kind of approach and we feel nostalgic for the good old days when you could buy nails by the pound and hobby electronics involved getting the covers off things..

MK

I'd like to know what their start-up cost was?

Scott

If you're joking, haha, no.

If you're not joking, no.

Let's celebrate that there are stores like this - bring back Toys 'r' us.

Well, I have to say that this kind of store is not the one I would consider as really "useful" for someone who uses RPI. It seems to be a nice front store, where to show the products, maybe selling some, probably more useful to make some course, some seminar, some interaction with some Hacking group.

My ideal store is the one like the electronic components of the 80s/90s. That kind of store where you would enter and find endless boxes full of components from where to pick what you had in your BOM. The interaction was between people who, like you, was looking for some specific Zener or IC to complete a project that was ready to be used in real life.

The RPI store seems to be too neat, too "classy", and not full enough of all that bunch of cables, components, printed datasheet that were hanging from the shelves. Today you must rely on online stores to find what you're looking for. When I studied physics, at the electronics lab, we had tables full of breadboards, where you could test right there if your circuit was functional, before actually getting the components you needed.

Even Elak, the store in Brussels, is too neat for me. Everything is on the shelf, you cannot touch nor try anything. I think that if you want people to start appreciating electronics, you must let them have some dirt on their precious hands at the store ...