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Why the Raspberry Pi Won't Ship In Kit Form
An anonymous reader writes "A post at the Raspberry Pi blog shows an image containing the device's SoC and memory chip to help explain why the tiny PC won't ship in kit form. Clearly, the chips are so small, and the solder blobs required so tiny, that most people would mess up doing it by hand. Add to that the fact one chip has to sit on top of the other, and if you're a millimeter out, your chips are fried."
The post also addresses the use of closed source libraries for graphics acceleration.
People have been doing BGA in toaster ovens for a while now. I'm not saying I'd try it with stuff this size, but it is doable. http://www.die4laser.com/toaster/index.html
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
The only assumption I saw was that most folks would botch assembly due to the teeny smd tolerances.
So, anyone who does it successfully would achieve a rare accomplishment, through hard work, diligence, and skill.
I don't know why people would really want to.
You clearly aren't the target market for a kit form, then.
Seriously, though: the world is full of people who want to do difficult, unnecessary things. It is a human-being feature. All Raspberry Pi has to do is say "Kits are not covered by warranty, period."
I could mess up soldering a 0 gauge wire to a car battery terminal, but I should be free to do so and waste my own funds doing it!
Their business, their decision. Don't like it? Fine; design, manufacture, and market your own credit card sized PC kit, and/or don't purchase any Raspberry Pi products.
I swear, with all the real oppression going on in today's world, it's astounding the nonsense people come up with to bellyache about in the name of "freedom."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The fact that they won't deliver in kit isn't news*, it's more interesting to know that they have HW-accelerated versions of MPEG4 and H.264 (and only those), and that all these libraries are closed source.
Furthermore, claims that they have the fastest mobile GPU are fluff: we only have the subjective word of someone who worked on it, not a neutral 3rd party, and it'll be caught up by someone else soon anyhow.
Finally, I'm going to advance that any complaints about the nvidia binary driver are going to be small fry compared to Broadcom's drivers.
*it's just not possible to hand-solder BGA packages. At best you'd need a reflow oven, and *that's* still tricky with the sizes involved here.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592#comment-10077
Visit the
With today's electronics, MacGyver would just do it all in software.
I don't understand why people even want a raspberry pi at all. The apps on the itunes app store are cheap. Why ruin CS and IT to make it a little easier for people who want to write their own programs? Also it would take you hours of your own time to write and compile your own software.
Come on man, its a hobby. When a dude puts together a 1000 piece puzzle you don't pee all over it by claiming you can buy a poster of the same picture and thats a better choice because you don't have to put it together... That kind of misses the point.
The fun fun fun of kit assembly isn't in working a 16 hour shift assembling it with chinese music on pandora, eating a couple rice grains and some tea while wearing a political prisoner uniform, and pretending your boss beats you for not working hard enough. Unless you like that kind of stuff. Whatever floats your boat. Anyway the fun of kit building is kit bashing weird stuff from different eras to massively customize the project to what you want. Something I've been up to on the bench recently: I started with a fairly modern microwave local oscillator kit. Then I swapped out the crystal because I need to work on a different frequency for a completely different ham radio frequency band. Then I smooshed in a completely different voltage regulator circuit; ugly as heck but I don't care; I want/need to run off 24 volts instead of 12 volts (long story there). Didn't want to buy a modern MMIC amp for the board because I had some old 80s era tech mmics laying around so I redesigned the bias ckt for the correct voltage drop and forward current (exactly as complicated as lighting a LED, just stuck a different value resistor in; didn't wanna build a constant current supply, at least not this time). So far so good. Also added a stylish power LED so I can tell my regulator hasn't shut down from overheating..... yet.
I think it would be fun to completely redo the I/O on a raspberry pi, at least to begin with that is the most obvious thing to do. Also some stuff I simply don't care about, I would not solder on. Not gonna do the composite video thing, not gonna waste time soldering it on. Probably would rip out the audio stuff figure out how to directly wire a software defined radio directly to the board. If the first thing in the TX chain on the SDR is a giant attenuator, and the last thing on the Pi audio out is a high powered headphone amp, simplicate it and toss both replacing both ckt sections with a piece of wire. etc.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's not that hard to reflow parts. I do it all the time with a toaster oven; basically you turn it on to 200F for a couple of minutes to let the board's temperature equalize, then you crank it up to the maximum, and when it gets there, turn it off and crack open the door to let it cool down slowly.
The problem is that this only works with leaded solder. You need a hotter oven to reflow lead-free solder. But there's not really a good reason to use lead-free solder anyway, so I see it as a non-issue. It's mainly used because some stupid people are worried about kids eating it or something, causing dumb laws to be passed. Simple solution: don't eat your electronics. You don't eat drain cleaner (or let your kids eat it), yet drain cleaner is easily available and no one's banning that, so what's the problem with electronics?
You also don't absolutely need a paste stencil; there are kits available with paste in a syringe with needle; you just squirt a tiny amount onto each pad. Of course, this really doesn't work too well with BGA parts, only the larger-pitch parts and passives. BGA parts, however, shouldn't need any paste; they come with solder balls already installed on the bottom, so you just place them where they're supposed to go, and reflow. There's even reballing kits you can get; I think there was some big problem with Xboxes a while ago requiring this for many out-of-warranty units, and a small cottage industry sprang up with people reworking these boards at home, removing the chip, reballing it, and reflowing it in a toaster oven.
I work at a place that has pick-and-place machines to manufacture our stuff. But we don't do BGA yet because we don't have the X-ray equipment to confirm that the BGA was soldered properly. Sure, you can do this in a toaster oven (it's somewhere on sparkfun.com), but it's not even for experts, it's for completely crazy people.
I have a lot of experience soldering small packages and would not even bother attempting a BGA.
This isn't just about "soldering small packages", this is about stuff where you can't even get physical access to the places that need to be soldered. I've soldered some 0.5mm QFP stuff (with an 0.4mm tip and a flux pen), but it's not fun.
tl;dr for TFA: This ain't Heathkit, and Heathkit never put surface-mount stuff in their kits.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If you think it gets too much attention on Slashdot, don't read the article or post about it.
If you think it should be a kit, design a similar system and only sell it as a kit. The people behind the R. PI didn't just sit around and whine, they did something. Don't just complain about it.
If don't like the closed source drivers, then reverse engineer them yourself. Or get together with the people who want an kit and write their software. Do something beside bitching.
If you think that assembling a kit at this scale is easy, set up a web site that shows how it can be done. Sell a kit of supplies for the process. Don't just emit hot air.
You people act as if the motto of Slashdot was News for crybabies, Stuff that sucks
Why is Snark Required?
This works for 'mundane' chips.
Not so much for ones that are either hard-to-use.
Yes, you may be able to get samples. But only if you qualify as a vendor likely to buy _large_ quantities.
http://www.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12494&contentId=4711&DCMP=WTBU&HQS=PlatformGuide+PR+wilink_4 - for example.
Contains the boilerplate 'This product is intended for high-volume wireless OEMs and ODMs and is not available through distributors. If your company meets this description, please contact your TI sales office.' - and they mean it.
This is very, very common for higher performance more difficult to integrate chips, or ones aimed at certain markets.
In short - they don't particularly care about small designers, only about ones likely to build 100000 of them in. It takes more or less the same amount of product support to support a vendor making 100, as a million. Support is expensive.