We are focused on the community. Feel free to build it yourself however. All the materials to build it are provided for free and you don’t have to pay any development costs.
Gerald
I have been looking for 3+ weeks and unable to find any stock anywhere.
Is there a way to see the order backlog with Circuitco and current supply capability? Is the issue getting better or worse? (My anecdotal experience suggests it may be getting worse.) The current situation is frustrating. If the news is bad, let us know it early and deal with it. Right now, there is no data at all.
Gerald: thanks for your timely and open updates.
Pick a distributor. Place an order. Do not wait until they show stock. We are basically keeping up with the back logs at most of the distributors.
As you can see we ship 700 per day and no one shows stock. Ever wonder why that is?
We have 140,000 board back log at this time. A lot of those orders have only come in the last couple of months. Lead times on some parts is 26 weeks.
capacity is not the issue.
Gerald
Gerald
wow ... i'm glad i have a drawerful at home. 
rday
what distributors accept orders when they are out of stock.
Digikey and Mouser will based on when the next shipment comes in. These distributors will not show any stock until they have sufficient inventory built up.
Gerald
for North America: http://www.newark.com/circuitco/bb-bblk-000/dev-board-am3358-59-arm-mpu-beaglebone/dp/65W6016
Place an order now and you will be in the queue. I believe you won’t be charged until it ships and can cancel it at anytime until it ships too. The amount that will be available when back in stock will be stock minus backorders. So it is possible for it to say 10,000 arriving on X date and then on X date there be 0 because those all went to backorders.
for Europe: http://uk.farnell.com/circuitco/bb-bblk-000/beaglebone-black-cortex-a8-dev/dp/2291620
cheers,
drew
as gerald stated, circuitco is in full production of the beaglebone black and continues to ship daily to a wide range of distributors. these distributors fill back-orders first before showing stock.
http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Board_Shipments
Dave
I got one from AdaFruit two weeks ago.
Hi Gerald,
I just want to check your math here.
Using your last full month, January 2014, you shipped 13,575 boards over 22 working days, or about 617 boards per day. So shipping 700 per day seems reasonable.
You say your backlog is 140000 boards which were ordered in the last couple of months. If I use 3 months as the span for the backlog orders, you backlog orders for about 47000 boards per month, or about 2100 boards per working day (based on 22 working days per month).
Based on this your order backlog is growing at about 3 time the rate you are shipping. It seems like this must have been the case for a while in order for the backlog to build to 140000 boards. So perhaps capacity really is an issue.
Is your current production limited by part supply issues? If so, I assume you increased your part orders several months ago when the backlog began, but with 26 week deliveries you won’t see the increased supply for another 3 months or so. If that’s the case then the backlog will only continue to grow and will take a month or two after the parts supply improves before you are able to clear this backlog even if you can increase your capacity to ship 7000 boards per day (i.e. 10 times what you are doing now).
I agree that people best bet is still to place an order and get in the queue for any boards they want. They may have to wait for a while.
Dennis Cote
Parts are an issue. Lead times on some of these are 26 weeks out. So it is not possible to ramp up to the 1500 per day that we did before the distributors asked us to back off. I takes a while to fill the pipeline. And as there is not profit in the board, we can’t just pay expedite fees on parts and PCBs to get them in here faster like we did on the other three boards. No desire to ship money out the door with every board.
Just because we have orders on the books, does not mean distributors will take everything they have on order immediately. They want them scheduled out.
Gerald
Dave,
Gerald,
I am happy to volunteer to do weekly analytics.
elinux.org only shows monthly shipments, with little clue around demand and back order situation. It is nice to know that “circuitco is in full production” but we need to provide lots more facts.
Dr. Anil Gupta
We did this. A year ago when we launched the product. Things were fine until roughly October. Demand has risen due to people using boards in products They never told anyone about their pending demand. They thought the boards just magically appear in the cabbage patch.
We build to distributor orders and schedules. We are close to getting out of this.
I appreciate your offer of help. But this is not just a analytic problem. It is a data problem. We have plugged the data into the formula and are adjusting to that new data and working to fill the pipeline and to get orders shipped.
Gerald
Appreciate the figures of 700/day on supply and 140,000 on back orders (200 days of supply… phew!).
This is an awesome product. What you saw until October was just people trying it out. They’ve concluded it is a good product and are ordering it in greater quantities. That is where we are and I hear similar stories from others. An order build up of 140,000 in two months, even with supply of 700/day suggests an incoming demand of 3500+ per day. I believe you will see this kind of demand continue. None of these buyers want to get into manufacturing–Circuitco is good at it. It would be a shame to see a great product go sideways due to supply issues.
Given that the main constraint is lead time for some components: if sweeteners such as expedite fees can help, I think the community won’t mind a higher price… say $48 or $50, to ensure a demand-supply balance.
Expedite fees? Well we used to do that on the earlier boards. But there is zero buffer on these boards. The idea of loosing say $700,000 is not something that makes a lot of sense. Having deals and POs in place with distributors and then telling them, Oh sorry, you have to pay more is tough.
I am thinking of maybe taking the price to say $75 in the future.
Gerald
+1 I think you should do that..
Regards,
We are thinking about a lot of things right now.
Gerald
+1 on $75
Good to hear, does that also include thinking about paying your debt to this cape developer ?
-- Bas
I would think that is up to whomever it is that owes you.
Gerald