On another note...

If suppliers do build customised versions for general resale, this could make supporting the platform more difficult.

With the limited number of versions out in the wild at present, it is much easier to make an assessment as to the devices capabilities and feature sets.

For example, if a tutorial is written for the (hypothetical) 12V GPIO tolerant Raspberry Pi, another user may find their standard Pi emitting the magic blue smoke.

Or:

P1: Why is my bluetooth not working? [Blurry Photo Attached]

P2: Because you don't have a Bluetooth dongle attached

P1: It's on-board

P2: Oh!, What bluetooth chipset is it

P1: I don't know...

etc... etc...

Paul, I suppose hopefully that if a company makes this kind of investment (that is anyway high) to resale its own branded and customised PI, they should include the internal costs to adapt the standard official documentation to the specific characteristics of their new product. Another lack of information missed is if there are and what are if any the limits for the customisation of the board. I think that as a company makes its own it's up to the company to give assistance and support and this is a PI-derivate model not supported by the technical PI crew.

Enrico

Enrico Miglino wrote:

 

I think that as a company makes its own it's up to the company to give assistance and support and this is a PI-derivate model not supported by the technical PI crew.

I agree, but I was thinking more along the lines of 3rd-party support, such as Element14 community members.

Ahhh ... This is true, so we should expect a rain of PI-aliens soon from hundreds of companies around the World asking to help their users to use their stuff

Yep!

I'm also interested to find out wether and how customised hardware would be supported in the official Raspberry Pi OS releases.

I would suspect that the "configure your pi" means that you get to leave out components. I don't think there will be re-layouting of the PCB. I don't think the "pi with bluetooth onboard" will happen under this programme.

Update: Hmmm. They do say "add stuff".... Still not sure if it will happen.

Woldff, I agree with you that probably they won't change the base PCB motherboard. First of all because it is too risky.

Instead, also adding components is not more difficult than remove. As a matter of fact I think they pose limits that we don't now yet, that dives the opportunity to have 3000+ devices for example including a LCD, with a different connector, with a specific board presoldered on it and so on.

Enrico

Enrico Miglino wrote:

 

Woldff, I agree with you that probably they won't change the base PCB motherboard. First of all because it is too risky.

There are two statements in the linked discussion that make me think otherwise:

Not so sure, Paul

They speak of Re-configure, that means leave untouched (or may mean so) and incorporating that means add parts over the PCB as well as change the PCB. But maybe they accept also PCB modifications ... It's only specualtion

Not so sure, Paul

They speak of Re-configure, that means leave untouched (or may mean so) and incorporating that means add parts over the PCB as well as change the PCB. But maybe they accept also PCB modifications ... It's only specualtion

The video of the press conference seemed fairly clear: They will redesign the board as needed to add whatever functionality the customer desires. That's why its a minimum of 3000 units.

I expect that there will be some fairly radical re-designs but the chances are that we will never see them as they will be propriety designs, kept exclusively for that customer.

@ Ted Mieske: That's not on the cards, all redesigns will feature the existing range of Pi SOCs.