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jrockway

Did anyone ever get an original Raspberry Pi? All I've seen is pictures of it next to the words "out of stock".

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Yes. I ordered one in late July from Element14. It arrived about 2 weeks later.

I currently have it connected to a webcam and running on solar power.

That sounds very cool. What kind of solar power product are you using? Where can I buy one online?

I'm using a 20w instapark panel I bought through Amazon.

Do you have a description of your setup? It sounds interesting.

Sure! I am still experimenting and changing things around, but here is my current setup.

12v 10Ah sealed lead acid battery

Instapark 20w solar panel with solar charge controller

Pololu step down switching regulator

Logitech c270 webcam (USB)

Edimax wifi dongle (USB)

With this setup I am running 24/7 "off the grid." We'll see how well it works in the winter. The webcam and wifi can be directly connected to the RPi. You don't need a powered hub. This greatly simplifies things. The goal is to eventually swap out the SLA battery for a 12.8v LiFePO4 and house everything in a waterproof enclosure made from a Pelican case. I also have a powered hub and a GlobalSat GPS unit that I'd like to add at some point. The logitech camera is not that great. I'll look into replacing it once we know more about the add on camera coming from the Raspberry Pi foundation.

Bear in mind there apparently some nasty hardware limitations in the USB controller that tend to make USB webcams unreliable: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1...

I'm guessing that whyenot dodged them due to a combination of luck and not having any USB peripherals connected other than the webcam and Wifi adapter; the more USB devices, the more likely you are to run into a problem.

I've connected the camera, wifi, gps and a usb hard disk to the pi at the same time using a powered USB hub (Belkin I think?) and haven't had any problems. This was with mains power. But you're right, there are many people who have run into problems. Either I was lucky or I didn't notice them.

I think connecting a keyboard and mouse as well may significantly increase the odds of it failing, which is unfortunate given how the Foundation advertised it.

Upon some searching around, I found this person is selling a kit for running a Pi from solar power (with battery backup): http://cgi.cottonpickers.plus.com/~cottonpickers/forum/viewt...

I tried something similar using a 2700mAh LiPoly battery, a 3.4watt solar panel and a USB / Solar LiPoly charger, all purchased from Adafruit for a different project. It can power the Pi for about 4 hours, but you'd really want a much larger panel and battery. Also, I was very worried about the potential fire hazard from the LiPoly battery. I will eventually be setting up my camera in a state park, and I don't want to be responsible for starting a brush fire.

That looks interesting , could you share it. Thanks.

Cool, I'm also interested in the solar power setup. How long does it last? How do you get the pictures back?

I did, after rather a long wait (I ordered in early May, and it came in early July). After the excitement wore off I installed OpenELEC and it now sits in my front room, working pretty damn well as a media centre.

I ordered mine the day after it went on sale. Two months ago I got am email saying it was being shipped out and should be here within 12 weeks. Last week I got an email saying it was delayed another 8 weeks. This really depresses me that they're talking about Rev1 production coming to an end and Rev2 production ramping up when they can't even fulfill their existing orders.

Good God! who did you order from? I placed an order with RS in May and got it about a month later. 20 weeks is simply unreasonable. I'd cancel and look at another fulfillment company.

I ordered from RS. At this point, I don't even care anymore. I won't be doing business with them again, and I likely won't ever order another RPi. I was terribly excited for it, but it's been so long since I put down the commitment that the thrill is gone. My cousin ordered a couple weeks after I did and he got his in June. I've just doubled down on Arduino instead.

This is normal for RS. Back in 95 when I was doing EE, we ordered 2000 low dropout regulators for a production run from RS. I left the company in 1998.

In 1999 I got a call from one of my colleagues and they'd received them...

Needless to say their invoice and stock was returned.

I ordered mine from RS on July 2nd... looking at their shipping tables that they have now posted my order number is not going to ship till mid-November..

This has saddened me greatly and has made me angry. My friend ordered from Allied Electronics and got his within a month.

I had ordered mine from Element 14 during july and was told it'd take until november until i got it, ended up shipping just before august. they are certainly fun to play with i got two, one to really play play with and the other to use as a print server for a 3d printer.

Should have ordered from element14 -- 4 day delivery time for me. I also heard that mcm electronics is pretty fast too. You should be blaming the distributors, not RPi. There are many distributors, so choose one that doesn't suck.

I'm not blaming RPi except in the capacity of control over their distributors. I'm disappointed in the response, and disappointed in the demand rapidly outpacing the supply. I understand the engineers do what the engineers do, but other complaints about RPi hold as well: they're not good at communication, they're only really transparent on spotty occurrences, and it's been six months since they launched and they're still having a hard time producing the units being demanded. What I was hoping for from this new revision was a chip that wasn't sold out. The email notifying me of the delay said their CPU was sold out so new boards could not be made. Shame on RS for telling me I had a unit coming to me when that unit apparently hadn't actually been produced yet.

As for the other distributors, some people apparently got great service from RS as well. My frustration is with the entire operation, top to bottom. It's hard to call this a success, and there's no indication it's going to get better. I have to wonder how they're going to supply the educational market if this is how they handle the hacker market they need so badly.

I know this sounds like a hit-job on my part, but you have to realize this is incredibly frustrating, and the news I'm hearing from people who received them is that the users aren't really interested in units to begin with (see below, "I never turned mine on").

I too ordered from RS... and I too was told about the delay, which makes me sad/angry because I had a friend order from Allied Electronics and they got their board within 4 weeks of ordering.

I tried contacting RS to see if I could cancel my order so I could place one at Allied Electronics and they told me they couldn't cancel the order, and payment had already gone through... I am thinking of contacting my credit card company, but I have in the past and will want to continue doing business with RS for other electronic parts purchases... I already had an account set up with them which made it so easy to pull the trigger.

Seeing people that have never turned theirs on makes me sad, mainly because I think it is a fantastic unit to play with, and I have some ideas of things I would like to do with the unit. If all of those people could have waited until later when supply was greater then those of us that are actually interested and actually want to do things with it would have had the chance to purchase one and have it shipped.

I ordered two about 3 weeks ago from Element 14. They arrived near the end of last week, so about 2 to 2.5 weeks for order fulfillment.

Yeah they've shipped tens of thousands of them.

Hundreds of thousands.

I haven't received mine. Ordered 17 July 2012, despatch expected within 11 weeks but still no feedback from RS.

This is really a shame. Another commenter says the same and apparently it turned him off to the RPi in general.

I don't know why RS drops the ball on some orders; hopefully as demand increases another supplier will start offering them for those of us who dislike RS.

I put my name down around June/Julyish, it was delivered in early August. Surprisingly faster than I expected.

I ordered one in August, that arrived a few days later. Just luck? It was out of stock every time before.

I have two. Neither of which have seen power. Too many other projects going on.

You have two you've never used, while I have 20 week shipping delays for one unit ordered six months ago, and a heap of schematics and already-wired modules to plug into the GPIO sitting uselessly, and a head full of further designs yet.

Goodness. I need to go for a walk. This thread is threatening to get the best of me.

I feel bad for you. Where are you located? If it is in the continental US I'll send you mine. I installed debian on it and did nothing else due to other commitments. I really don't know when I'll have chance to start playing with it.

I couldn't ask you to send me your RPi. I've put all that stuff in a box under my workbench and moved on to new Arduino projects. Someday maybe my RPi will show up out of the blue and will be a nice surprise and I can pull that stuff back out, but if I got it tomorrow it would likely end up like yours. I've just moved on for now.

I've got one, I've had it for months now.

Yeah, I got 3...

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