Development effort on Pi's USB problems

Ugh.. depressing reading.  Light at the end of the tunnel is a good thing, but it's amazing the number of problems in external devices this is exposing - like cheap hubs with only one TT messing up audio.

The only thing for certain is that I'll never look at USB (in general, not specific to the Pi) in quite the same way again. 'Universal' takes on quite a different meaning...

selsinork wrote:.

 

The only thing for certain is that I'll never look at USB (in general, not specific to the Pi) in quite the same way again. 'Universal' takes on quite a different meaning...

USB is a black box that must forever remain black.  If it ever stops being black, the hordes of Mordor emerge through the opened portal and lay waste to humanity (and hobbits) while searching for the One True USB Frame.

Unfortunately in the Pi, the box isn't black.

The term "black box" is a bit misleading and I find it gets bandied about a bit too freely.

There may be some opacity in the encapsulation, but given a bright enough light (of the right frequency) then all will become visible. Whether or not you can actually touch the insides is the only issue - and it only really matters when the contents of the box don't work as they should anyway...

Sometimes people leave the box open because they know you'll need to get inside and poke about with a soldering iron because they've been too lazy and dim to finish the job properly themselves. And what's the practical difference between "closed" and "a million combinations of undocumented command line switches that only seem to make it worse"?

The Pi's USB thinger has been particularly troublesome, but it was predictable given the provenance of the SOC and the limited USB functionality of the box that originally used it. I maintain that if any blame is to be apportioned then then it is with the tech "journalists" (their term, not mine) that originally hyped it before it was even released and to a lesser extent with the Foundation for letting the hype get out of hand.

I guess that the thing with single board computers is that they're delightfully cheap, but only if everything works. At least with modular x86 if there was some fundamental disagreement between (and I'm showing my age now) an nforce2 motherboard's USB and your new piece of hardware then a £5 pci USB card with a VIA chip would doubtless sort it. There is no such recourse with credit card sized computers and you have to hope that the manufacturer sorts it in software before your throwaway computer reaches obsolescence..

Or if it's all open then you can spend a year of your life fixing it yourself while the people that sold it to you are sipping cocktails somewhere...

I guess it all comes down to buying the most suitable (in engineering terms) part in the first place.

I guess it all comes down to buying the most suitable (in engineering terms) part in the first place.

You are correct, however the end user may not be aware of those issues at purchase time.

Myself and a collegue both have RPi and use a wireless keyboard and mouse.

We thought we had faulty Logitech devices due to the random stuck keys, wrong keys, etc, but they work elsewhere, and are very strange.

It turns out the USB might be the problem.

It won't change our minds about buying/using RPi but isn't something the average user would necessarily know about, until they got sick of replacing hardware.

(it sounds like one of our systems where the optical mice kept getting blamed)

Thanks for the update Morgaine

I did note how the overlord decided the minion's form of punishment wasn't enough. ...scary

Mark

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

I guess it all comes down to buying the most suitable (in engineering terms) part in the first place.

You are correct, however the end user may not be aware of those issues at purchase time.

 

Which is why it's up to all of us to make sure that e.g. the lazy and feckless technical press start writing about the here and now rather than just dreaming about some imaginary point in the future. When was the last time you saw a roadtest that went past a "deboxing" video, for instance? And whatever happened to "it's thirty quid, so it's quite possibly going to suck really badly" style pragmatism?

Hope you get your issues sorted out btw.

rather than just dreaming about some imaginary point in the future

Jonathon

You are quite right.

I've done the odd review of Arduino books for the magazine I send words to (the editor makes them into an article), and try to give a reasonable view on who it suits, would I buy it, etc.

Unless you're like the UK Top Gear team where absolute truth is a marketing advantage, many times the end result of reviews isn't as honest as it could be.

For products it may also take a lot more in depth probing that can take far longer than the deadlines available ...however that only lasts for the intial launch.

Whether telling people the problems afterwards sells copy is another thing.

Publishers tend to like repeat business, and the advertising executives tend to see the glass half full, so honesty probably isn't the highest on the list.

When was the last time you saw a roadtest that went past a "deboxing" video, for instance?

Funny I have something sent to me to do an unboxing video.

Personally they don't interest me in deciding to buy the product or how useful it is.

If I was a company looking to stock/puchase them then I might be slightly interested, but for reasons other than its function.

Hope you get your issues sorted out btw.

Thanks for the kindness.

Its not a huge issue, and is more of a nuisance that we can live with.

Mark

rather than just dreaming about some imaginary point in the future

Jonathon

You are quite right.

I've done the odd review of Arduino books for the magazine I send words to (the editor makes them into an article), and try to give a reasonable view on who it suits, would I buy it, etc.

Unless you're like the UK Top Gear team where absolute truth is a marketing advantage, many times the end result of reviews isn't as honest as it could be.

For products it may also take a lot more in depth probing that can take far longer than the deadlines available ...however that only lasts for the intial launch.

Whether telling people the problems afterwards sells copy is another thing.

Publishers tend to like repeat business, and the advertising executives tend to see the glass half full, so honesty probably isn't the highest on the list.

When was the last time you saw a roadtest that went past a "deboxing" video, for instance?

Funny I have something sent to me to do an unboxing video.

Personally they don't interest me in deciding to buy the product or how useful it is.

If I was a company looking to stock/puchase them then I might be slightly interested, but for reasons other than its function.

Hope you get your issues sorted out btw.

Thanks for the kindness.

Its not a huge issue, and is more of a nuisance that we can live with.

Mark