Overall Situation and Status
It has been some time since we updated you, we are sorry about that but things have been keeping us quite busy over here.
We so much share the common frustration about delays and especially the fact that we have limited influence over it. The outbreak of the corona virus has become a huge challenge to the complete supply chain on one hand and of course and most importantly the daily lives of us all.
To be able to cope with the outbreak, strict measures had to be taken which will have an impact long after this outbreak is contained and managed.
Overall improvements have been seen in the last few days. That is very good! The measures of course stay in place which is understandable since the changes have to be proven sustainable.
This week many factories resumed work, which is also very good. The overall problem though is the lack of labor to get the performance back to where it was before the outbreak. The limitations on travelling, especially from heavily hit regions, still keep much of the labor away from Shenzhen.
The measures also affect logistics which means raw material will arrive late.
Factories have to outsource services (e.g. surface treatment for our cases, or extrusion for some parts) which adds uncertainty to delivery times. Most of the surface treatment plants e.g. did not even resume work yet.
The results are overall increased (or not confirmed) delivery times.
After checking all available options (e.g. even changing suppliers) we decided to stick with the existing channel because it is in the best interest of all.
In short it means that we can still not give you detailed shipment information at the moment, because one or more of the above mentioned problems exist. We did split the batch though, to at least be able to release goods step by step.
We still try to manage the shipments until the end of March, but many unanswered questions in our supply chain remain.
From now on we will release an update every week.
Extended Promotion time
Because of the situation explained we will extend the promotion until further notice.
Logistics / Shipment
International shipments from our warehouse have also been affected. With many international flights to China cancelled until April and beyond the available air cargo space has substantial shortage. It also affects our ability to deliver economy express to some destinations.
This service delivers the cargo to the destination country and then hands it over to the local post for delivery. The only fallback solution we now have is to ship with China Post.
We expect some of the shipment options to resume this week, overall the situation is difficult. DHL, UPS are affected, but do process as usual.
ROCK PI SATA HAT TOP BOARD Product details:
This time we would like to share some details about the sata hat top board.
We did get some questions out of the community and we like to share the answers.
The Sata Top Board is both a tool to manage the temperature inside the case and a status information panel at the same time. The added software managed switch can be used to take action and/or scroll data on the screen.
Once you mounted all parts please install the provided software running the following script curl -sL https://rock.sh/get-rockpi-sata | sudo -E bash -
The following features will be activated:
- The big mounted PWM controlled fan makes sure the air flow is stable and disks and of course HAT and Raspberry Pi 4 are kept on acceptable temperature levels. PWM means - the fan´s rotating speed and noise are related to the temperature inside of the case. This is done with a temperature sensor and software which manages the RPM of the fan. This feature provides good noise management because the fan is not permanently spinning with full speed.
- The second monitoring device is the OLED display. It provides frequent update on the status of the NAS. Standard information provided is e.g. CPU load, RAM usage of RASPI4, Temperature, IP address and disk information. The displayed content can be managed with adjusting the related config file under /dev/rockpi-sata.conf
- The third feature is the small switch which can be assigned to different functions via the same config file we mentioned above. Once you finished the modification of the configuration file you can reboot the NAS or restart the service with this command: sudo systemctl restart rockpi-sata.service
You can find the complete product specs and installation details here:
If you need some more details don't hesitate to contact us on sales_cn@allnet.de
Thank you for your ongoing patience and trust!
53 comments
Daniel-san
I’m intrigued by this nice NAS case + 4 drives HAT for the RaspberryPI 4. I was wondering if there’s way to add an RTC module to keep the clock time even with no internet connection. Normally these modules use the I2C pins of the RaspberryPI but they are used for the OLED display and the whole GPIO header is occupied the HAT connection anyway. The I2C bus actually supports multiple I2C devices via addressing but I don’t see a way to spill those pins connections.
James
Hey, since this box support a total of 16TB, what 4TB 9.5mm drives would you suggest?
Thanks
Norbert
@Joel – we plan to resolve all back-orders until the end of April. Things are looking good so far – still missing some major parts which should arrive soon.
@Wes – shipments to the US have never stopped, they only are sometimes delays because of limited shipment channels. We could find some new alternatives though which have proven to be very time efficient. (referring to non DHL shipments)
@Rick – shipments are ongoing already for some weeks. The goods arrive in smaller batches so we do not have to ship everything in one big lot. Our target is to resolve all open orders until the end of April.
Joel
Any new updates on Shipping of orders already in the system?
Wes
Any further updates on shipping to the U.S.?