Raspberry Pi 3 Model B GPIO 40 Pin Block Pinout

I agree. It is quite moving that Element14's entire team, and Farnell/Newark, clem57 and others in the community do such a fantastic job supporting as best as they can, and get people up-to-speed on the Pi's to spread the knowledge, and quite sad that it is not helped when BCM/RPF do not publish information that we normally rely on for other such products. We should highlight the lack of specs/support/community spirit from RPF/BCM if we believe it not present. Despite the lack of help from them, there are hundreds of great projects originated (and documented) by this community (see the Raspberry Pi projects section), and great support from Clem and others.

clem57

I fully realize that you are not responsible for the RPi's deficient docs. And I thanked you earlier for your contribution to try to fill in the blank.

You seem to think I'm criticizing you and others on the forum, which is certainly not my intent. I assume you're all volunteers.

To your point: It hardly requires a life-and-death situation to need the elementary specs that I'm talking about here. This is just digital electronics 101. 

This forum is on element14, a vendor which sells probably 100's of thousands of digital chip products, virtually all of them providing exactly the specs I mention, because these are the basic data needed to carry out responsibly the task of interconnecting them.

So I think a few remarks criticizing the lack of such specs for RPi are entirely in bounds.  And again, I see that you are trying valiantly to fill the gap, which you are understandably unable to do authoritatively, because apparently Broadcomm or RPF aren't releasing the essential I/O parameters.

Graham

gwideman

     Let get real here. We are trying to help people who want some knowledge. We are not the folks who controls the hardware/software design. I would rather impart some knowledge and get some things wrong. But you are coming off on another plane. Don't beat the rock or your chest about this. I cannot believe you are in a life and death situation (which then you cannot use this!). I declared equivalent not exact. Take it for what it is worth. Please complain to those who can do something not us.

My final word,

Clem

shabaz Thanks for your comments, regarding the technical topics and larger context/history.

There's no good IP reason to withhold that info, and without it, there's no way to engage these boards using even the basic tools of EE. 

Your earlier comment that the I/Os are "LVTTL" is helpful, but reports like this from you and others only tell experience with some samples, and don't illuminate the SoC's designed limits or guarantees. (I realize: choir, converted etc!) Also it disagrees with Gert's flawed scribd doc, and may or may not agree with mosaic's GPIO Electrical Specifications, Raspberry Pi Input and Output Pin Voltage and Current Capability. Absolutely needless and stupid confusion.

Worse yet, given the RPF's supposed educational mission, it conveys to naive users the anti-educational message that the best they can do in the realm of actually understanding electrical aspects of RPi is randomly plug things together and sometimes they'll work, and sometimes not. 

Ridiculous.

You know, I don't even understand what the big deal is about releasing the schematics. It's not like they performed some engineering miracle, they put a microprocessor on a board and hooked it up. Just like every other manufacturer. Hardkernel releases full schematics of their boards, maybe not on launch day, but soon after. It's not like anyone can get the broadcom processors to make clones anyway. When you release a tinkerer's board you need to expect people want to know this stuff.

Idk,

Mike