The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, low power computer with an ARM-based processor and a price tag of around $35. But what you get for that price is basically a system board without a case or even storage card for the operating system.

So the folks behind the project consider the current model to be more of a developer kit than a finished product for consumers.

Raspberry Pi

Unfortunately the two firms that Raspberry Pi has teamed with to actually accept orders and ship the products to customers aren’t convinced, and they’re waiting for regulators to give the device a CE mark.

What that means is that it could take a little longer for people that have placed orders to get their system boards. But while some folks are getting messages suggesting the Raspberry Pi devices might not be delivered until August, the team says that date is probably wildly inaccurate.

Instead, the shipments will probably begin much sooner, but the distributor generated an automatic message when the device shipments were put on hold.

Meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi is hardly the only low cost, low power open source project in the works. You can already pick up a Mele A1000 Linux-friendly set-top-box for about $70 and attempt to build your own inexpensive PC.

 

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4 replies on “Raspberry Pi $35 computer deliveries hit a snag”

  1. Thanks for the info on audio in. It matters for me since I am interested in a low cost skype device.  Pi would need an external add on or some software wizardry that I don’t have.

  2. There will be (is) more expert help with the Pi for those who want the ability to choose from a wide variety of software and aren’t adept at wrangling Linux from source.

    I don’t see any reference to a mic input for the A1000 in any published specs.  Can you verify that?

     

    1.  Follow lilliputing’s link from the Mele article to the link out to the work on porting Ubuntu.  Observe the notations added to a photo of the PCB indicating USB device, UART, MIC and CVBS IN.  In addition there is another unlabeled six pin port on the left and several other unpopulated sets of pads. Bet if this puppy gets popular for hacking on their uses will be discovered.  A few GPIO pins would be nice.  JTAG to recover from accidents would be super sweet.

  3. At this point the Mele is the way to go.  Take a Pi, add a case, power supply, etc. and you are almost certain to hit $50.  And no matter if they ever actually ship the thing (probably not) you still have an obsolete, slow, memory starved machine that is essentially just a co-processor for the 100% closed GPU.  The Mele on the other hand is much more open, not much more expensive and most important it is actually shipping.

    The Mele also has much better hardware.  You get a faster and more up to date CPU that modern distros will run on, double the RAM, 2GB of onboard NAND, SATA, three USB host ports vs two, optical audio, VGA and it looks like if you open er up you get a USB device port as well as a serial console and composite video input and a mic in..  And the DealExtreme version for $100 even tosses in a remote which implies there is probably an IR receiver in all of them.  In other words, a LOT more product for a little more money and you can buy it today.

    On the other side, the Pi is essentially unbrickable and has the potential for a touchscreen, camera, direct drive LCD panel and direct low level I/O headers for GPIO, i2c, etc.

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