When you see $125 off something you probably assume it cost several times that to start with. Nope, this drastic discount leaves just $25 plus shipping. Use coupon-code: 2JLP-R4XRT3 when ordering the little rover. There’s a quick video snippet of it embedded after the break.
What you’ll get is a Stellaris ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller on a board with a bunch of goodies.
- MicroSD slot
- USB host and device connectors
- I2C audio with speakers
- Ethernet connector
- 96×6 OLED display
- Motors
- Optosensors
- Bump detectors
As always, we want to hear about the hacks you come up with once you have this little guy in hand.
[update, the code is now expired]
[final update — Someone from TI explains what is going on.]
—- from the comments.
As some posts already note, the coupon code is only available to ESC Boston attendees. That said, we’re psyched about all of your interest and understand there seems to have been some confusion, so TI plans to fulfill all of the finalized orders to date. We’re working on some logistics in getting the code up and running again for ESC Boston attendees, but proof of ESC registration will be required. Stay tuned.
We hear you about the e-store and are working as quickly as possible to avoid issues in the future. Thanks for your patience.
Bottom line – we’re glad to see the excitement around EVALBOT and look forward to checking out your projects! We encourage you to share them on our e2e Forums at http://e2e.ti.com/
-Jean Anne Booth, Texas Instruments
——-
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQPyZPQcyKI]
[Thanks GDM]
@torwarg
That’s a pretty steep request. Think about it – They probably sold 1500 of these in recent days. At $125 off, that’s almost $200,000 in losses to coupons.
I say they are pretty damn generous to honor any of our orders considering this code was meant for ESC Boston, and was never supposed to be used by any non attendees!!!!
Oh man, I hope to see some cool applications for the bot soon! Rovio anyone?
towarg:
It wasn’t just hackaday that had this coupon. It spread like wildfire. I know of a few forums it appeared on where people will buy just because they can, not because they actually care what it was. Sadly ebay will be flooded with these as shipments are fulfilled.
I think it is great that TI responded, I dont think it was a PR ploy in the first place. I think it was a simple website and conference coupon mistake on their end and well, word travels fast and no one really knew why the coupon existed. TI has made many moves to get hobbyists involved. Sure this will be a loss, but some websites that make a pricing error like this will simply cancel orders (amazon and bn come to mind)
I hope most of the orders were from HaD and other hobbyist websites though, with people that are interested in utilizing it.
Duh…. lessons for TI:
1) Make unique #s for each coupon handed out… perhaps authenticate against ESC Boston registration #’s or something identifiably unique
2) Lose the ASP toy systems… bring back the TI Explorer? ;-)
Seriously, there are more robust OS’s and merchant servers out there – get a clue!
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=estore.ti.com&probe=1
Nope, haven’t learnt…
Thank you TI for honoring the orders. You can trust that as an electrical engineering student that loves programing and robots I will gain lots from this. Order #6350
@Jake:
I don’t think its a steep request. Did you ever see the total bill for a larger trade fair. Depending on the size of your boot a single day can easily come up to be several 10.000 of dollars a day. Within this time they might have only 1/10 or even less of the amount of interesting people. I mean really interesting people… not the pen and keychain grabbers. Thus, the price comes close to a Hackaday coupon. But for the later, they will gain extreme positive PR, “employ” some talented hackers for free (simply announce a competition and suck in all the ideas and code) and there will be discussions across the net.
Taking all the people into account who do not buy a unit but read HaD, the personal blogs and all the other infos you would find soon on the net. This becomes really really a very economical PR.
I just spoke with someone from TI to get a status and they said that there were over 25,000 orders placed! No word on how many were finalized before they stopped accepting the coupon. I still haven’t had my card charged, just authorized, and I am order #5337
Anyone know of the other sites that were discussing the evalbot?
@chris muncy
start a thread at hackerfoundry.com
Everyone interested is welcome to join http://ti-evalbot.proboards.com
Not set up by me, but seems like a good place to start.
@Brian 25,000 orders? I think that is a bit over the top. The order nr seams pretty linear and TI stopped the coupon a bit after you see someone mentioning 7040 in the comments here..
That E-store cannot not handle 18.000 orders in a few minutes :)
Thankx to TI to honor the orders.
It would be nice to see TI team up with Hackaday to do some kind of competition on this or do a similar discount/ promotion in the future. (After the E-store is hardened a bit :) )
I just got an updated ship date. Mine ships tomorrow!
Me too!
w00t!
sadly mine is still stuck at Status: Processing
Order status updated ! (#5671)
Qty SKU Description Price EstimatedShipDate
1 EKB-UCOS3-EVM EKB-UCOS3-EVM – Stellaris® Robotic Evaluation Board for use with Micrium’s µC/OS-III 25.00 10/11/2010
Hmm. I’m around #6400, no word yet. Anyone above #6000 get a ship date yet?
Also, I agree with polossatik. I’d believe 2,500 orders, but not 25,000.
I’m around #6500 nothing yet.
2,500 orders! ROFLMAO. Imagine it costs them about half the sell price of $149.00 to make. and then sell 2500 at $25. $6,200 in sales for $186,000 in parts and labor. I guess $180,000 for advertising is an averavge price?
When all the college students graduate with the knowledge of how this board works, guess what chips they pick to use in the real world.
I’m #6604 received the 430 I also ordered… and appear to have been double charged for… but nothing about the EvalBot.
Just checked… odd… appears my first payment didn’t go all the way thru… status says waiting to ship.
Order 6391 here. The pending transaction on my debit card has gone away. I don’t know what is going on.
@Knightfire
my ordernr is #5979 and my status is “Order Placed, Payment Authorized” :.<
(i'm from europe)
@KnightFire
I was double charged for my last order. I’ve been meaning to call them about that, been pretty busy.
To those wondering about the pending authorizations on the credit cards, TI won’t bill your card until it’s ready to ship. They did a pre-authorization to make sure you had the funds, but since it’s taking so long to ship, those authorizations are dropping off. Don’t worry. Give it time.
OK…
I’m order #5757, and I HAD a ship date of 10-11-2010.
I looked today, and the ship date is changed to 12-21-2010!!!!! Not happy.
I was going to make a friendly robot, but now I think I’ll program it to kill. Oh, and TI lost my second Launchpad order too. While I’m venting, I’ll also ask, why do TI-83’s still cost the same amount as they did 10 years ago?
Grrrr…
Hahahaha. I’ll be lucky to get mine by next spring xD
My ship date is now December 21st as well. *sigh*
damn. mine still says processing. in the late 6400’s. I know I got the order in before the lady from TI said no more. I assume if the coupon worked, we’re good. Merry Christmas everyone who gets theirs this year. Hope mine ships in 2010.
Just got the update: shipping 12/21/2010. I’m order 5895. Considering I wasn’t planning on buying one of these before the coupon, I can wait the 2 months. It will be a nice thing to play with over winter break. Just the fact that TI is honoring the orders is great.
satstus update
shipping date is 2010.21.12 :D
Does anyone know who to contact in regards to a order problem? I received the confirmation that my order went through and my cc was pre-auth’d but not charged. Now the pre-auth has dropped off, I can’t find any tech support contact for the sales site, and my order says “processing”.
That’s normal. The pre-auth will only stay on for a few days. If you got an updated shipping date of December you’re good to go till then, in which they will charge your card when the evalbot starts shipping.
@Chris Muncy
Thanks, thing is I never did receive the estimated ship date email, and there is not one listed on the order page. I received the initial confirmation email, but that is all.
If you log in to the TI store web site, what is the status of your order and what’s your order number?
It’s 5823, and it says “processing” under status, as previously mentioned.
(order 66xx) I also only got one email from IT confirming the order and now the status is “pocessing” in the webshop.
@Jaguarius Just relax and sit back, you might get the bot around jan, I think I’m in for somewhere around april or so :)
It took months to get my Chronos, the launchpad was a bit faster.
Order #6141
status:processing
status: waiting to ship
Will it ever come?
#6126
still processing
#6674 waiting to ship
What a (sad) joke. Two weeks and still “processing”. No contact information to even cancel the order. TI, get your act together and finish this stuff up.
If you need to contact the Ti E-Store the Phone number is 1-800-336-5236.
It can also be found @ http://averad-blog.com/tech/ekb-ucos3-evm along with information about the EKB-UCOS3-EVM
man i missed this… would have done so much with it…
Just received mine today! #5775
LIES!
Pics or it didn’t happen.
I just received mine this morning as well. #5785. Took a bit to assemble, and one of the wires to a motor came off, but I got it working.
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k19/minocc/100_1169.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k19/minocc/100_1168.jpg
My order #5868 shows as processing, with an estimated ship date of 12/21/2010. Sadly that means it wopn’t arrive for Chrtistamas, and I’ll have to find something else for my 12 yr old to hack :(
Mine arrived and they listed the actual price we paid ($25) which meant no customs or expensive royal mail handling fees to pay! Frankly I am amazed.
Thanks TI – what a wonderful early Xmas pressie!
For those that just received their evalbots, did you ever see a December ship date on your oder status?
On a side note: My status has now changed to captured…..
I wonder if SkyNet is involved….
#6141
Yesterday it said:
status:processing
status: waiting to ship
Today, it’s at my house!, actually I was sleeping, Fedex knocked, and just left the pickup notice.
But I’ll have it by tonight!
Shipped from Fort Worth TX.
btw, there was no confirmation email, no shipping email, nothing.
I checked on my status on TI just yesterday. The backorder date was still 12/21. The fedex man brought it around this morning! My friend said his TI status changed to ‘shipped’ this morning as well!