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Raspberry Pi - Hardware Flaws and Fixups?

Former Member

Several people have commented on the hardware design of the Raspberry Pi.  Some are buried in other topics so please post your comments here.  I'll try my best to answer questions about the design decisions we made.  The Raspberry Pi is not perfect, never will be.  I've always found that perfect designs have a habit of never getting built, engineers are always a bit guilty of that, but I had Eben phoning/emailing me every day wanting to know when it would be finished.  Also, one persons perfection is another persons nightmare.

 

e14 is the home for engineers so please contribute to make Raspberry Pi better.

 

Thanks

 

Pete

Parents

  • First, I would like to say that RasPi is a very beautiful board design.

       This is very minor suggestion.  I would like to have the option of bypassing the micro USB power input S1 and soldering 5V power inputs directly to the board using little wire jumpers.  I can almost do this already since there are vias on the traces connected to S1 pins 1 and 5.  However, it looks like there's solder mask in those vias, which is a pain to clear.  So it would be really nice if the solder mask could be changed so those vias aren't filled.

       While you're at it, the trace connected to S1 pin 1 seems awfully close to (unused) pins 2-4.  I'd shift the trace away a bit so the cleared via doesn't short to S1 pins 3-4.

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  • First, I would like to say that RasPi is a very beautiful board design.

       This is very minor suggestion.  I would like to have the option of bypassing the micro USB power input S1 and soldering 5V power inputs directly to the board using little wire jumpers.  I can almost do this already since there are vias on the traces connected to S1 pins 1 and 5.  However, it looks like there's solder mask in those vias, which is a pain to clear.  So it would be really nice if the solder mask could be changed so those vias aren't filled.

       While you're at it, the trace connected to S1 pin 1 seems awfully close to (unused) pins 2-4.  I'd shift the trace away a bit so the cleared via doesn't short to S1 pins 3-4.

Children