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.

Comments

The response from the RPi forum

[AdamHaun]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592#comment-10077

liz on January 31, 2012 at 9:17 pm said:
Indeed – we have to use an x-ray machine with microscopy to ensure all the pads are connected properly. And NOBODY has one of those at home.

This post has just been Slashdotted. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/31/203229/why-the-raspberry-pi-wont-ship-in-kit-form Plenty of commenters there appear downright insulted that we don’t think they’ve got ovens, masks, and an x-ray machine at home, along with the dexterity of a TINY TINY PIXIE. (They don’t have any of those things, but they’re still insulted.) Sometimes I really hate Slashdot.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[vlm]

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.

Stop whining

[Required Snark]

If you don't care about the Raspberry PI, don't read the article or post about it.

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