One batch sold out, the next in the works

I put the most recent batch of 20 Rascals up for sale earlier this week. These Rascals were hardware version 1.2 and had the final Anthrax release of the Rascal software. The batch sold out approximately 9 minutes after the announcement went out to the mailing list. There were a few alert folks who noticed the Rascal in stock before the official announcement, but I did get a flood of emails expressing a mix of frustration and disappointment that the Rascals were gone so quickly. Sorry for the frustrating experience-- the next batch is 5 times larger and should be up for sale in a few weeks, for some flexible value of "weeks."

The Rascal has now been shipped to Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, South Korea, Thailand and the US. Thanks so much to all of you that have shown interest in the Rascal.

Bin laden with Rascals ready to ship

Plan for the release of Beriberi

I plan to load the next batch of Rascals with a new software release, codenamed "Beriberi" as the alphabetic successor to Anthrax. If you're using Anthrax on your Rascal, we'd love to hear reports of bugs or feature suggestions in the forums. Even in the current release, the majority of the non-stock code (specifically, a lot of the editor, the Python hardware library, and the interrupt handler) was contributed by Rascal users.

If it's useful, all of the non-stock-Linux/Python code shipped on the Rascal can be found in Rascal Micro's code repositories on Github.

Ethernet jacks soldered in place

The next batch of hardware is ready for testing!

The pictures below show the latest batch of Rascal 1.2's that will go up for sale soon.

Finally got Ethernet jacks

After many weeks of waiting, the Ethernet jacks I needed to finish this batch of Rascals finally arrived. The rest of the components had been soldered by a robot in Colorado; I soldered the last piece in by hand for each board.

Over the next few days, I'll be testing the hardware to make sure the batch works the same as our first two demo units. In theory, the hardware is 100% identical, but I want to be certain.

When the next batch is up for sale, I'll post it here, on the Rascal Twitter account, and send a message to the mailing list. Thanks for all the inquiries you all have sent me over the last few weeks since the Engadget article was posted; it's pleasant to be reminded that people want this thing.

First Anthrax release candidate available

The first release candidate for Anthrax is now available for download. This is basically a new collection of software for the microSD card in your Rascal. (All Rascal software releases are named after infectious diseases.)

Anthrax should be compatible with all existing Rascals, though this release candidate has only been tested on pre-release Rascal 1.2's. The point of release candidates is to test the software before we send it out to newly-minted Rascal zealots, so please let us know if you run into difficulties with Anthrax.

More details are on the Anthrax release page.

Quick update on the status of Rascal 1.2

As of June 22, 2012, we're waiting for Ethernet jacks, which will allegedly ship on June 25th. Predicting the future has historically been a dicey activity for humans, so we'll omit fictive speculation here.

Preparing for Anthrax release

New hardware

The new Rascal 1.2 hardware, which fixes the exasperating memory bug that doomed Rascal 1.1, has been running solid for the last few weeks. A new batch of Rascals has arrived from the assembler; as soon as they get Ethernet jacks soldered in place (around June 21), they'll be ready for new software.

The picture below shows the Rascal before (left) and after (right) the memory fix. Note the serpentine trace in between the memory and the processors-- this is evidence of the effort to match propagation delays across the memory bus.

New software

From here on out, each Rascal software release will be named with a date and a codename. As is traditional in many open source projects, the codenames will have a theme. Most of the cuddly themes are taken, so we've decided to use the names of infectious diseases. In addition to being memorable, this makes for great casual conversation, particularly in public spaces.

"Say, Linus, have you heard about the new Anthrax release?"

"I've tried Anthrax, but I can't wait to try Beriberi!"

"If you liked Rickets, you'll love Scurvy!"

There are two major goals for the new software release. The more exciting is the new editor; the less exciting is the infrastructure work that's been going on behind the scenes. More details about how the software is being upgraded in the next post.