USB discussions getting a bit heated

Those threads are terrible They downplay most of the problems people have encountered and add confusion.

But it's a timebomb waiting to go off...

I guess user Kernel sums it up pretty nicely http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12097&start=197

 

Frankly even though the Foundation people are not making profit on Raspi, I think it doesn't make them any less responsible for the quality of the device they designed and have been (indirectly) selling.

 

Regardless of the cause (software, power, design) of Pi's problems, they are frustrating to deal with and are likely to cause many to lose interest at some point (even children, or perhaps especially them).

 

Those threads are terrible They downplay most of the problems people have encountered and add confusion.

Thing is, the issues are complex. A lot of the confusion is being caused by people who mostly don't have a grasp of either the hardware or software problems.  Lets face it, with a usb IP block that nobody seems to have much information about, we're all in the dark and what makes it tick may as well be black magic

Still, at this point the Pi really is a development board - there's lots of development happening and various people working on fixing issues. Unfortunately due to all the hype there's lots of them landing in the hands of people who are used to a device that's been in development for years with budgets in the billions and expect everything to 'just work' instantly, instead they have a device that was designed to a strict budget with all the compromises that entails. This was bound to cause some friction.

I suspect the RPF was very much unprepared for the amount of destructive stress testing a couple of hundred thousand users can do in such a short time with devices that were never thought of during the design.

selsinork wrote:

 

I suspect the RPF was very much unprepared for the amount of destructive stress testing a couple of hundred thousand users can do in such a short time with devices that were never thought of during the design.

I think everyone would agree that the Foundation was unprepared.  The Pi doesn't work properly even with very common devices and very unambitious setups that work on all other systems tested.

It should be pointed out that this isn't a case of the community being over-demanding, and the complaints aren't coming from people intent on destructive stress testing.  They come from ordinary users who are expecting (shock horror!) that when they attach a common USB device and it is recognized by an available driver, that it should then work.

Morgaine.

selsinork wrote:

 

I suspect the RPF was very much unprepared for the amount of destructive stress testing a couple of hundred thousand users can do in such a short time with devices that were never thought of during the design.

I think everyone would agree that the Foundation was unprepared.  The Pi doesn't work properly even with very common devices and very unambitious setups that work on all other systems tested.

It should be pointed out that this isn't a case of the community being over-demanding, and the complaints aren't coming from people intent on destructive stress testing.  They come from ordinary users who are expecting (shock horror!) that when they attach a common USB device and it is recognized by an available driver, that it should then work.

Morgaine.

It should be pointed out that this isn't a case of the community being over-demanding, and the complaints aren't coming from people intent on destructive stress testing.  They come from ordinary users who are expecting (shock horror!) that when they attach a common USB device and it is recognized by an available driver, that it should then work.

and as any decent engineer knows, best way to test your device is to put it into the hands of those ordinary users.. Agreed that they're not deliberately going to do destructive stress testing, but often that's the result as they'll think of things to do with it and ways to use it that you didn't think of and never designed it to cope with.  Most stuff indended for consumer hands would go through many iterations of that before a general release. The Pi didn't, it has some issues. Surprise !

over-demanding ?  expecting random, even if common, untested devices to work ?  IMHO maybe some people are expecting too much, it's easy enough to find a common usb device where the manufacturer provides zero linux/mac support as he designed it for windows and there's either no community linux driver or a very poor one. Funnily enough those are usually usb wifi adaptors (or synopsis usb otg controllers)

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if all the Pi were recalled, to be replaced with an OlinuXino or Beagleboard. Would either of them fare differently in the hands of 300K+ ordinary users ?  I'm sure the issues would be different, but equally sure that someone would be complaining about something.

Hopefully if there ever is a Pi-v2.0 some lessons will have been learned from this time round on all sides. Not holding my breath on that one

selsinork wrote:

 

over-demanding ?  expecting random, even if common, untested devices to work ?

Yes, fully expected to work, if they're class-compliant USB devices.  That's why we have standards in this business, so that you don't have to test each device individually with each different brand of computer.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It should be pointed out that this isn't a case of the community being over-demanding, and the complaints aren't coming from people intent on destructive stress testing.  They come from ordinary users who are expecting (shock horror!) that when they attach a common USB device and it is recognized by an available driver, that it should then work.

JMO/YMMV: As far as I know, this is still the developer version of RasPi, so anyone who buys a RasPi should realize they're participating in a beta test and that problems will most likely occur (and recur due to regression) and they should help the community by reporting problems and work-arounds.  Part of the fun, n'est-ce pas?

From the forum comments at raspberrypi.org, it's clear that lots of people bought a RasPi without realizing it's a beta product.  I think it's fair to criticize the RasPowersThatBe for not having been more energetic about making this clear, but it can be hard to get the tech media to report tech accurately.  If they've got more than 50% right, you're in great shape.  The RasPTB may have just figured that "hey, we told you so, how can you imagine that an uncased board with no power supply could be anything other than beta?"

I would hope the USB issues get ironed out in time.  We'll see.  Maybe they'll end up with permanent beta software.

JMO/YMMV

selsinork wrote:

 

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if all the Pi were recalled, to be replaced with an OlinuXino or Beagleboard. Would either of them fare differently in the hands of 300K+ ordinary users ?  I'm sure the issues would be different, but equally sure that someone would be complaining about something.

 

Hopefully if there ever is a Pi-v2.0 some lessons will have been learned from this time round on all sides. Not holding my breath on that one

I don't have any experience with OlinuXino, but BeagleBoard would probably fare OK.  The hardware is now very stable, having gone through many improvements including bringing out the LCD control pins so you can use VGA or an LCD panel.  The early problems with OTG and the serial port were solved long ago, and there's a good wiki.  OTOH, I'm not sure how easy it is to downloads an OS.  Finding a blessed version of a RasPi OS is easy, and downloading it is straightforward.  BeagleBoard wasn't anywhere as easy the last time I looked into this.  I'd be happy to hear other opinions.

Regarding Pi-v2.0, I don't think the RasPowersThatBe are in any hurry to go through compliance testing again.  It takes a special kind of person to be willing to deal with that chore.

Wait for the A13 new one that is about to become available in September.

-J

After reading the interview on the last MagPi, I find now more difficult to understand what is the mission and the goal of RPF's besides being a self promotion for the Upton's, and a tax free shelter.

Claiming all the time "we are a charity", or "I'm the only full time employee" is 100% BS.

I was really surprised that they are not going to do anything related to produce educational materials.

They clearly demonstrated that can not manage and deliver on such a relatively complex endeavour as producing the R-pi board, their own arrogance transmitted to the clueless minions managing the blog and forum is awful.

Plus the lack of any system to seriously track and analyse problems, the lack of a decent knowledge base, compounded by the blindness that like it or not "sh1t happens."

I totally lost my confidence on anything coming out of RPF, I'm really sad because some of the people at Cambridge are good engineers and have a very interesting vision, but it seems that they no longer have much of a say against the Queen-of-Pi.

I already decided that I'll NOT recommend any of the local schools to get into this nightmare.

-J

It's experiences such as I've just described in a new thread about RF mice used with self-powered hubs that provide a perfect example of the Pi being a complete dog rather than a properly behaving computer.

This is so far from normal in the industry that engineers who aren't affected by the "Pi aura" must be staring in disbelief at what is going on here.  Any normal product exhibiting these faults would be withdrawn immediately from sale and existing units recalled, because it's pretty close to being a non-working product.

And yes, it is a PRODUCT, not a prototype --- people are paying for it, and therefore it is a commercial product by definition.  What's more, the BIS defined it as a consumer product in the UK when they explained why it required certification.

Of course the Pi hype won't permit normal engineering practice to be followed, because there would be too much egg on people's faces and too many plans spoiled.  It's too late, we will have to live with it.  But that doesn't mean that as engineers we should pretend that all is well or as expected.  It's not.  The Pi is faulty.

Morgaine.

Yes, fully expected to work, if they're class-compliant USB devices.  That's why we have standards in this business, so that you don't have to test each device individually with each different brand of computer.

There's an implicit assumption in there that the Pi is class-compliant or is following the standards. At this point, I'm not convinced that's a realistic expectation   It may end up that the Synopsis usb core in host mode just isn't ever going to work properly with linux. Nothing can be done about what's in the silicon today, regardess of what we think of the result, too late for that.  All we could ever hope for is that a Pi v2.0 uses something better. Either that or ditch the Pi and move to a different board altogether.

Yes, fully expected to work, if they're class-compliant USB devices.

Morgaine, you raise an interesting side issue here. How do I know my device or host is actually compliant ? 

Looking at http://www.usb.org/developers/compliance/ we can find some details of the various certification and compliance requirements. But I'm struggling to find any device that actually has the logo on it. Almost everything has the CE, FCC and equivalent logos, but I don't appear to own a single usb device that shows any of the usb compliance logos and like most people I have lots of usb things. The integrators list is closed, so I can't exactly look it up and even if it was open I likely couldn't lookup RPF or Broadcom, I'd need to know the exact detail of whatever Synopsis IP core was used.

So other than an assumption on my part that something with a plug that looks somewhat like a usb one will work, there's no simple way for me to know it's tested, is compliant, won't kill the thing I plug it into or burst into flames. (ok, CE probably ought to say it won't burst into flames, but same issue, how do I verify it actually meets whatever CE requirement ?)

IMHO, just because things mostly work doesn't mean you can expect them to work or that they're guaranteed to work. Even with the logo there's no guarantee, but it would at least give an indication they should generally be compliant with the standard and therefore they ought to interoperate.

However as your other thread on the Dynamode hub that has all the certified logos shows even the logos presence probably isn't good enough.

selsinork wrote:

 

So other than an assumption on my part that something with a plug that looks somewhat like a usb one will work, there's no simple way for me to know it's tested, is compliant, won't kill the thing I plug it into or burst into flames. (ok, CE probably ought to say it won't burst into flames, but same issue, how do I verify it actually meets whatever CE requirement ?)

Let's just hope that CE doesn't stand for caveat emptor

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any policing of compliance.  The actual manufacturers are often no-name entities in far-away places with no reputation to protect, so there's nothing to prevent them from trying to cut every corner they can get away with.  I ran into this last year when I was trying to get cheap HDMI cables to work with my BeagleBoard.  It turned out that the cable makers didn't bother to hook up the individual ground/shield lines in the HDMI connectors, relying instead on the outer shell and a common foil shield to do the job.  This works as long as the cable is short and HDMI shields at both ends are connected to circuit ground, so few people will notice that it's out of compilance.  The manufacturer saves a penny, and if they get caught nobody gets punished.

It's generally difficult or impossible to tell whether actual products bought these days are in compliance.  A lot of the time it doesn't matter because you don't use the product in a way that exposes the problem.