50 are way too much for our need , I guess , provided that they are the first slow and power hungry model , ideas of what to do with them?
Maybe Bethanie from Kent Raspberry Jam could use some of them? Or Grace and Femi from South London Raspberry Jam?
Can I take one?
Yes, they are under the table in a box labelled “raspberry pi”
They are all mki versions and need memory cards. Great for starting out but probably not great for anything high powered.
I did speak to Grace and they mainly use the Mkiii as they were using the AstroHat (needs mkii or mkiii)
If people want one to play with to learn the basics the these would be fine. Dont get rid of them all though as we are in discussions to run a RaspberryJam starter event !
Courty
1 Like
Definitely not throwing that away…
1 Like
What’s a RaspberryJam Starter Event?
Plus, can I take one of the Pi’s for my old man?
The talk at the time we got them was ‘take them as you need them’, as opposed to ‘take what you like and keep them in a drawer at home’.
Up to @electrotechs to decide: is it useful to have this many?
Exactly what it says on the tin. A getting started with the Pi event. You interested @boldaslove ?
Courty
I’ve never used one before.
An intro would be really great!
I’ll try and come up with an idea for a project.
I use a Pi occasionally. They’re not useful for any serious processing, but are decent enough where a power source is readily available and Linux-ish features are needed. In my case that boils down to firewalling, encryption and backup software. Anyway, I’d be happy to help out with a Pi Jam. I gather these are all headless, so participants would need to bring their laptops?
These boards that we have are Raspberry Pi Mk. 1 Model Bs. At left in the picture below is a Revision 1 board, and at right is a Revision 2 board, identifiable by the addition of mounting holes on the PCB. The GPIO pinout changed between the revisions, so keep that in mind if you take one and want to use the GPIO.
I understand that these boards came from the London Fablab. I spoke to @Barnaby_Coote who was one of the ones who picked them up. They are apparently faulty, and Barnaby was told that they need replacement voltage regulators.
Most of them are in this packaging, with RS Components labels on them, and with the word “intermittent” hand written in permanent marker on the box:
Because there are so many of these, and because some of them seem to have customer names and addresses, and RS invoice numbers on stickers, what I suppose happened is this: These are Raspberry Pis purchased by RS customers and then returned because they were faulty. Somehow all this D stock wound its way up at the London Fablab. Perhaps they were deemed fixable by someone willing to take the time, but RS did not think it worth their time, so they were donated to the Fablab. Ultimately the Fablab did not consider them worth the space they were taking up so they wound up with us.
It might be worth seeing if one can be fixed with the hot air rework station, after changing the reportedly faulty voltage regulator. Which voltage regulator it is, however is not certain. There are at least three regulators on each board: a 9117-33 in TO-252 packaging, a 9117-18 in SOT-223 and a regulator I cannot identify with “LONB” written on the packaging. Confirmation and identification of the unknown regulator can probably be found in the schematics.
I would have tested some in the space today but I did not have a full-size SD card or adapter for a micro-SD card, or an HDMI or composite video cable to hand.
1 Like
Howard reckons they probably have some dry joints on them, and so can possibly be fixed just by reflowing the components where this is the case. Replacing the components may not be necessary.
Perhaps a good excuse to purchase a binocular microscope for the electronics area?
It seems that the asking price for a working Mk. 1 Model B on eBay is £20-25, so there are potentially £1,000 worth of Pis in the box.
Well, that’s not good…
We could test them , most of the problem with the first RPi were the sdcards, people were buying fake ones and the RPi is sensible to the clocking of them…maybe we will find some false positives
This was part of an arrangement RS came to Fablab, Makerspace and Hackspace offering pallets of returned stock.
Like, what, “we are too busy to dispose them”?
presumably because the faults are simple dry joint problems on the whole?
If the problems are dry joins , I’m up for resolder them , if someone will be up to test them 
No as in theres good and bad stuff in there.
Not sure how you’d test them, except turn them in and hope for the best, haha. But I’m happy to form a production line with someone with the hot air gun /reflow gizmo