EtcherPro progress updates

Mostly plan on personal use for EtcherPro. But also to help make it easier installing software update on flash drive for my co workers. We update all vehicles that come in our shop. Most of them don’t understand what root directory means. When manufacturer comes out with new images every few months. Lots easier for me to make one and copy it for them.

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Can’t wait for the pre-order system to go live. Want/Need asap !
Hope to be first in line :slight_smile:

btw - how long until actual delivery after “pre-order”

We aim to open the pre-order system in January.

It should be about 3 to 4 months after pre-order until we ship, but we are currently in the process of finalizing all of the lead times etc so we will have a better idea of that when we launch the pre-order system.

Sounds like an interesting use case, and glad to hear that we will be able to simplify your processes with EtcherPro :slight_smile:

Thanks.

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Further to the previous update above, we are excited to announce that we now have a confirmed date for launching pre-orders - Tuesday 5th Jan 2021 at 9am UTC.

The pre-orders will be through our web store and the details will be as follows:

  • Full price - $990 + shipping and any applicable taxes / EU VAT.
  • Pre-order deposit - $50 + any applicable taxes / EU VAT (this deposit amount will be removed from the final payment amount).
  • The special edition metallic grey version will be limited to 1 unit per customer. The standard blue unit will be limited initially during the pre-order to 10 per customer until we have a better idea on demand and production pipelining.
  • We will have a limited number (50) of special edition metallic grey units available. These will be the first units to ship and will likely be around 2 months before the standard production blue units.
  • Initially we will definitely be shipping to Europe, USA, Canada, Aus and NZ. We aim to add more areas as we move forward and will launch with worldwide shipping if possible.
  • The product will have worldwide adapters compatible with EU, UK, USA and AUS plug types. We will include the Ethernet and power cables required for daisy chaining devices.
  • We aim to ship the first units around 3 months after the pre-order begins. Units will be shipped on a first-come first-served basis. We will send a payment request when your device is ready to ship.
  • We will provide regular updates during the process to keep you informed of how production is progressing.

For those of you arriving at this page who haven’t heard of EtcherPro before, or those of you who have but want to know more - the key features remain unchanged - provision up to 16 IoT devices, SD cards or USB drives at once with a single EtcherPro, daisy chain multiple EtcherPro units to provision up to 160 at once, 50MB/sec write speed. Like the SD duplicators and USB duplicators you know, only better :slight_smile:

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Is there a limit on how many units one can pre-order?

@Jazzagi aha - very good question.

Yes - the special edition metallic grey versions will be limited to 1 unit per customer (with a total of 50 available). The standard blue unit will be limited initially during the pre-order to 10 per customer until we have a better idea on demand and production pipelining.

I will edit the above post to reflect this :slight_smile:

Fantastic! Can we pre-order?

@Ana if you see my post above you will see that the pre-orders will start on 5th Jan 2021 at 9am UTC.

This is amazing news, and the packaging is looking great too. Can’t wait to see these units in peoples hands!

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Does the Full price - $990 + shipping and any applicable taxes / EU VAT include any provision for flashing Raspberry Pi Compute modules or do I need additional accessories?

@pform this can flash compute modules directly over USB. But you will need a carrier board such as the Fin or compute module IO board.

In the future we hope to have a USB to SODIMM adapter to make this process easier but probably not from launch. We are focusing on getting the product out before moving to accessories like this.

@pform, just to add that Etcher (the open source software that EtcherPro uses) supports earlier RPi compute modules but not the latest CM4. We are working to add compatibility with CM4 asap, always flashing via a carrier board as Aaron said. In our case we use balena Fin to flash RPi CMs.

Another quick update for everyone, we have put the pre-order page live on the website now. This is where the pre-orders will launch on 5th Jan 2021.

We have also just sent out an email to our mailing list, which you can view here…

Hope everyone has a great holiday season and New Year. We can’t wait to launch pre-orders in a few weeks!

Hey all,

Just a quick one to say the pre-order is now live!

And here is the email update from today…

Hello,

Do you think that it would be possible with this Pro to flash the SPI of rockpi 4>

to do rkdeveloptool?

Thank you for your answers, we have pre-ordered this great material;)

@rocket13011 thanks very much for the suggestion. It is not currently possible to do this with Etcher / EtcherPro (EtcherPro just runs the Etcher application, so if it doesn’t work in Etcher, it won’t work in EtcherPro).

We definitely want to support flashing of more devices over time though, so I have added an issue over on the Etcher GitHub page for this:

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Hello,

Are there any documents, e.g. how to update/replace the Etcher App?

And would it be possible to use one USB port e.g. for a USB barcode scanner?
But I think another USB port on a future version would be great.

Thank you for your support.

Hi @Andlix,

We’ll release the documentation once we are ready to ship the EtcherPro devices. The updates for the Etcher app and the OS will install automatically when there’s a new update and the device is connected to the internet. If you want to replace the Etcher app and write your own software you will need a balenaCloud account. Once you own an EtcherPro, we can transfer the device (or devices) under your account. You’ll be able to maintain your fleet from there, push code, monitor and keep your devices up to date.

About the extra USB we don’t plan to add an extra USB in the near future. You’ll have to sacrifice one of the USB slots if you want to connect an accessory like a USB barcode scanner.

If you have more questions, let us know.