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Update 23.45pm Mar 30: minor changes to the article to reflect the fact that recent versions of the BeagleBoard-xM appear to have acquired a CE mark. Update, 8.40pm Mar 28: element14 have put out a, enlarging on what’s happening with CE compliance. It’s well worth a read – head on over! Update, 6pm Mar 28: we have spoken with BIS this morning, and they have confirmed that, given the volumes involved and the demographic mix of likely users, any development board exemption is not applicable to us; as a result, even the first uncased developer units of Raspberry Pi will require a CE mark prior to sale in the EU.

As we mention below, we are working with RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell to bring Raspberry Pi into a compliant state as soon as is humanly possible. Following on from last week’s discussions, both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell have now informed us that they are not able to distribute the Raspberry Pi until it has received the CE mark.

While this differs from our historical view (as we’ve said, we believed that the uncased Raspberry Pi was not a “finished end product”, and could be distributed on the same terms as earlier versions of the BeagleBoard and other non-CE-marked platforms), we respect their right to make that decision. The good news is that our first 2,000 boards arrived in the UK on Monday and that we are working to get them CE marked as soon as is humanly possible, in parallel with bringing the remainder of our initial batch into the country. Pete and Eben have been burning the midnight oil – literally; I only exchanged about three words with Eben yesterday, and those were when he got back in from a long day’s hacking at two in the morning. On the basis of preliminary measurements, we expect emissions from the uncased product to meet category A requirements comfortably without modification, and possibly to meet the more stringent category B requirements which we had originally expected would require a metalised case. We’re also talking to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), to better understand the terms under which other non-CE-marked platforms are permitted to ship to domestic end users in the UK, and to obtain a definitive statement as to whether we can distribute on the same terms.

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We should say the UK Government in general, and BIS in particular, have been incredibly supportive of the project so far; they are looking into this as a matter of urgency, so hopefully we should have another update for you soon. With graphs in. We know you guys love graphs. All this means that we’re waiting on one of two things – the results of further EMC tests, and whatever BIS comes back to us with – before RS and element 14/Premier Farnell can give you any firm delivery dates. We’ll let you know as soon as we do. Finally, here, as promised, are some pictures from the factory (taken by one of the observers RS sent in – both RS and element14 have people onsite to oversee production) of the boards that the Foundation now has. I don’t believe that FCC and CE are mirror’s.

The europeans have been on a crusade to screw SME’s for the last few years egged on by a Test and Compliance lab industry that is now more healthy than the electronic SME industry! The europeans require ROHS and Immunity testing as part of the CE stamp. FCC part 15 only requires emissions testing.

But it’s the list of exemptions that you should watch. Most devboards come under unfinished commercial test equipment exemptions, meaning its not a consumer product and that any person using it will be using it for the development of something (ie commercial activity) whether or not it actually leads to that or not. European EN5022/24 and the mess that are the supporting guidelines say something similar. Tip1: read FCC part 15 first – its written by humans. Then try to read the european directives. Tip2: move the sales operation to china and let people order online direct from there. There isn’t really an exemption for dev boards (which aren’t test equipment by the FCC’s definitions) – what exists is an acknowledgement that component boards that will become part of a larger system may only be meaningfully evaluated for compliance in terms of that larger system.

In that case, the purchaser of the board is assumed to be a manufacturer or system integrator that will assume responsibility for EMI compliance. In the case of Pis (and for that matter Beagleboards), that is largely not the case – the purchasers are largely end-users, who (even if they are doing further development) are neither knowledgeable enough about EMI issues nor equipped to test for them, and therefore should not be sold non-compliant equipment, since they will be on the hook for things they cannot reasonably be expected to be competent to deal with. (And moving everything to China doesn’t help, as Customs can (and will, upon FCC notice) refuse to let the boards into the country.) •.

Greg – as I said, they may actually be used for development, rather than as end-user devices, and some percentage may be used by professionals. However, perusing the projects list on beagleboard.org, it appears a large number of the projects are being done by hobbyists. Even if they are doing development, it is likely that a high percentage of these are not knowledgeable on EMI issues, are not doing their (hobby) development in an industrial setting, and likely don’t have the facilities to test for or avoid EMI.

Since nothing exempts the user (whether an application level “end-user” or a developer) from having to avoid/prevent EMI (not being a “finished product” isn’t a magic “get out of jail free” card), they are still on the hook. (The requirements of Part 15 are basically to deal with reducing the responsibility on those non-knowledgeable, non-equipped users – if they cause interference with appropriately certified compliant equipment, they still need to deal with it, but their liability (legal and financial) is reduced or eliminated. That’s why such users should only use compliant equipment.) If you are selling equipment that has to be used by a certain class of users and/or in a certain way, but you _know_ that you are selling to those not meeting those rules, you are in the wrong. (Not sure whether you are _legally_ in the wrong, but you are certainly riding the edges.) •. I’m surprised how quickly some people will move operations off-shore to sidestep local labour laws and/or regulation. Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive (RoHS) has been around for a while; RPi shoud not contain hazardous materials since it’s a new product.

Granted the CE directive is a bit of a surprise but these distributors understand their markets and I think they are spot on. Many people’s perception of the RPi is that it’s a cheap home computer equivilent, not a component within a larger development, that’s certainly the message I’ve been getting from the PR campaign, BBC coverage etc. I think people need to understand that in a place like China, where the regulations are generally disregarded or non-existant, your phone, tv and all your gadgets still work. Planes don’t fall out of the sky and cars don’t run off cliffs due to inteference. What has happened is that Europe has the heaviest barriers to entry to bring products to market.

Its a severe barrier for british and european business because testing each product can easily cost 10K or more. All the products you are buying online from China have no testing. Usually they just put the labels on.

This situation has occured because big business has lobied the regulators to get strict on this. The result has been to damage small business.

Raspberry Pi is lucky because there are so many orders in place that they can cover these costs. Other small businesses already have things like this on the market. Ethereum ETH Mining Roi there. They havent had the attention of the Pi or the backing and have generally disregarded the CE requirements due to cost.

The test labs have enjoyed the current situation as they make all their money off large business, who having accepted higher regulation as a barrier to entry for other players have pushed up test lab prices. Hence a vicious circle. SME’s generally ignore the law because they have no choice in order to compete with chinese goods where no testing has been paid for. The regulators are generally under-resourced and don’t care except in extreme cases of complaint.

I believe this can be a consumer product as bare boards are sale to all of us at any given time. What I’m speaking about is bare bones computer parts at the brick and mortar store down the street. Looking at the product, I don’t believe anyone is being dishonest here in the marketing of it, it’s a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).

I see a bare bone computer, and as a hobbyist I can’t wait, I’m thinking about creating a cool little case for it. However, if others that are not computer savvy view the product I’m sure they will be intimated by a bare mother board looking thing I can’t see my mother or one of my friend that don’t know much about computers purchasing one of these things because they will be too intimidated by it.

I think (having looked at the disclaimers on both the original Beagleboard and the xM) that the beagle people are being at best disingenuous. While they state the board is a development system that should only be used by developers in with both the knowledge and facilities to evaluate and control EMI issues (and in the case of the xM, use it only in an industrial environment (class A, even though they mistakenly claim it is certified to class B), they clearly are promoting and (through their HW partners) selling it to end-users (who, to a large extent, are neither knowledgeable of nor equipped to deal with the EMI issues) and for use in residential areas.

That is, they are putting a legal disclaimer in their documentation, but are knowingly promoting and selling it in ways effectively guaranteeing the disclaimer will be violated, making them guilty of at least contributory negligence in the violation of FCC part 15 and (probably) EMC Directive 2004/108/EC. Oh, come on now, I think you’re being a bit harsh.

We’ve been given full details at every stage of the process, from conception to launch. It’s hit a few obstacles along the way, just like every other product launch in history. The difference with the Raspberry Pi is that the whole team have been completely transparent and open as to what is going on. Other manufacturers don’t give you these details, they get away with delaying release schedules with no explanation or don’t even give an expected release date until it’s ready to buy. The Raspberry Pi team’s willingness to be so open about these issues is a blessing and a positive sign of what is to come in the future.

Well – I paid for my open pandora 3 years ago and after a run of things going wrong and circuit co in Texas almost killing the project with their incompetence- I’ve still not got one and now they are asking for a voluntary extra payment because they are making a loss on what they originally asked for!!!! This launch is going very very well by comparison!

– Still supporting the open pandora and excited about getting it – much respect for those guys and you – I’ve been raving about the positive educational and social implications of the Raspberry Pi project to anyone who’ll listen. Not disrespecting anyone – just stating my experience.

Good luck guys. I have to agree.

I gave them the benefit of doubt when the initial delay happened due to the wrong ethernet ports as that was a simple error at the factory. However to not know if your product is going to need to comply to standards isn’t good enough. We’ve had no real formal explanation as to how long our orders are going to be delayedwe didn’t all get up at 6AM to order something with no known date that it was to arrive. At it stands we’ve not actually been given even a rough estimate for when we’ll receive our Pi’s. The whole launch has been very poorly handled. I’d expect CE compliance to be one of the first things that was discussed with Farnel and RS.

I appreciate that you guys work VERY hard on this, but it needs to be said that the communication side of things is pretty terrible. Many people (myself included) aren’t willing to trawl through pages of ‘this has already been discussed’ closed threads on the forum trying to find an answer to the most basic of questions.

A blog post really needs to be made saying “if you ordered on launch day, you wont be getting your RPi until at least X” as so far you’ve ignored requests for a rough date or even an update on whats happening. Have you even considered that the information you are asking for simply doesn’t exist yet? And that is why it hasn’t been posted? It may be a basic question, but if no-one avtually know the answer yet, how can we possibly post it?

And we don’t know the answer yet, because of a number of issues – CE compliance being one it them. Or have you even read any of the posts explaining WHY the CE compliance testing wasn’t originally being done at this stage? I would say that the communication over the whole project has been better than any other product launch I can think of. In fact, its difficult to see how any MORE information could have been sent out. As to updates on what’s happening – have you even bothered to read the front page of the website for all those updates that have been posted? Jsut because those updates don’t contain the information YOU want (which doesn’t even exist yet), that doesn’t mean that there have been no updates.

Picture this. You go and place a pre-order for something on, lets say Amazon or somewhere like that and they confirmed your order with an estimated date of dispatch based on the stock levels and pre-order information. You’d be mighty annoyed if 15 days after your estimated date had passed that youd not received so much as an email saying “really sorry but its delayed”.

Generally if there is going to be a delay, at very least an email is sent out saying how long the delay will be, and why its happened. As I said above, we’ve not actually been given any form of information as to how long the delay is. The last actual update was that there was around a 2 week delay due to the wrong Ethernet ports, even then it was only provided in the comments section of a blog post.

People WONT sit there trawling through pages and pages of forum and blog posts trying to find an answer. People need to have an email saying its delayed – heres how long for, heres why. Was this not covered in the contracts that were done with RS + Farnell?

I can understand their reluctance to ship non-CE product given liability concerns, but I don’t understand how they can somehow change the terms after the fact if they agreed to ship it knowing it hadn’t been CE certified. Also, what’s this going to mean for the US (FCC) market? Are you also going to have to go through FCC acceptance tests? Are those tests also being performed now, or will US customers have to wait even longer to get through the FCC battery at a later date?

And what happened with the other 8000? The last we heard the ethernet port fixes were nearly completed, and that was ~3 weeks ago. Where did the other 8000 go if you only have 2000 in hand in the UK? I’ve never loved a man before. Good job on dealing with the whole situation so calmly. One question, do you sometimes wish it had been a lower key launch so that you could have clear the first 10k as pure development boards, not for retail etc etc ps for a nice FCC getout clause, read the TI Launchpad user guide: FCC Warning This equipment is intended for use in a laboratory test environment only. It generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and has not been tested for compliance with the limits of computing devices pursuant to subpart J of part 15 of FCC rules, which are designed to provide reasonable protection against radio frequency interference.

Operation of this equipment in other environments may cause interference with radio communications, in which case, the user will be required to take whatever measures may be required to correct this interference his own expense. Regards Nick •.

It sounds like the distributors are pulling the rug from under you. Why have they raised these concerns so late in the game, and what was their justification for treating the Pi differently from a Beagleboard? Also, compliance testing takes time, resources, and equipment, that I am sure will cut into your bottom line.

I hope this does not derail your efforts. Do you foresee this affecting the pricing structure of the Pi models down the line? Is there anything that the community can do to help you guys out? Do you have a donation mechanism, so that people can contribute and help you offset the unanticipated cost of compliance testing? Keep up the good work!

Eben, Liz, and Team R-Pi First, thanks very much for the update – any news is better than no news (although know news is even better:) ). You may not be aware, but, I believe that other manufacturers have been using a loophole in the CE standards (they’re not technically regulations, much less law) wherein only digital devices with clock speeds at, or below, 300 MHz are subject to compliance, except for toys and transmitter/receiver radios. This is due to the typical delays in the bureaucracy in that the standards haven’t been updated since the days when computers had clock speeds well below 300 MHz (hey, the ARM you’re using is equivalent to a Pentium III >~300 MHz, right? Problem solved!;) ). As I posted elsewhere: FCC Part 15.103 states: “The operator of the exempted device shall be required to stop operating the device upon a finding by the Commission or its representative that the device is causing harmful interference. Operation shall not resume until the condition causing the harmful interference has been corrected. Although not mandatory, it is strongly recommended that the manufacturer of an exempted device endeavour to have the device meet the specific technical standards in this part.” As for the EU/CE, the emissions standard EN 55014-1, which covers consumer digital devices (not including radio transmitters/receivers) does not address digital emissions above 300 MHz since effective radiated power for such devices is typically milliwatts, or less.

It does include radiated emissions limits and methods, but only for toys. The experimental/educational nature of devices such as the R-Pi means they are not being sold as toys, and they’re not intended to be radios! YMMV, so start looking for copper mesh, conductive paint, etc.:) Farnell/RS are using the FCC’s strong recommendation to ensure compliance so that a bunch of boards don’t get returned because some unsuspecting customer is living next to a neighbor with nothing better to do than find something about which to complain.

I don’t often quote Brits who are alive today, but, some of the members of the Dead Poets Society were prescient – as Shakespeare said, “First, we kill all the lawyers.” In no way am I promoting the killing of lawyers – go arrest Shakespeare, OK?:) I really am looking forward to seeing the “splatter” diagrams, polar graphs showing the emitted radio frequencies by angle of orientation, colored by frequency, around all three axes of rotation. I don’t see the 300MHz value in the current (2004) version of the CE EMC regulations (2004/108/EC).

Further, my reading of those seem to indicate that the PI would not be in any of the exempt categories, would not be considered “inherently benign equipment”, and would be subject to them as an “apparatus” since (even though it is a “component/sub-assembly”) it is available to end-users. (Note that this is because an end-user is assumed to not be qualified to deal with EMI/EMC issues.

Components/sub-assemblies intended to be exclusively used for an “industrial assembly operation” (which I take to mean a commercial manufacturer) as a part of a further assembly, _are_ exempt (because it becomes the responsibility of that manufacturer to ensure compliance).) This section is why I think the Beagleboard documentation is disingenuous at best – they are claiming it is intended for usage in ways and in environments that make it exempt for the seller, but it isn’t actually being promoted and sold that way (certainly not _exclusively_). I’m also not quite sure what your reference to Part 15.103 is supposed to be saying. It does say there that for exempted devices, meeting the technical standards are recommended not mandatory, but the Pi doesn’t match any of the exempted devices in that section (that is, it isn’t exempted). Finally, as far as I can tell, EN 55014-1 applies to home appliances, tools and so on, with motors, switches, and relays (that is, electrical, not electronic devices), but doesn’t apply to home digital devices. It’s great to see RasPis in bulk production at last and to hear that compliance testing is progressing. Can anything be said at this point about how component sourcing is going now, especially the ethernet connector that was causing worries when the wrong type was fitted?

I am still waiting to be able to order (having initially chosen RS) and Farnell are now quoting 135 days. I am sure many are in this position and it would be really good to have some news on how scaling up component sourcing to allow production to meet the demand with reduced lead times is going.

Keep up the good work – it really is appreciated! A reference for Beagleboard compliance? It’s stated in page 2 of the System Manual: “NOTE: This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference when the equipment is operated in a commercial environment.

This equipment generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with the instruction manual, may cause harmful interference to radio communications. Operation of this equipment in a residential area is likely to cause harmful interference in which case the user will be required to correct the interference at their own expense. All accessories used with this board must meet FCC certification to maintain compliance of this equipment.” •. Although I have not been in production for a few years, isn’t CE marking a self-certifying mark, and that you only need to prove compliance when challenged? Shouldn’t this product have gone to a test house for certification at the development stage.

After all, should there have to be a redesign it would have saved a lot of expense. Of course, technical people rarely make good salespeople, and although the technical people managed to get us all hyped up, the introduction of this amazing device was not handled correctly. Maybe it should have been kept under wraps a bit longer, until it was fully developed and tested. Like myself, people I know are now on the downward curve, and our enthusiasm has taken a bit of a knocking after weeks of anticipated sales. I especially regret getting up at an early hour, waiting for the Farnell or RS sites to open, and never getting anywhere. I think that I will have to put this project to the back of my mind, until I am certain that I can actually place an order, for a stocked item. Written with the best of intentions.

RS only took expressions of interest and to let you know when you could order it with regular updates on what was happening. E14 you could order it on their site even though they didn’t have it, that didn’t make sense, the RPi’s hadn’t even been assembled and tested then they messed around with the price causing a bit of heartache with those who have paid already. The mistake most people were making here is the product was never readily available to sell and though they weer ordering the product, but all they were doing is expressing their interest in the product and added to a queue that is attempting to be in some sort of order. I for one can’t wait to mess around with this when I do finally get one.:) •. No one has “paid already”. When you place an order, the vendor may have made a small charge to verify that the credit card account is valid.

Since they don’t verify the charge after it’s approved, the charge expires due to lack of confirmation and you were not billed any amount. So you have not paid anything – only confirmed that you submitted valid credit card details. Vendors are not allowed to charge for items that they haven’t shipped. It was believed to be ready for sale to developers and experimenters. The much greater than anticipated number of orders caused the distributors to realize that all these orders couldn’t be going to only developers and that they needed to go through the compliance process to cover their own butts. The vendors do this stuff as a matter of course and are certainly more familiar with the requirements than anyone else – including the foundation. My ship date was listed as March 30th until a couple of days ago.

Now, no one knows – we have to be patient and let the process take its course. There are plenty of shops that allow you to buy stuff they don’t have in stock. Go to a car shop and ask for a fuel pump for your ’77 Chevvy. They’ll order one for you.

It surely makes sense to have people order the boards before they are in stock. Now you know for sure that the boards you get will be sold.

One of Farnell’s worst nightmares is that they will be left with an unsellable stock. You occasionally see that they have some components or boards in stock which will never sell. They also have the successor or that component which is cheaper and better. Who will buy the older component? A product range with which it makes sense to compare Raspberry Pi for certification purposes is Arduino, as Arduino boards are produced in very large quantities and the company is similarly based in Europe (Italy). The leaflets accompanying my Arduinos say that the boards have RoHS, CE, and FCC (Class B) certifications (as well as something called Life Zero Impact). Since the Raspberry Pi is substantially more consumer-oriented than an Arduino, it should be expected to have at least that level of certification.

Thanks for the updateAs far as I can see the RPF have become a victim of their own success. As soon as the wider media got hold of the story of a $35 computer (with a nice desktop and 1080p) then the board became a “must have” for everyone who was vaguely interested in computers, including non-developers. I’ve no doubt that if wasn’t so attractive it would be shipping now as a dev board. And, in turn, this the reason why RS and Farnell got wobbly.

It’s very easy for all of us to say that it should have been tested earlier and I’m sure, given their time again, the RPF would do that. I’ve been as frustrated as anyone with the delays, but these guys need congratulating for their efforts so far. They’ve risked their own money and credibility to bring this here and been exposed to abuse from some parties.

Most people don’t have the guts to run with their dreams and it makes them bitter over time. If there was a PayPal account to buy them a beer, I’d be contributing in a shot.

They need to sit back with the drink of their choice and know that people appreciate, no, love, what they have done. This is the end game and they need a round of applause from us all. It’s great to see the RPis rolling off the production line. While it is frustrating to have another delay, we should not forget that we are getting an amazing machine for very little money. I’ve been watching some of the videos on YouTube and was fascinated by Eben’s comments about interest from “developing world” countries. When production gears up fully, the RPi is really going to change the world – people who have never used a computer before will be able to plug this into their TVs and instantly overcome the “digital divide”!

Also I’d echo Lobster – I have a lot of programming to learn:) •. Dear Eben and Liz, Keep your chins up!

As true entrepreneurs you are attempting and against the odds achieving the almost impossible: to bring a high tech product through prototype into mass manufacture and worldwide availability at the lowest price point on the planet and in the public gaze. All as a charity and thus without the buffer of profit. I am thrilled that some time this year I will have my Pi and get perhaps a few months of Python experience under my belt after 10 years away from hardware design and coding and then be able to buy another three or four Pi for my teenage son and teenage nephews, nieces and cousins who all want to have some part in creative computer science but lack the platform on which to learn like I did some twenty-mumble years ago with PETs, ZX-80, Spectrum and Beeb. Then I can give something back to the youngsters – the benfit of my experience to mentor and help their Pi journeys. So take your time and get it right. The nay sayers will continue to criticise the decision to go with Farnell and RS for distribution and suggest alternatives. Keep your nerve.

Schools are corporate buyers and will already have RS and Farnell on their approved suppliers lists and trust them to deliver solid reliable “education grade” product. A little delay is worth it to assure success in the big roll out. Don’t forget these first 10,000 are “Series Zero”; there are still manufacturing wrinkles to work out. The protoypes got you to TRL9, reaching MRL9 will take more time and effort still.

But you will make it driven by hard work, midnight oil and caffeine overdose. Finally, the greatest respect to you for baring all with the in depth reports on magnetics and EMC testing. Yes, I’m a geek, but x-rays of boards and polar radiation plots are meaningful and educational.

Your charitable mission of education is already well under-way – you are educating and refreshing my skills and I can explain and show to my son how this process works with your candid blog as the “documentary footage” of engineering product design in action. Keep up the good work and feel free to ask if you think there is anything the user comminty can do to help you right now. Yup, that’s meI have a tendency of moving on and seeing the big picture and not living in the pastThey are doing a great job, but not perfect and I stand by the fact that they should have realised that going on telly would give RS and Farnell the willies and they would insist on compliance testing. I’m disappointed that they didn’t see that one coming. We all screw up and that, in my opinion was a screw up. But, if I get one in the next month or so I’ll be happy and, all things considered, they will have done a great job I’d be happy to buy them a beer. This whole sorry saga comes down to one thing: not having the strength of your convictions.

The original plan was sound. Disappointing for many of us, but sound. Get the first 10k – see how quickly they sell, then decide what to do next. Would have worked fine. No-one would have cared whether they were certified or not. Ironically, the RS/Farnell plan was also perfectly sound. Get certified now, let them handle manufacturing.

Ramp up is much quicker after a small startup delay. But it only makes sense if you’re expecting more than the initial 10k to sell quickly. The problem was sticking with Plan A right up to the last minute and then switching to Plan B. All the confusion and crossed wires can be explained as a result of changing your mind from “10k might not sell that quickly” to “10k will go in 30s, better get the next batch ready”. I understand why you did it, but if you’d stuck with one or the other, you’d have a lot less frustrated people not really understanding what’s going on, which is a shame. Not having any clue where I am in RS’s list of registrants (I was really ticked that you tweeted that the registration page was wrong, else I’d probably be near the top!), I have no idea how long I’ll have to wait.

Oh well, still looking forward to some Pi when the time comes!:-) •. The problem with plan A is that the Foundation is not equipped to deal with the level of demand. We are unable to buy the next batch without the proceeds from the previous batch, so ramping of production would take ages. 10k batch, 15k batch, 20k batch, 25k batch – only 70 k supplied after 4 batches. Instead of getting your boards within a couple of months it would be more like a year! Lets say demand is currently 250k boards. That’s about 8 batches.

At say 1.5 months per batch. 1 year minimum. Add on top of that the need to have a website that can handle the demand.which costs money.and a full time employee to run it all which costs money.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the logic for bringing in RS/Farnell. On release day when I saw the plan, I thought “That’s genius!”. Then it turned out to have been a last-minute change (as evidenced by RPF never really knowing what RS/Farnell are doing, CE requirements not being discussed, etc.). *That’s* the bit where it went wrong. Sticking with Plan A would have been interminably slow, yes, but everyone knew where they stood. It’s not the problems, but the confusion about the problems that’s making you look bad. I think this is the major problem: communication.

The foundation tells an official plan and says that plan is going well and this is the only plan. After weeks of consistent communication turns out that a very different plan is going on for weeks or months. I know the foundation tries to have a very positive communication for marketing purposes. But this not-always-honest communication is very frustrating for the community that following the happenings. It seems the communication has a long delay (or lag) before turns out what is really happening. Otherwise, this project is very needed for young and not-so-young people who has interest in computer sience and it could start a new age. You’re misunderstanding my point.

I’m saying I agreed with RPF’s original postion and they could have sold the first 10k in the manner in which they had originally planned, for all the reasons they originally enumerated (which I agree were valid), but at some point late in the day they decided to bring RS/Farnell on board. I don’t see why the foundation couldn’t have sold the first 10k themselves while still talking to the distributors. I don’t see what was gained by using them from the off when they clearly weren’t ready. There’s no point talking about 500k when we still haven’t seen the first 10.

Nevertheless, what’s done is done. It will all be sorted in the end. “I’m saying I agreed with RPF’s original postion and they could have sold the first 10k in the manner in which they had originally planned,” That’s where the misunderstanding occurs.

You are talking about the original position — the position where Eben and Liz and the rest of the team would have quite happily packaged and sent 10000 RasPis from their kitchen. This was before they had to answer thousands of emails a week; deal with a forum of 15000 people; travel round the world promoting it; decide which of the several interview requests per day they should accept; do those interviews; and still deal with the manufacture and testing and logistics of a prodcut that has hundreds of thousands of people queueing up to buy it. On top of a day job;) So no, they really couldn’t “have sold the first 10k themselves”, not once it all snowballed. “This whole sorry saga comes down to one thing: not having the strength of your convictions.” Tell you what bud – go and invent something innovative, something that tries to solve a problem and is potentially world changing.

Remortgage your house and give up your job to follow this dream even though people are slagging you off and you don’t know if it will be a success. And then when you have a few problems we’ll all come along and post on your forum (you will have an open forum where you post everything that is going wrong as well as right, won’t you?) that your whole sorry saga comes down to one thing: you not having the strength of your conviction. Post like yours make me puke. I hope the anti-stat bags are just a standard packing rather than a necessity. Those of us used to handling circuit boards know to at least touch a ground point before any further contact with the circuitry. However many of these boards will go out to people who are not used to any special handling precautions to prevent static damage so I hope that the Pi will prove to be reasonably static proof or there will be disappointed customers or, worse still, customer returns. Hopefully this has been considered and checked but at the very least an included note about basic bare board handling precautions to avoid static damage might be a good idea to minimise problems.

(It does beg the question of whether the device will ship with any documentation at all – I hadn’t expected this in the initial experimenter phase but now that interest has gone wider, expectations, as with CE testing, could change.) •. “Its simply standard practice in the industry.” Actually it seems to vary a lot between suppliers RS seem to put nearly everything in full on conductive anti-static bags (metal or carbon based). I’ve seen a complete boxed evaluation kit place inside an anti static bag by them before. They also have this habbit of pre-packing things in standard sized bags unless you select “production packaging”. Farnell seem to use the pink “static dissipative” bags for non-sensitive components and most things are packed to order (though you occasionally see stuff that was clearly prepacked). Rapid, mouser and digikey all seem to put the non-sensitive components in ordinary plastic bags. While you are talking to BIS about the “requirements” of EMC testing, ask them how they can purposefully allow powerline networking products (PLT) that have been shown to exceed EU testing limits (CISPR22) by 40dB (1000x) and cause interference totally unchecked?

Conformance to EMC standards such as EN55022 is non-mandatory. If you want the pass certificate, you can even get a test-house to falsely declare a pass, which is how PLT manufacturers have claimed conformance. (I have proof via FoI requests) The law is the EMC Regulations 2006, which state the essential requirements as: “2) Equipment shall be designed and manufactured, having regard to the state of the art, so as to ensure that— (a)the electromagnetic disturbance it generates does not exceed a level above which radio and telecommunications equipment or other equipment cannot operate as intended; and (b)it has a level of immunity to the electromagnetic disturbance to be expected in its intended use which allows it to operate without unacceptable degradation of its intended use. ” And Ofcoms view on this is that there has to be a victim receiver for the law to be breached. Even if it is found to be an issue, they will act “proportionately” It seems to me that if you have pots of cash and piles of junk to peddle, you can bring pretty much anything to the market unchecked, safe in the knowledge that BIS and EU will not allow barriers to trade (even if they happen to be legal!). On the other-hand, if you are bringing a product to market with intrinsic value but lower volumes, expect to get picked on.

Actually this is a misunderstanding of several events. The first is that in the course of pricing they decided instead of importing every part into the EU and having to pay taxes on each component they would import the board and pay a single import fee for a single product. (so they weren’t trying to dodge import taxes, they wanted to only have to pay them once) The second is that the issue is not “finished” vs “unfinished” product when it comes to CE testing.

CE testing is about what the boards are being used for. The original expectation was that while it would be open for anyone to purchase, the main people showing interest would be developers as such the boards were classified as developers boards and didn’t need CE testing. As things turned out, however, the demand for the r-pi has far exceeded everyone’s expectations by leaps and bounds and the distributors lawyers went “wow, with this much demand, I think we should push a head the CE testing”. Hope this helps. They did however say this (): “If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all”. The intent to pay less taxes seems clear (I’m not saying it’s a bad thing).

It does say “An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25” at the top of the page, not “An ARM dev board for $25”, and also in the FAQ: “The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer”. It was marketed as such with demos of the board running XBMC, MAME, Fedora, etc. So arguing now that it is a dev board seems a little disingenuous. Can You Mine BitcoinDark BTCD On Iphone on this page. Well now you’re wording it differently than your first post. In your first post you made it sound like they were trying to something shifty and under the table, but in the second you recognized that they were trying to pay less import taxes. (maybe not how you intended it, but how it came off:-)) Secondly, you can read all over this site and the recent post by Pete L on compliance on Element14’s site and see what people mean by dev board. I think you have an overly literal interpretation of the word when that’s not how it used in a legal sense.;-) •.

As I understand it, your original plan to sell the board as a development board to hardware and software developers to start an ecosystem of projects leading to the education (& consumer) launch later in the year. Can you not still do that with the first batch of boards by asking purchasers to declare their intentions as part of the selling process.

If a purchaser were to fraudulently declare their purposes as being development, neither you nor your distributors could be held responsible. That way, if hardware modifications are required, you can make those changes before subsequent batches go into manufacturing. For the record, as a member and leader within the BeagleBoard.org community, I agree that it seems a bit silly to expect development boards to have FCC and CE compliance certifications. Nevertheless, when you start reaching beyond the basic set of design engineers who are knowledgeable enough to avoid interference with other electronic circuits, there starts to be a seed of reason—though I honestly don’t think the Raspberry Pi (or the BeagleBoard.org products for that matter) crosses the threshold. I do hope that the more zealous members of the Raspberry Pi community will begin to take a slightly more reasoned approach to communicating about other open source focused low-cost development solutions as the claims have been consistently outrageous. While it is certainly possible to build a $35 development board (computer) with a TI AM335x processor, we made other choices we thought best served our community in the launch of the BeagleBone—and those choices were not focused on making more money of the sale of the boards, except perhaps by selling more of them.

Paying for operations like certification was one of those choices. I personally look forward to getting a Raspberry Pi when it is available to me and to whatever benefits it provides to open source on affordable, low-power ARM processors where we all benefit. Our communities have significant overlap and we’d both benefit greatly from more accurate communications in the future—and perhaps even more corrective action on miscommunications. The BeagleBoard.org project has been fairly consistently praised for its openness and honesty and I hope to continue to set an example I’d be happy to see the rest of the open source hardware community follow. I’m afraid that we don’t have time to verify all claims made by posters to the forums (or to posters on other forums!) – however wherever the mods/admins see incorrect data (that we know is invalid) we do try and correct it. That said, we do like our own facts to be correct, so I have emailed Eben to look in to any inaccuracies that may be promulgated by the Foundation itself. I personally have no idea of the capabilities or costs of Beagleboard products, so refrain from commenting, but I am sure, as you are, that each product line has advantages and disadvantages over the other.

Spoken with BIS this morning, and they have confirmed that, given the volumes involved and the demographic mix of likely users, any development board exemption is not applicable to ——————————————————— Im not sure why volumes matters and especially the demographic mix. Im pretty sure this is a HEAVILY male, balding clientele with a touch of young geeks so unless many women in their 80’s are interested, I fail to see where demographics come in. And the volume speaks of the interest towards the project. If 100 geeks are into something, its quaint but if 10,000 geeks from around the world are into something, somehow its a problem? The fact that people are buying the first batches without cases hints that this is for geeks to test and play with as opposed as Joe Consumer who wants to plug in a cheap computer in his 60 inch TV.

Im not saying that I wont be buying some later on for those kind of uses when cases are out but Im not thrilled that a projects popularity is given as reason for not receiving an excemption ESPECIALLY since many of these Pi’s WONT be shipped to UK.