Any news on official Raspberry Display?

[GekkePrutser]

It's REALLY difficult to predict this sort of thing, and it's better to make too few when you don't have the unlimited cash piles that bigger companies have.

It's predictable in a way, you could do a poll on the website or perhaps even a kickstarter where people prepay their orders so you have money to work with.

It's not like you would be announcing something we don't know yet - it's always been said that a display would be coming at some point.

But I understand these things aren't as easy when you have partner companies to work with. I'm looking forward to the display, if you do as good a job as on the camera then it'll be brilliant!

[DougieLawson]

It's REALLY difficult to predict this sort of thing, and it's better to make too few when you don't have the unlimited cash piles that bigger companies have.

It's predictable in a way, you could do a poll on the website or perhaps even a kickstarter where people prepay their orders so you have money to work with.

The thing with kickstarter is that the folks pitching their product have done some predictions on numbers of prototypes they'll sell and a cost price for the bidder. If all those numbers add up then the KS will get funded.

The problem the RPF has is that they can't predict how many will sell. The problem the other side of the market has right now is that we've got no idea on price or delivery date. There's a lot to be said for the RPF running the final stages of the launch of the display with KS style rules as that would give them the numbers for an initial manufacturing run and would give the market an idea of price and expected delivery (which has to be better than this vapourware thread on the forum).

My economics teacher would have loved this dilemma.

I thought about waiting for the RPF display but in the end I decided spend £80 to go with a regular DVI-D & VGA monitor to replace three old CRTs and and a DVI-D to HDMI cable so it would work with a Raspberry Pi.

[W. H. Heydt]

We probably won't hear anything until a batch of 10,000 have been made...and then they will sell out in a few minutes and there will be a 3 month wait for production to ramp up.

I do love the RPF, but they seem to have formed a habit of being blindsided by demand for new products. (I understand *why* the caution. At this point the results are mainly amusing rather than distressing.)

Do you know how many people out there want a display?

No, neither does the Foundation...

It's REALLY difficult to predict this sort of thing, and it's better to make too few when you don't have the unlimited cash piles that bigger companies have.

I absolutely agree with you on those points. I *said* I understood the reasons. The RPF doesn't want to have a sunk cost of large amounts of unsellable goods (and certainly not manufacturing contracts to produce vast quantities more with no reasonable way to break the contract. Nor would they want a reputation for breaking contracts). You can take all of that as understood.

The other side is that it is becoming the RPF running gag... New product. How many did you make? 10K, but they're all gone and we're working with the factory to get lots more now that we know people really want them.

Of course, the day will come when a new RPF product comes along and the response is...crickets...and the RPF is stuck with most of the initial 10K. I sincerely hope that day is in the very far future, but I do understand the worry that it will--eventually--happen.

And just for the record...I know one person that will probably buy a display (assuming the sort of reasonable pricing the RPF is good at)...me. But I'm not going to get upset if I miss the initial batch and have to wait a few more months past the launch to actually get one. (Besides, if I have to wait, the software will be in better shape by the time I do get one...though I'll take the risk on that front if I manage a shot at the initial batch.)

[alexeames]

The thing with kickstarter is that the folks pitching their product have done some predictions on numbers of prototypes they'll sell and a cost price for the bidder. If all those numbers add up then the KS will get funded.

The other thing with kickstarter is that once you take money off people they have a tremendous feeling of entitlement and ownership. The enormous public scrutiny and the weight of responsibility is quite draining (classic British understatement). Then there's the "can we actually do this?" once things start going wrong. Then there's the "when are the ********* parts coming?" once the design is finalised. Then there's the "will I get a tracking number?" And when you finally get them out there, there's the "I just broke some bits off and it won't work any more"

It's called hardware because it's hard. That's why you'll likely never see the RPF do a crowd-funder. I would do another one, but not for a complex product unless it was 99% ready to go.

[blachanc]

The other thing with kickstarter is that once you take money off people they have a tremendous feeling of entitlement and ownership. The enormous public scrutiny and the weight of responsibility is quite draining (classic British understatement). Then there's the "can we actually do this?" once things start going wrong. Then there's the "when are the ********* parts coming?" once the design is finalised. Then there's the "will I get a tracking number?" And when you finally get them out there, there's the "I just broke some bits off and it won't work any more"

It's called hardware because it's hard. That's why you'll likely never see the RPF do a crowd-funder. I would do another one, but not for a complex product unless it was 99% ready to go.

Alex,
going a bit off-topic here:

I think you should create a off-topic thread where you share your kickstarter experience. It would be very interesting to read.

and +1 for the tracking number comment, I was about to contact you on this topic

Ben

[ulix]

Does no one want to spill the beans? Come on some news, how went the testing

[Alexander Brown]

Does no one want to spill the beans? Come on some news, how went the testing

+1 that thought

[ulix]

Well,
there are two states possible, the first one is that the display is finished in a shorte time, or it went on hold.

[DirkS]

Well,
there are two states possible, the first one is that the display is finished in a shorte time, or it went on hold.

Poppycock

[W. H. Heydt]

Well,
there are two states possible, the first one is that the display is finished in a shorte time, or it went on hold.

Poppycock

Law of the Excluded Middle?

Perhaps it is finished and they are waiting for enough of them to be manufactured to fill the pipeline in order to be ready to make the announcement and let people buy them. (And, perhaps manufacturing has been delayed by the B+ followed by getting some Bs made, and then possibly by getting some As back in stock, or even while making enough A+s to fill *that* pipeline.)

[jamesh]

Well,
there are two states possible, the first one is that the display is finished in a shorte time, or it went on hold.

Poppycock

Law of the Excluded Middle?

Perhaps it is finished and they are waiting for enough of them to be manufactured to fill the pipeline in order to be ready to make the announcement and let people buy them. (And, perhaps manufacturing has been delayed by the B+ followed by getting some Bs made, and then possibly by getting some As back in stock, or even while making enough A+s to fill *that* pipeline.)

This is likely to be it - with limited engineers and production capacity etc, things do take longer than many expect. You only have to look at the delays encountered by almost all Kickstarter projects for examples!

[alexeames]

This is likely to be it - with limited engineers and production capacity etc, things do take longer than many expect. You only have to look at the delays encountered by almost all Kickstarter projects for examples!

The other thing with KS projects is that they tend to grow when good ideas appear from the crowd and you get bullied/badgered/cajoled/persuaded to implement them. And dealing with China, you can go round and round in circles for weeks sometimes

Hardware is hard. Delays happen. It's inevitable.

[mung]

Is there any chance of getting ballpark price for the displays?

I am seriously considering getting a hdmi/dsi parts kit and phone display which works out around $60 (unassembled but soldering it up is a fun learning experience provided it works at the end). Apparently the kits were available as of yesterday shown in comments on this web page https://hackaday.io/project/364-mipi-ds ... mi-adapter

[Paul Webster]

Eben said in an interview earlier this year that the target was around 70USD (presumably plus tax and shipping).

[ulix]

Watch out:
finally there is some news:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/pi-pads/ , sadly no video or better pics.

cheers

[DanielFDI]

Hi everyone,

I work with a company called Future Designs Inc, based out of Huntsville AL. We currently have a Raspberry Pi / BeagleBone Black touchscreen display solution in the works as well. We're hoping to have it on the shelves with distributors like Digikey, Avnet and Mouser by end of year.

It's called ELI (Easy LCD Interface), and works by just hooking up power and HDMI into the Pi.
http://www.teamfdi.com/eli/

I'm currently soliciting community feedback for what kind of project could be tackled with this tech. I'd love to hear from you guys.

[Paul Webster]

Watch out:
finally there is some news:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/pi-pads/ , sadly no video or better pics.

cheers

Where Eben is quoted saying ...
“This is our first display panel that we’re going to be hopefully getting out of the door before the end of the year or early next,”

[DanielFDI]

I can tell you from sitting in on our engineering meetings that it is a bit more complicated than you might think. I think a lot of us familiar with tech are spoiled by nice tablets from Apple or Samsung, and there's a consumer expectation now that they can simply be designed and on order with a quick turnaround.

Our ELI platform at FDI has been in the works, at least conceptually, since back around February when our director was having conversations with some partners at the EE Live trade show in San Jose. Since then, it's taken a lot of R&D and prototyping, we're only just now getting ready to mass produce and have it on shelves within a few months. I can't imagine the mountain of work that Pi would have been going through to evaluate their product as well. I can't wait to see what they've got in store and what kind of lessons we can take away from it as well.

[GekkePrutser]

Watch out:
finally there is some news:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/pi-pads/ , sadly no video or better pics.

Thanks for the link!! I noticed he does confirm there that it's a touchscreen, that wasn't certain before (not anywhere I've found anyway). And it's capacitive as well which is great. It looks a bit like a tablet screen.

I wonder how the touch interface works, there's no touch interface on the DSI is there? I hope it won't take up a USB.

[RaTTuS]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/eben-at-techcrunch-disrupt/ extended info from about 8:30 onwards

[jdb]

Watch out:
finally there is some news:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/pi-pads/ , sadly no video or better pics.

Thanks for the link!! I noticed he does confirm there that it's a touchscreen, that wasn't certain before (not anywhere I've found anyway). And it's capacitive as well which is great. It looks a bit like a tablet screen.

I wonder how the touch interface works, there's no touch interface on the DSI is there? I hope it won't take up a USB.

No. It's an I2C touchscreen.

[GekkePrutser]

No. It's an I2C touchscreen.

Thanks for confirming! That's great! Good to keep those USBs free.

By the way, I was looking up the schematic, it looks like Model B+ does have I2C on the DSI connector (pins 11 and 12), I assume for Model A/B we could simply hook up the touchscreen to the I2C on the GPIO ports? Shouldn't be too difficult.


Edit: But maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of things here as it's not announced yet, sorry!

[Alexander Brown]

Google just put this on my breakfast table:

PCWorld: New Raspberry Pi goodies inbound: Official display accessory, revamped A+ model. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw-ez92Bo

[Jessie]

Eben discussed both at TechCrunch. Pretty good upbeat interview. It's on YouTube.

[DougieLawson]

Eben discussed both at TechCrunch. Pretty good upbeat interview. It's on YouTube.

It's brilliant just to watch Eben and his interlocutor squirming in their uncomfortable chairs.