PiJuice - A Portable Project Platform For Every Raspberry Pi
Created by PiJuice Team
PiJuice is the ultimate module for all portable Raspberry Pi projects. Includes many fun maker projects and a solar power version too!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
First shipment tracking numbers uploaded, next batch and Tinker Board / Tinker Board S Support
about 8 years ago
– Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 11:59:30 PM
Hi all,
Today is a REALLY GOOD DAY! The first 1900 units have completed shipping out from Floship. Words honestly can't describe how good we feel about this and how much of a relief it is to finally see PiJuice shipping.
More information below on what this means and what happens going forward.
First shipment tracking numbers uploaded
The first batch of PiJuice boards that we received from Embest and have shipped out covers 1488 backers for a total of 1900 units shipped. That leaves around 1000 backers and 1300 units to ship in the next batch
If you are one of those 1488 backers in the first batch shipment, you should in the next day or so receive (or probably already have received) an email from both Floship and BackerKit with your tracking number and shipping service details along with a link to the tracking website.
Most of the shipments, depending on where you are located in the world, should take between 3 and 14 working days to arrive after they have shipped. But of course you can keep an eye on their progress with the tracking number.
Next batch
We have been informed today by Farnell / Embest that we will receive another 3080 units (enough to fulfill the rest of the Kickstarter with spares) of PiJuice before the end of March (we are, as always, pushing to speed this up) and we will then receive the final 1000 units that we have on order by the 15th April. This will finish the allocation of boards currently owed to us by Farnell / Embest.
Floship have the shipping file ready to go now, and so as soon as the next batch of boards drops into their warehouse later this month they will ship those out and we will again send tracking numbers out to those backers.
What this means, is that everyone should have had their rewards shipped within around 4 weeks and with them within around 6 weeks.
If this changes at all, either shorter or longer, we will let you know with as much details as we can.
Tinker Board / Tinker Board S Support
For the last couple of months we have been talking to the team at Asus about their Tinker Board and Tinker Board S with a view to building in support for all of our Pi Supply products.
The great news for anyone interested in PiJuice is that we got confirmation last week that PiJuice is now working successfully with both the Tinker Board and Tinker Board S expanding the compatibility of your PiJuice out to a wider range of single board computers.
Getting started info, guides, competitions and more...
As we now move into the final phase of the PiJuice Kickstarter, we want to make sure that you have all the information and support you need to make the most of the PiJuice product.
We are planning to send out an email containing links to a whole host of information about and software for the product. We will only send this to people whose boards have shipped and will send to the remaining backers when their boards ship too so you have the information close to hand when your board arrives at your door.
We are also going to be running a bunch of competitions both for our general customers and some for "Kickstarter backers only" to win things like more PiJuice HATs, solar panels and cases, among other things.
Last but not least - we would be super grateful for any help testing, improving and perfecting the code that runs PiJuice over on our GitHub page so if you are interested then feel free to head over there and submit an issue or a pull request as necessary. The better that software becomes, the more useful PiJuice will be for everyone!
Make some noise! (and a huge thank you)
In case you didn't already guess, we are very excited to now be shipping out PiJuice HATs. We are super grateful for all of your support and patience throughout this campaign and are glad to be finally bringing this to a close around 3 years after launch. We can't believe that it took that long, but we are glad to have not let you down entirely and to finally be delivering, after everything that has happened along the way. We are excited to move on to more projects and products and hope that we can win back and/or hold on to your trust and support for our future endeavours.
We also can't wait to see all the projects you will create with the PiJuice and would really love it if you can share them with us and the rest of the world. So once you have worked out what project you are going to integrate PiJuice into, why not send us a tweet with the plan and the results to @PiSupply and/or @ThePiJuice on twitter? You can also use the hashtag #PiJuiceProjects
Thanks as always, Aaron and the Pi Supply / PiJuice team
Shipping update, DietPi support, Frederick Vandenbosch project write-up and more...
about 8 years ago
– Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 10:44:24 PM
Hi all,
More news for you with regards to shipping and lots of other stuff. Let's get started...
Shipping update
As you can see from the below image, our shipping partner Floship has early last week successfully approved and received the incoming shipment of PiJuice boards (RAAMaudio UK LTD is our official company name). This was the final step before commencing shipping and just required them to confirm the quantities of items in the shipment. They have already begun the picking and packing process. We have provided them with a CSV file to complete detailing the tracking number and courier service they use for any shipment. Once they send the completed form for this shipment we will immediately upload it to BackerKit which will send you a notification of the tracking number by email, so you know to look out for your shipment.
Shipment received and approved
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the BackerKit data, it does not seem to actually have your Kickstarter backer number in the export. So we are not entirely sure of the order these will ship out in. We are talking with Floship and BackerKit about this in more detail to confirm what's possible. We may have to ship out in a more random fashion. We will keep you posted. Additionally Chinese New Year may cause a slight delay but hopefully nothing too drastic.
More updates soon.
DietPi support
We sent one of the sample units across to DietPi to build support into their awesome bare bones OS and this is now successfully complete.
In our previous update #69 you may remember we showed a project that Frederick Vandenbosch was working on to build a power outage monitor with PiJuice, Raspberry Pi A+ and a PaPiRus HAT.
Well the great news is that now Frederick has published on his website a guide on how to build it yourself. Hopefully this might provide some project inspiration if you're needing some :-)
Thanks as always,
Aaron and the Pi Supply team
Units recieved by forwarder...
about 8 years ago
– Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 10:40:29 PM
Hi all,
Just a quick one to let you know that our freight forwarder Floship, who is doing all the Kickstarter fulfilment, has now received 1930 units of PiJuice (unfortunately 70 are currently in rework due to not passing the functional test we have set up).
So shipping should begin this week. As soon as we have tracking numbers we will upload them to BackerKit.
Will keep you updated on timelines for the remaining KS units.
Also - we have just updated the pijuice-base and pijuice-gui softwares too.
Thanks, Aaron and the PiJuice team
Shipping news, battery level calculator, quick start / FAQ, software update and firmware update
about 8 years ago
– Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 10:56:26 PM
Hi all,
We heard from Embest today that they will only finish the 2k units production on Friday or Monday now instead of Thursday! It will then take a couple days for them to get to the shipping partner, Floship, at which point they will begin shipping out. So between Wednesday and Friday of next week the shipping out process should begin.
We will keep you posted on progress on this as and when we have news but things are looking good generally.
Software Updates
If you have been keeping an eye out on our PiJuice GitHub you will have seen that there has been a lot of activity there in the past few weeks. A huge shout out to Denis our new software engineer, Milan the hardware engineer behind PiJuice, Francesco our technical content guy and Ton who helps us out with testing and improving our products - they have done an amazing job!
Some of the updates that have happened recently:
huge amounts of testing and bug fixes to make sure your PiJuices are running smoothly!
overhaul of graphical / UX layout to streamline things
splitting of the software into pijuice-base and pijuice-gui - as requested by you backers - in order to make it easier for headless use without needing a large amount of dependencies.
adding missing features such as powercut behaviours
improving firmware update functionality
adding new firmware to package (more on that in next section)
added configuration for spare IO ports on P3 header
There are changelogs here and here also for a quick overview of all the changes.
PLEASE NOTE: The new pijuice-base and pijuice-gui packages CONFLICT with the previous pijuice package. If you previously installed the software via "sudo apt-get install pijuice" you will not be able to install the updated software. In order to install the updated software, you will first need to purge/delete the old software. The command to do this is "sudo apt-get purge pijuice" followed by "sudo systemctl stop pijuice.service" (since the purge of pijuice does not stop the service).
You can feel free to install the software now, as future software updates will be available just by the standard update procedure on the RasPi using the commands "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" and interim/beta versions will be available for download and manual updates from the GitHub page.
New "IO" tab for configuring STM32 spare IO pins
Firmware Update
In order to facilitate some of the software updates, an update to the firmware on the STM32 chip on the PiJuice was required. Unfortunately, as the first 2k batch was already mid-production when we finished this firmware update, they will be running the slightly older firmware.
So, if you receive one of these first 2k units (you will know who you are as you will get a notification) then it is strongly recommended that as soon as you get your device, you install the PiJuice software, navigate to the "Configure HAT" menu, click on the "Firmware" tab and then click "Update Firmware".
If the button is greyed out, as in the below image, and it says "Firmware is up to date" then there is no need to do anything and you have the most recent firmware.
Firmware Update Menu
Any units shipped after the first 2k units will be running the more up to date firmware. But no need to worry either way - as the firmware update process is super easy by design - so we can add to and improve PiJuice in the future :-)
Inspired by the efforts of our good friend Alex Eames' testing of PiJuice, we tasked our graphic designers with making a nice battery level approximation calculator.
Battery Dishcarge Calculator
The purpose of this, is to give you a rough idea of how long your battery might last in a variety of scenarios - idling, watching video, shooting video etc. And with a choice of different Pis (based on the mA draw data developed by Alex in his testing of Pis).
We have also added an "advanced" tab - which allows you to add your own variables and additional inputs / output current draws as well as tweak the system efficiency etc.
Whilst it will never be 100% accurate - it should hopefully prove to be a useful tool.
Last but not least, Francesco has been hard at work developing a quick start guide and FAQ for PiJuice including basic assembly and getting started, using the case, using PiJuice with Pi PoE, pinout diagrams and more! Check out all the information here - https://www.pi-supply.com/make/pijuice-quick-start-guide-faq/
There is also a wealth of information in the READMEs on the GitHub pages which goes into painstaking detail about how everything works, how to set it up, what variables are available and more:
