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Raspberry Pi PCB Layout Revealed
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, the final Raspberry Pi printed circuit board (PCB) layout was revealed. The word 'packed' comes to mind as this is one very complicated looking board. The reason for that is just how much Raspberry Pi has strived to save money on the machine by using complex routing to keep things small and cheap. The Raspberry Pi team don't believe the design is going to change again unless they missed something. With that in mind, they revealed the final board is exactly the same size as a credit card, measuring 85.65 x 53.98mm."
How am I going to use this computer without a screen and keyboard?
I demand a credit card sized keyboard and screen!
Huh? What's complicated about that board? Looks pretty normal.
ARM11, specifically ARM1176JZF-S 700-megahertz which is a component of the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC.
While it's cool that they got the cost so low I'm kind of sad to see all those SMC's, kids today can't get into building electronics because so much stuff has gone to stuff that you just can't solder by hand. Yes, I know you can still use microcontrollers with breadboards, which is cool if you want to make a simple robot, but stuff like building your own computer that you can hook up to your TV and use like any other computer would be very cool as well.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
At first glance, this looks like a normal routing with a 4-layer board. Eventually 6, if you add proper ground + power.
There's nothing indicative of PCB parameters, like drill sizes, clearances, blind/buried vias, minimum trace width, so on. Again, a simple look reveals nothing but common parameters for PCB.
Again, TFA is biased.
Penguins and Altoids tins happen to be about that size as well... I wonder how well a populated Pi will fit... if so, awesome little PC cases!
I'm fine with this. R-Pi is worth it.
This could make a pretty big change for computing hardware and software learning.
Too much is done on overbloated hardware where you aren't even exposed to said hardware.
Most people in computing don't even understand the very basics of yester-2-decades-agos knowledge.
The most they touch on it sometimes is throwing together things in Java, if they are lucky.
It's all fine and well if you can do X on a really powerful computer, but being forced to do it and have noticeable slowdown or inefficiency in code by not doing it is a HUGE difference.
Having limits forced on to you in order to design efficient code is the best way to design said code.
But most developers these days are absolutely atrocious at their work, abusing the hell out of hard drives, flooding your RAM and page files with crap all over the place because they feel that their program has more worth than another persons program.
Worse when they do all that AND LAG LIKE HELL. (STEAM! DAMN IT VALVE FIX THAT CRAP ALREADY)
PEOPLE. MULTITASK.
I'm hopeful for the next generation of developers actually having an education on this, as well as possibly other similar boards. (admittedly a little on the expensive side in comparison)
So many lost techniques with all this high-level abstracted knowledge.
It's like building the frame of a car without the body. Sure, people could push it, people could pull it, hell, they could roll it down a hill. Still doesn't work efficiently.
Really, it's not. I do stuff like this every day. It looks pretty normal for a 4-6 layer board with a BGA or two on it. TFA needs to learn about what modern design standards are. It's only complicated if you still lay boards out with ruby tape or a sharpie.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
1080p30 using h.264 is the top specification.
While I'm with you on this on many levels (remember building things with the 4000 series? Yeah, we don't do that anymore. Haven't since PICs. We just write some code that does the job much better), I wouldn't say that kids can't get into it anymore.
SparkFun, for example, regularly organizes PTH and SMD soldering classes as well as offering kits for both. Some SMD you can solder by hand quite easily, others you can get a nifty breakout board that lets you easily seat the SMD IC and melt solder up to its leads ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-32orELxkpE ), and yet others you get some solder paste, a syringe or a toothpick (seems popular), put the paste on the pads or dip the leads in the paste, put the part on the PCB, and then stick it all into your toaster oven.. or on a skillet.
Of course for most kids, just playing with e.g. Arduino and some shields/sensors is going to be a great way to get into electronics in the first place.. then when they need something that's not on the market they can explore PCB design, soldering, etc.
Why not? The CMOS 4000 series and TTL 74xx series is still around, even in the various combinations (74HCxx CMOS, 74HS, etc). They're still availble from Digikey and the like, and many designs actually use them still.
Slashdot has become an RSS feed for the Raspberry Pi blog
Yes, how dare a site that claims to be 'news of nerds' cover a project to build a cheap computer designed to be interesting for school-aged nerds to play with? I demand more Apple stories, and political news!
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...and yet, just like the OpenMoko FreeRunner (giant opaque SMedia Glamo blob meant 2d VESA grade graphics only) and the OLPC XO-1 (giant opaque Marvell blob meant the whole WiFi subsystem and "mesh-while asleep" was all a black box and driver couldn't be troubleshot) , all the software is "open" yet obfuscated
The entire Raspberry Pi depends on a gigantic proprietary blob from Broadcom.
Hmm. Google search came up with this deviantart for "Raspberry Blob", maybe this can be the project's mascot. Hooray for undocumented blobs, we don't need source code, maybe we'll get Windows CE for it someday!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
a perfectly cromulent word
That's what Arduino shields are for.
It would be rather difficult to make any GHz computer board these days using parts that a person could solder by hand. That's the price we pay for having $100 GHz computers.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Y'know...being candid, I'm barely interested in Raspberry Pi at all...but this is definitely of note for the target audience for Slashdot, or what Slashdot used to be in the late 90s when I first started reading it. Much better than some of the really worthless ask slashdot questions that get through, for instance.
Most of those questions are answered in the comment thread on the article. No individual layers released until their PCB designer gets back. The picture shown does not include power or ground planes, so the missing ground is likely hidden. The connectors being used will require some through-hole components. The GPIO headers will be on the final release, but unpopulated.
The biggest omission to my mind is the lack of mounting holes or other fixtures. (I'm not sure where you see "plenty of empty space". Even getting screw holes to fit would require some thought, it seems to me.) The screenshot was also pretty useless for determining the exact mechanical placement and dimensions of the connectors, which is the only important thing for those designing cases. Someone in the comment thread did mark and label the rough outlines of the connectors, though. The connector placement also seems not at all designed for usability, or with any thought to future case design but purely to make the cheapest possible board.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I think the biggest thing that can come out of this project (especially if more like it come around) is the fact that the hardware is too cheap to run a non-free OS on it. Now sure, to make it into a full computer you have to add a monitor, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, storage (not sure if it comes with flash built in or if it needs a SD card to boot from), and and Internet connection. But most people are going to see the $25 price (assuming something like this ever gets retail) and pick one up. The netbooks almost made this happen (since they were Linux only when they first came out -- until Microsoft cut a deal for Windows XP). Only thing is, would the typical user be using a Debian based (or similar) distro, or would they be using a version of Android?
The only thing I think that would make this more useful is if they added another, say, $30 or so to the price and added a calculator screen / keypad to it (and battery/charging circuitry). Since most high school kids need a $100 graphing calculator, one that transforms into full workstation when plugged into a monitor/keyboard would be great. Of course the schools probably would never allow the use of an "open" calculator on exams (but then again, most high school level exams only need a simple scientific calculator -- or a slide rule).
You talk as though the Pi is feeble. It's a staggeringly powerful computer. Better than a workstation of a few years ago or a supercomputer of a few decades ago. You know, the kinds of things they used to design jet aircraft, run accounts for multi-national corporations, invent nuclear weapons, plan space missions, develop models of the universe and stuff. We're just accustomed to almost unbelievably powerful computers.
If you want someone to learn how to code efficiently give them an 8-bit microcontroller, not a 32-bit one-point-something GHz CPU with hundreds of MB of RAM.
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