Raspberry Pi - Hardware Flaws and Fixups?

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

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morgaine over 14 years ago

I do worry about the robustness of the micro-USB connector. How many connect/disconnect cycles are they rated for? Remember that the Rpi has no power switch, so the connector and its mounting area will inevitably suffer a lot of abuse.
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morgaine over 14 years ago

I do worry about the robustness of the micro-USB connector. How many connect/disconnect cycles are they rated for? Remember that the Rpi has no power switch, so the connector and its mounting area will inevitably suffer a lot of abuse.
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johnbeetem over 14 years ago in reply to morgaine

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Mini_and_Micro_connectors, micro USB connectors are rated for 10,000 cycles, compared to 1500 for a standard size USB connector. Personally, I find this dubious given how well some cheap cables adhere to standards, but if it's right you can plug and unplug your RasPi three times a day for 10 years :-)
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morgaine over 14 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

Cheers John. I must say I'm surprised at "10,000". I wouldn't like to bet that the ones I've seen would last even 100 insertion cycles.

Perhaps the rating is for perfectly axis-aligned insertion and removal. In the real world, USB leads are wiggled laterally and place stress on the socket mounts.
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rew over 14 years ago in reply to morgaine

Remember that Pete has said that he chose a "high quality" one that has through hole attachments. This connector is soldered with pins THROUGH the board. This in contrast to the flaky ones that some consumer products use: SMD only, so they come off after a few mating cycles or a small bump to the cable.
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