I want my money back

[pfeerick]

I just looked over the kickstarter page here and couldn't find anything about kodi. Where is all the false advertising I keep hearing about?

Not to start off any arguments about 'misrepresentation', as that simply isn't needed, here are some of the sorts of info that would have confused people looking at this board during the kickstarter period:

   

   

   

There was also a kickstarter update which spoke about running Plex on the pine64 as well. I believe most of the confusion as resulted from the oversell of the pine64 as a supercomputer and media center device. It is indeed capable of playing videos and doing light-duty media center playback (which is to be expected, as the lower spec Raspberry Pi 2 can also do that). I wouldn't be expecting it to play 4K videos any time soon though!

The software and documentation is also not quite as ready as would have been hoped, in comparison to other projects such as the Raspbery Pi, Odroid, etc. However, it's still early days for this board, and it needs to be remembered that the Raspberry Pi support and documentation was nowhere near as good as it is now when it was first released...

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Clearly the PineA64 SBC was unfairly over-hyped and was marketed by an over-zealous team who got lost in the board's clear potential but who also completely forgot about the reality of the board's clear inability to deliver on the 'reasonable' expectations that were unfairly set. 

The other side of the equation ( which is also fair in this discussion to point out ) is that some of the expectation on the consumers end was unrealistic too. I backed this board as a development board only with clear potential, and as a viable replacement ( and better replacedment frankly ) for the Raspberry PI;  it has been all of that and more!

So campers like myself are happy as clams , while folks who thought they were purchasing a fully developed polished commercial media appliance are very grumpy campers ( its to be expected, based on the way the board was marketed primarily ).

The second main piece causing much of the general complaint is that the shipping team did not really consider the infrustructure necessary to satisfy and 'real' shipping request from all of the backers who were hyped into supporting the venture;  in other words, the team unfairly hyped up a product to muster support (which they got), but did not provide ( in the background ) an efficient way to supply the damand, nor an ability to support the rewards.  ( that is a huge equation to miscalculate )

So the two serpents were unleashed !  1) shipping fiasco,  and 2) unsatisfied expectations.

That's just autopsy with minor, but fair, blame. The questions that should be asked at this point are how to move forward 'realistically' and how to set 'reasonable' expectations in the future?

[HayseedGeek]

Clearly the PineA64 SBC was unfairly over-hyped and was marketed by an over-zealous team who got lost in the board's clear potential but who also completely forgot about the reality of the board's clear inability to deliver on the 'reasonable' expectations that were unfairly set. 

[...]
I backed this board as a development board only with clear potential, and as a viable replacement ( and better replacement frankly ) for the Raspberry PI;  it has been all of that and more!

[...]

The second main piece causing much of the general complaint is that the shipping team did not really consider the infrustructure necessary to satisfy and 'real' shipping request from all of the backers

We could add to that the fact that many of the shipping delays were attributed in various different Kickstarter updates to 1) The ABS cases 2) the LCD screen 3) the Lithium battery 4) the Z-Wave modules 5) constant reminders that many backers had not yet completed their surveys (when in fact they were expected to make uninformed decisions about what Backerkit accessories they actually needed).

The ABS case requires modification to be useful, neither of 2 official Pine64 LCD screens have worked with my board (I tore the ribbon cable on the panel trying to get the first one to work and the tpi connector on my board trying to get the replacement to work) 3) Lithium batteries seem to be a contentious issue due to their present unavailability. The Z-Wave modules have to be deconstructed to work in the ABS case.  The camera doesn't fit the case. (I would be interested in selling my unused LCD panel, unopened ABS playbox, and unused camera module if anyone is interested PM me). And parts that seem not to be 100% compatible were apparently arbitrarily arbitrarily interchanged making troubleshooting a seeming nightmare (ala the GBE) and parts were left off of the board that are supposed to be their (e.g. pullup resistors for GPIO).

So, I'd say it is a bit more complicated than unrealistic expectations and shipping logistics. Mr. Lim seems to be a very fair, decent, and honorable man, but this is not his first rodeo with consumer electronics, I still have a VEO webcam that has his handiwork in it (though it no longer has drivers available for Linux nor Windows), and his Popcorn product seemed to be quite successful. I would have expected that his experience would have headed off many of these issues.

I'm sure you aren't saying the Pine64 is at present a viable replacement for a RPi? We are constantly reminded by you and others that we cannot buy products from Spark,Adafruit, or Seeed for the RPi and expect them to work out of the box.

(and as an aside, can you advise as to whether the HDMI-VGA adapter sold at shop.pine64.org will in fact work with this board? It would be so much easier if I didn't have to whork up or family television set to have a local display, and I thought I recalled some weeks ago seeing a statement that they will not work reliably.)

As for moving forward, I wholeheartedly agree Pine64 (or another manufacturer since the hardware is open source needs to resolve the issues and bring a replacement board to market sooner than later. I do want to love this board and see it succeed, I really do, but it simply isn't off to a promising start.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

I'm sure you aren't saying the Pine64 is at present a viable replacement for a RPi? We are constantly reminded by you and others that we cannot buy products from Spark,Adafruit, or Seeed for the RPi and expect them to work out of the box.

You are correct; in that context I am NOT saying so at all.  When I say that the PineA64 is a better replacement for the Raspberry PI ( I'm not speaking of third party product adaptability ) I am saying that as a development board for both hardware &software its better suited to that purpose than the Raspberry PI; it has more memory, it has more GPIO ( a better bus system ) it has the AXP803 PMIC, its eth PHY is better, its usb support is better, it has a better battery and charge system (PMIC) and it has a wider variety of software options and development communities ( including the armbian community ).  I am saying that as a development platform ( for the price ) its at the top of the game; and certainly exceeds the Raspberry PI by significant margins.

[pfeerick]

So whilst the board was over-hyped, making people expect more from it than it could deliver, and are now understandably annoyed, I do have to agree with Marcus that it is a very powerful board for it's price. I bought a Cubietruck (CT) two (or 3?) years back for around $120 (so only 3 times more expensive!) when it was released, and it has arguably similar specs... (yes I know, it has a SATA, but has 2 less CPU cores and is 32 bit, but also has onboard wifi/BT and battery support). I bought it for the GbE capability, as the ethernet RPi was, to be frank, useless. Due to the ethernet and USB being on the same chip, when the ethernet was used to share files from the USB, it would consistently and erratically drop it's ethernet connection. The CT had a separate ethernet controller, and it was GbE to boot. After re-configuring the pine64 to get more sensible network speeds, the pine64 can give a board that is three times it's price a run for it's money (when transferring to and from the USB). So it certainly has potential, but then again I'm also happy with it being a more development board than a media center board... but certainly don't think that my intended useage is the norm... far from it, considering the marketing.

I remember when the first Raspberry Pi Bs came out, and had issues with power, due to the protection polyfuse placed on the input, which they promptly advised people to bypass, as there was a faulty batch. Then there was the small snaffo they encountered during manufacture when their manufacturer realised it integrated the wrong ethernet jack, soldering a non-magnetic port into the circuit board. Not so good if your network capable model can't go on there internet.... bet they were glad they could that one during manufacture, before they made it into the wild!

So whilst we're here singing praises of the Raspberry Pi... it wasn't always as good as it is now. It has taken time, and the pine64 has the potential to get as good with a good community behind it. For it's price point, once the teething gremlins such as software de-optimisations, hardware flaws and spread out or non-existent documentation are resolved it will be a nice board. It has a faster processor than the Raspberry Pi (RPi) (actually no, RPi 3 is the same speed and 64bit also), has facility for built in wifi/bt (RPi 3 has onboard), has more memory than the RPi (only the Pine 2GB, as RPi 2&3 both have 1GB ram), has GbE ethernet (when it works, and even when it doesn't, unless the RPi finally fixed their crappy shared USB/ethernet host design, even the 100MB link on the pine64 will be more reliable than the RPi), has a PMIC allowing for USB and battery power (which the RPi does not have - you'd have to look at the Banana Pi for that).

And yes, shipping was a fiasco... and still is for some people (myself included... I'm still waiting for that board and case!!!). So I feel the pain also, but look at thinks a bit cynically after backing more than few kickstarters. That plus the fact they got 55 times the backing they were aiming for, so it's just a wee bit hard to scale up things up that much! I wasn't expecting a glossy instructions manual, and a genie in the bottle to walk me through using the board, etc... but I was expecting something better than what was provided, based on on the marketing, and other products that are on the market. However, that wasn't the case, so it's better to try and help out, and get it there, so that we can stop worrying about that, and get on with using the board and having a fun time!

Moving forward, I'd like to see the wiki opened up for editing, as that is the more sensible place to be putting documentation and how-to guides. More stickies need to go up on the forum, particularly in the newbie/startup thread, linking to known issues, documentation and how-to guides. It's the little things like that that make a big difference, especially since due to the low price of the pine64 board, a lot of people are willing to give it ago, even if they don't know anything about SBCs, linux, etc. It will all come together eventually, it just takes time as this is a community effort, and we are doing what we can in our spare time...

I could easily go on and on, as there are a lot of things that went wrong (ABS case, GbE failures, RPi compatability, lithum battery connector), and went right (GbE ethernet(?!), price, GPIOs, modular wireless). However, I just want to point out that it wasn't all good, and it wasn't all bad. And progress is being made - it's just that communication is not a strong point of this project at times. As you can see from the recent product release, efforts are being made to improve on that, and things will get better for the pine64 board as well given

So the two serpents were unleashed !  1) shipping fiasco,  and 2) unsatisfied expectations.

That's just autopsy with minor, but fair, blame. The questions that should be asked at this point are how to move forward 'realistically' and how to set 'reasonable' expectations in the future?

[Brandwagon]

Hi Papsnoek,

We sell the Pine 64 in South Africa should you be interested- http://brandwagon.co.za/pine64/

[CaptainZalo]

[words]

Anyway, I will take the loss. Sorry Bluphire, I live in South Africa, so will cost me more to ship than what I will get back from selling...

Give me a ballpark figure on the shipping cost to Norway + the original price you gave for the items (meaning total refund for you including postage), and I'll seriously consider buying the whole thing including shipping cost. 
I'll have to pay taxes on top of that, so I'm not exactly doing a bargain, but you don't have to feel let down or bummed.

This way everyone wins except my wallet. What do you say?

[CaptainZalo]

[words]

Anyway, I will take the loss. Sorry Bluphire, I live in South Africa, so will cost me more to ship than what I will get back from selling...

Give me a ballpark figure on the shipping cost to Norway + the original price you gave for the items (meaning total refund for you including postage), and I'll seriously consider buying the whole thing including shipping cost. 
I'll have to pay taxes on top of that, so I'm not exactly doing a bargain, but you don't have to feel let down or bummed.

This way everyone wins except my wallet. What do you say?

I take it you either sold the board or you're not interrested. Pop me a PM if you still want to sell your stuff.