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Raspberry Pi - Hardware Flaws and Fixups?

e14 Contributor

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

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    I use these, David (UK source):

     

     

    They clip perfectly onto the Pi's P1 header pins.

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to fustini

    If you're willing and able to recompile the kernel, you can add some platform data and have the kernel read the rtc and set the date and time for you. This removes the need to use hwclock and binding the driver to the correct i2c address. It's possible to add platform data for all sorts of i2c devices so that they come up automatically on boot, regardless of userspace.

     

    One of my projects is to add an RTC and a GPS with PPS output to my Pi and turn it into an NTP server.

  • One thing I'm really getting very pissed off is that there is no system/process or whatever to keep track of reported issues and fixes, I'm not quite sure it is the responsability of the distributors to do it and the RPF Blog/Forum for it is not good or efficient enough.

     

    I guess it is another thing RPF failed on execution, sounds so close to the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

     

    Somebody should put together a ticketing system and a knowledge base, the current minion operated BBS does not scale.

     

    -J

  • in reply to jamodio

    jamodio wrote:

     

    One thing I'm really getting very pissed off is that there is no system/process or whatever to keep track of reported issues and fixes, I'm not quite sure it is the responsability of the distributors to do it and the RPF Blog/Forum for it is not good or efficient enough.

     

    Somebody should put together a ticketing system and a knowledge base, the current minion operated BBS does not scale.

    The eLinux Wiki is the best we've got for now: http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting.  The Wiki will continue to improve as people like us report problems and work-arounds, and evenutally people will look there first instead of using the RasPi Forum.  As to actual fixes to the RasPi hardware design... let's just say that having stable hardware has its advantages.

  • in reply to morgaine

    Thanks for the info.  Went off to Mansfield and got them this afyernoon  (52 mile round trip).  I can now continue to experiment.

  • in reply to morgaine

    Yikes, I've read about IP address bans and just realized that might mean a user wouldn't be able to even read the RaspberryPi.org blog, is that right?

     

    In general, I'd love to see more members of this group post in the group's blog about any Pi projects/tinkering they might be doing.  I'm going to post about another I2C device shortly.

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    That sounds very exciting!  I'm going to have to try that.  The attraction of the Pi to me is being able to meld my electronics tinkering with the kernel I've been running for so many years - and learn more about how it works at a lower level in the process.

  • breadboard up and running.  Three LED's, two resistors and a micro switch and connectors to Raspberry IO pins.  Now trying the program.  It hic cups! at unzipping and does not make the directory RPi.GPIO-0.2.0.  Put question out to one of my friends to solve and awaiting answer.  But for the moment it powers up from Raspberry.  The breadboard from Maplins is vastly different from the Tandy shown in the magazine.  Maplin links accross the horizontal whereas the Tandy seems to be vertically linked.  The Maplin has 4 cols of 6 horizontal holes by 30 vertical holes.The Tandy has is quite different.  The headers on the Maplin board do not appear to be connected to anywhere.  So to use Maplin in the same way as Tandy requires a number of wire links, but it works with a little ingenuity. I'll keep you informed of progress toward getting my robot arm working from Raspberry Pi.