PyPortal hardware issue, questions re stands, and site suggestions

Support
1

I emailed this to support yesterday but haven’t received a reply or acknowledgement yet so I’m hoping a larger community may be able to help with this. I’ve modified it slightly to reflect that this is aimed at the community…

I bought a PyPortal which I have some follow-up comments and questions about.

When I switched it on, the monitor didn’t work as I expected. I took a look and noticed monitor ribbon was incorrectly placed. I tried to gently move it and found that it wouldn’t so I had to pull the clips down to re-adjust it myself. The monitor itself was poorly placed on the back of the PyPortal to the point that I had to peel it off and re-place it correctly. For what it’s worth, there’s an image of the ribbon. One of the clips is opened as I was about to fix it when I thought to take a picture first. NB: That last sentence was not in the email but seems pertinent.

PyPortal-Ribbon%20Incorrect
PyPortal-Ribbon Incorrect.jpg1000×563 397 KB

I appreciate that neither problem may have been pimoroni’s fault, but I’m quite certain that these faults did not occur during shipping as it would have been difficult to dislodge the ribbon. I think a little QA on their side (and Adafruit’s) would not go amiss in order to correct these issues before they’re shipped to customers. I also think that placing the adhesive may be a bad idea, instead letting the customer do that themselves. I had to peel it off to re-place it and, the fool that I am, placed it down on the shipping note by accident and despite my best efforts, I managed to pull the paper away making the adhesive now useless! That is, of course, entirely my fault but again, it might be an idea to not stick the monitor to the back of the device.

Some comments/questions:

  • No power cable. No big deal, we’ve all got dozens of them lying around, but I wasn’t prepared for the lack of one, possibly because when I’ve order Pi’s in the past, I simply ordered the starter kits (power cable and enclosure).
  • No stand. This is a bit of a problem as I clearly lacked the foresight to realise that the promo images were of products where the stands were either made in a printer or bought separately. I don’t have a 3D printer and I can’t find any stands on the site that would fit the PyPortal. If anyone can point me in the direction of some stands or cases for it, I would be very grateful! I couldn’t find any on the site and there isn’t a “related products” or “customers also bought…” section on product pages.

Feedback on the above would be greatly appreciated, particularly the stand as I don’t have one.

I don’t think most of these issues are necessarily pimoroni’s fault but I think they could possibly mitigate them with a few changes to product descriptions and or some changes to the site.

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Thanks for the feedback, Dan. Sandy here, who also replied to you on Twitter. 😀 We aim to respond to most support tickets within 24 hours, so our support team should get back to you soon.

Apologies that your PyPortal didn’t arrive in tiptop condition. In cases like this, we’re always happy to replace the product if you send it back to us in the condition you received it, or if the problem can be resolved by you then we’ll advise you how to do so.

The PyPortal is an Adafruit product that we stock so, in terms of the assembly of the product, then that’s outside our control, but we’ll pass your feedback on to them 😀 Being a fairly small crew, it’s not feasible for us to open and check every third-party product we sell (although we do test and check all of our own-brand products) but, as I said above, we’re always happy to replace any ones that don’t meet expectations.

I’ve added a note to the product page to say: “Note: Does not include power supply, cable, or cases/stands pictured!”, and rejigged the pictures to put the ones with the board itself first, so thanks for alerting us to that.

In terms of cases, Adafruit do make and sell an acrylic enclosure for the PyPortal and although we don’t (yet) sell it, our friends at The Pi Hut do. Here’s the link: https://thepihut.com/products/adafruit-pyportal-desktop-stand-enclosure-kit-ada4146 We’ll look into stocking that case.

Thanks again for your feedback!

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Hi Sandy,

Thank you for replying. The product doesn’t need to be returned. It was a case of simply unclipping and re-securing the ribbon cable. I removed the adhesive though as it’s now useless but will replace with double-sided tape when I get hold of a case or cradle.

I looked at ThePiHut link you added but that’s a pre-order and doesn’t appear to be on sale yet. The price is reasonable and definitely better than the cost of printing and shipping something from thingiverse/makerbot.

Kind regards, Dan