Possible Hardware fixes

There is another DC-DC converter I'm testing for another design from Intersil, ISL9104 500mA 4.3MHz high efficiency, very small package and cheap, few external components.

The Alpha board had DC-DC converters and apparently a better power supply design. The micro USB and phone chargers is turning to be a really bad idea, so I agree about changing that, actually I'm powering the board from the P1 header.

Yes without the Gerbers is not easy to envision what kind of "blue wire" fixes can be done.

I'm thinking seriously if after all there is enough interest and momentum to start a true "open source hardware" development.for a Pi like board, with parts that are documented. Even if I understand the reasons I don't like at all that the Pi design was built around a part that has practically no documentation publicly available.

I may be able to get some funding and people interested to support an open project, perhaps I should exchange some lines with Jim Manley that seems interested to the right thing.

I'm really pissed with all the secrecy, conspiracy, mystery, bad vibes and misinformation emanating from RPF.

-J

I'm thinking seriously if after all there is enough interest and momentum to start a true "open source hardware" development.for a Pi like board, with parts that are documented.

I could certainly be interested, but I see two stumbling blocks. First is that anything with a GPU is unlikely to have good enough docs, second is that anything without a GPU seems unlikely to have the sort of mass market appeal to get the cost down to something reasonable.

The rhombus-tech guys seem to be a reasonable way along this road already, with some interesting info like the cpus they've evaluated: http://rhombus-tech.net/evaluated_cpus/

However they seem to be a long way from an actual released product and I'm not at all convinced of the EOMA-68 form factor. Although I do like the idea of a set of standard interfaces.

selsinork wrote:

 

I'm thinking seriously if after all there is enough interest and momentum to start a true "open source hardware" development.for a Pi like board, with parts that are documented.

I could certainly be interested, but I see two stumbling blocks. First is that anything with a GPU is unlikely to have good enough docs, second is that anything without a GPU seems unlikely to have the sort of mass market appeal to get the cost down to something reasonable.

 

The rhombus-tech guys seem to be a reasonable way along this road already, with some interesting info like the cpus they've evaluated: http://rhombus-tech.net/evaluated_cpus/

However they seem to be a long way from an actual released product and I'm not at all convinced of the EOMA-68 form factor. Although I do like the idea of a set of standard interfaces.

This is extremely hard to do without corporate sponsorship.  You have to build a lot of boards before they become cost-effective.  Sure, at $89 BeagleBone sounds like a lot of money, but I expect it's quite reasonable given the quantities sold.  If more people get behind BeagleBone, the costs would come down to something closer to RasPi.

Then you have the BeagleBone "capes".  They're pricey, but again it's because of the quanties manufactured.  You really cannot make anything with high-density SMT without specialized equipment and know-how, so it's almost always cheaper to contract it out.  However, the fixed costs of doing so are quite high so you need to pretty large quantity to get something reasonable.  Custom bare PC boards are pretty cheap now, but populating them with BGAs and QFNs isn't.

So my recommendations would be:

1.  Support the most open existing boards, e.g., BeagleBone.

2.  Take existing tablets and make the software open, like Make Play Live's Vivaldi and ZaReason's ZaTab.

3.  Take a look at Xilinx Zynq.  I don't know if that has a complete technical reference yet, but there's no reason it shouldn't completely document the ARM A9s and its hard peripherals.  And it's technically possible to design a completely-open GPU using the FPGA fabric.  Yes, a big job but so is reverse-engineering closed GPUs.  And yes, the FPGA image is (I assume) closed as well, but you can design at the Verilog or EDIF level.

It's really too bad that the Zed Board is so expensive.  I could afford one, but it's unlikely to get a mass following at the current price so my work wouldn't find wide distribution.

Sure, at $89 BeagleBone sounds like a lot of money, but I expect it's quite reasonable given the quantities sold.  If more people get behind BeagleBone, the costs would come down to something closer to RasPi.

Looking at BeagleBone on uk.farnell.com the other day, out of stock. Approx 300 available for delivery sometime between now and 2nd week in August.

Compare to the 12000+ available for delivery on 23rd July that the Pi was showing a few days ago and the difference in scale is clear.

You have to give the RPF credit for managing to get the interest and backing to be able to ramp up to where they are in such a short time. They seem to be the only ones to have managed it so far. As everyone keeps pointing out there's plenty of other boards out there, but none seem to be gaining the necessary momentum.

How much of the success of the R-Pi is down to aiming low to begin with and praying that the interest will be there ?

selsinork wrote:

 

... As everyone keeps pointing out there's plenty of other boards out there, but none seem to be gaining the necessary momentum.

 

How much of the success of the R-Pi is down to aiming low to begin with and praying that the interest will be there ?

I think the success of RasPi is the US$25 price.  "A computer for $25?  You've got to be kidding!"  And yes, they are kidding because you can't get the $25 unit, only the warmer $35 version.  Oh, and that doesn't include a case or compatible power supply or mass storage or monitor or cables or keyboard or mouse or any of the other gewgaws you expect to have with a computer -- but you already had those, right?  So there's a big red asterisk beside that "An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25" slogan.  Must be a new meaning of the word "box" I'm not familiar with.

[I'm not complaining.  I knew exactly what I was getting when I ordered a RasPi and it's a great board for the price.  But having grown up reading MAD Magazine I dislike misleading marketing.  "An ad that's bad gets spoofed in MAD."]

Anyway, the US$25 price point gets you interested.  When BeagleBoard came out in 2008, the US$150 price point was terrific for a tiny GNU/Linux capable development board, especially compared to the US$800 (IIRC) full-size board you could get from TI.  But as Morgaine has pointed out, US$35 buys you a good dinner with shipping paying for the tip.  The risk in buying a RasPi and discovering that it's useless for your needs is pretty low.  And US$35 is usually below the level requiring spousal approval.

I imagine that the RPF is flabbergasted by the level of interest -- in a world where desktops are dominated by Windows and most consumer computers are closed consumption devices, who could imagine that you could sell 1 million uncased boards for which you have to download the operating system yourself and transfer it to an SD card.  I'm flabbergasted by the level of interest as well -- the idea that millions are becoming GNU/Lunix users is terrific and helps the future of computing.

at least you find out that the advertized $25 price isn't real before you

commit to the purchase.   Only later do you find out that your keyboard

doesn't work, or your SD card, or your power supply, or your usb hub,

or your wifi dongle, or your mpeg-2 TV tuner, etc.   And only after getting

everything to work do you find out the performance issues, that the hyped

GPU isn't used for X acceleration, that the SD cards run slow, that the

cpu overhead for USB interrupts is 20% at idle, the L2 cache isn't attached

to the cpu, etc.  And then you find out about the intermittent problems,

such as usb packet loss, SD card corruption, audio pops, failure to boot

after working fine for a week, etc.

All the front-page blog stories are happy stories, the sad stories are

in the discussion forums, and the media hasn't picked up on them yet.

I think it's interesting that half (10 of 19 by my count) of next month's

magpi interview questions have to do with hardware fixes.  So that's

clearly on people's minds.  We'll see if they actually answer those,

or just dodge them like they've been doing so far.

http://issuu.com/themagpi/docs/the_magpi_issue4_draft

John Beetem wrote:

 

I think the success of RasPi is the US$25 price.  "A computer for $25?  You've got to be kidding!"  And yes, they are kidding because you can't get the $25 unit, only the warmer $35 version. 

That's the sum total of it, it's all about price perception, and perception management which is a polite way of saying "lying".  RPF are good at it, and this seems to be why they don't like people messing them around with reasoned factual discussions.  It gets in the way of spin.

Any competitor will have to live with the same magic price point though, $25, that's the key to mass adoption.

Oh, and that doesn't include a case or compatible power supply or mass storage or monitor or cables or keyboard or mouse or any of the other gewgaws you expect to have with a computer -- but you already had those, right?

Oh it wouldn't do to point out that after buying an SD card and several USB chargers to find one that works with Pi, your total investment could be higher than for BeagleBone which comes with a 4GB micro-SD card in the box and takes +5V from a generic barrel connector with proper power management so that everything "just works" without needing to play compatibility games.

BeagleBone and Pi aren't directly comparable because each has benefits that the other lacks, but comparing price and nothing else, I spent more to get a basic 4GB system running on Pi than on BeagleBone, so my bank manager could validly claim that the BeagleBone was cheaper.

It depends on what gear you happen to have around of course, but the "$25" tag is creative marketing that verges on deceitful because that expenditure alone doesn't give you a bootable system.

Morgaine.

John Beetem wrote:

 

I think the success of RasPi is the US$25 price.  "A computer for $25?  You've got to be kidding!"  And yes, they are kidding because you can't get the $25 unit, only the warmer $35 version. 

That's the sum total of it, it's all about price perception, and perception management which is a polite way of saying "lying".  RPF are good at it, and this seems to be why they don't like people messing them around with reasoned factual discussions.  It gets in the way of spin.

Any competitor will have to live with the same magic price point though, $25, that's the key to mass adoption.

Oh, and that doesn't include a case or compatible power supply or mass storage or monitor or cables or keyboard or mouse or any of the other gewgaws you expect to have with a computer -- but you already had those, right?

Oh it wouldn't do to point out that after buying an SD card and several USB chargers to find one that works with Pi, your total investment could be higher than for BeagleBone which comes with a 4GB micro-SD card in the box and takes +5V from a generic barrel connector with proper power management so that everything "just works" without needing to play compatibility games.

BeagleBone and Pi aren't directly comparable because each has benefits that the other lacks, but comparing price and nothing else, I spent more to get a basic 4GB system running on Pi than on BeagleBone, so my bank manager could validly claim that the BeagleBone was cheaper.

It depends on what gear you happen to have around of course, but the "$25" tag is creative marketing that verges on deceitful because that expenditure alone doesn't give you a bootable system.

Morgaine.