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

Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like the assumptions they're making.

Re:Assumptions

[s0litaire]

which are???

Please enlighten us mere mortals....

Re:Assumptions

[SomePgmr]

The only assumption I saw was that most folks would botch assembly due to the teeny smd tolerances. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I don't know a lot of people with reflow ovens or hands that steady. And at $25 & $35 for the assembled models, I don't know why people would really want to.

Re:Assumptions

[Suki I]

I don't like the assumptions they're making.

Ditto! 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!

Re:Assumptions

[Fned]

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."

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom? Why do the most idiotic Americans always bring up liberty in every goddamn discussion?

Go ahead. Buy one, take it apart and do a worse job putting it back together. Who's stopping you?

If they don't want a bunch of yahoos buying kits, screwing up, and then complaining they deserve a refund for a "bad product", that's their fucking right.

The good folks at R.P. are free to run their charity as they like and to tell you and your moronic ideas to piss off.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead. Buy one, take it apart and do a worse job putting it back together. Who's stopping you?

For many neat electronic devices, US law.

Re:Assumptions

[CanHasDIY]

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."

Re:Assumptions

[viperidaenz]

It would probably cost more to package the components for a kit than to assemble the thing anyway, so your kit would not only cost more, it would probably never work anyway.

Your reflow oven would need the correct temperature profile, you'd need a solder paste stencil, you'd also need fresh solder paste of the correct type - because it has an expiry date and should also be kept refrigerated.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

So, anyone who does it successfully would achieve a rare accomplishment, through hard work, diligence, and skill.

And for those ten to twenty people out there? The phrase I'm looking for is "not a significant market".

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

The kind of person who can solder BGA are also usually the kind of people who can acquire parts and produce PCBs.

Re:Assumptions

[Beardo the Bearded]

If you've got the tools to do it, just buy the pre-assembled system and remove the solder. (Heat-gun soldering stations usually come with a removal gun as well.)

Voila, you've got your kit.

Now put it back together. Now you've done not just one, but TWO difficult, unnecessary things.

I worked with one woman who was a brilliant solderer. Production put a part upside down and she was able to solder it on so it worked. (For firmware development, bought me two weeks of dev time.) It was a QF44 PIC, I was astonished when I saw it.

Re:Assumptions

[Austerity Empowers]

No the assumption is that you don't have the capacity to solder a BGA at home. You don't do this with a soldering iron, you do it in an oven, and you have to place the part precisely enough that it can self orient. I have heard of hobbiests doing this chip-to-pcb with larger pitched BGAs, but not fine pitch, and not chip to chip. I just don't think this is a good use of time or money, considering you will probably break a few.

But if you really want to do it, the gerbers are out there. There are lots of cheap board fabs, use one of them, then just go acquire the parts from digikey.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

They might as well include one of these in the deal too, for people who like to do pointless and unnecessary things:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterme/3428170/

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all bullshit reasoning anyway. Instead of BSing (and insulting potential customers in the process) they should just say they do not want to supply kits. Simple really

Re:Assumptions

[sjames]

Since it's an open design, the few who REALLY want to do that even though it will cost more than a pre-built unit (due to packaging etc) can probably get together and order the needed parts.

As it is, they appear to be doing a find job getting the pre-assembled form designed and built now, they likely have their hands full.

Re:Assumptions

[TheGratefulNet]

whenver I see a chip upside down, dead-bug style, and wires coming out going to the board below, I grin. I've been there, so I can grin...

Re:Assumptions

[Nimey]

#firstworldproblems
#whitewhine

Re:Assumptions

[Maddog Batty]

44pin Quad Flat Pack are trivial to remove and replace with the right tools - which basically means a hot air gun with the small nozzle. A couple of weeks ago I removed and replaced two 144 pin quad flat pack devices with 0.6mm pitch legs in about 10 mins. It isn't something I want to do for production boards but it is fine for the development boards I was using.

Screen printing solder using solder masks + ovens are easily within the hobbiest market now. You can get a custom PCB + solder stencil made for £40 (100mm^2) and I use a £50 oven to melt the solder. Gives good results too (though I still do the sub 1mm pitch pins by hand as I get too many shorts otherwise).

I've not attempted BGAs as I could see that the success rate might not be too high.

Re:Assumptions

[interval1066]

Did you see the illustration in the article? The two main chip packages are pictured on the end of a guy's index finger. Sure, people like to difficult things, but come on! If you're not using the proper ($20,000 +) machine tools you're rate of failure is going to be +/- 90%... just buy the production package, for your own sanity man.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell you what, I'll buy one, desolder all the chips, put it all in a bag and ship it to you for $50. Then you can have fun putting it back together. :)

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

We can have competition: how many times you can desolder/solder the yoke before it stops to work?
Extra points if you use only one hand ... and don't tell me what are you are doing with the other one.

Re:Assumptions

[queazocotal]

You can't actually buy the components involved in small (under 10000) quantities.
In addition, desoldering and attempting to re-ball BGAs is not a good idea.

I'm one of the ones that requested a 'kit' - of the major components - I don't care about the tiny components, those are easy to source.

Why?

Several reasons.
Amongst them:
Because I can (maybe).
Because the r-pi is annoyingly large for some use-cases.
Because being able to trim the design to have just the required bits on can be useful.

Fundamentally - this is about education. Not software, but hardware education.
Fostering a community of interested hardware engineers.

It's a lot easier for many people if in addition to the problems of actually physically constructing the board, (not the actual making the PCB, only insane people would try that), they don't have to do any significant software work to get the board up and working.

Re:Assumptions

[queazocotal]

The chips are not available from digikey, only directly from broadcom, in large numbers.(tens of thousands)

Re:Assumptions

[RaySnake]

Well unfortunately the Broadcom SoC used in this is only available to official Broadcom partners. So no, the typical person who wants to do this CAN'T acquire the parts.

Re:Assumptions

[SpaghettiPattern]

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."

In my class I probably was the best at designing PCBs and at soldering and I must disagree with you. Times have changed -and I'm also getting older- and I find it hard to sensibly compete -even as a hobbyist- with mechanical, industrial level soldering, which is what the Raspberry hopefully meets. Also, trying and failing is probably less of a nuisance than trying, nearly succeeding and winding up with weird situations because of soldering issues. Spoke as a tinkerer.

Re:Assumptions

[symbolset]

Everything is sold in kit form. Just packaged in a convenient form for kit testing. Just put it in your toaster oven and the components fall right back apart for your assembly challenge. I've soldered some of these tiny components before. You'll want to lay off the coffee for a few days prior.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

You can't actually buy the components involved in small (under 10000) quantities.

Citation needed.

You can get prototype quantities of any electronic part out there. It might be expensive, though sometimes you can get mfgrs to send you samples for free, but how do you think design engineers test their designs?

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You don't think the bad publicity they might get if lots of people report "I bought a kit and it failed" is a sufficient reason for them to refuse?

Re:Assumptions

[Space cowboy]

That's just not true. It's relatively trivial to solder even BGA parts with an oven (and a $50 "toaster oven" qualifies. Just don't use the same oven for food...)

Here's how I do it:

• Get the PCB manufactured - I usually use Dorkbot pdx because it's (a) cheap and (b) good. It's also pretty fast (9 days) so there goes that saying...
• On your PCB, put some solder points for capacitors that can be used to make a top-left and bottom-right corner, so that the inside edge is lined up with the printed outline of the BGA part
• Before placing the BGA, make those corners with a couple of 0805 capacitors, so that the BGA has nowhere to move to when you place it in the oven. These caps are literally fractions of a cent each, so buy 100 for $0.40 and just use them as throwaways.
• Solder the caps by tinning one of the pads first, then place the cap where you want, re-melt the tinned pad's solder, and the cap will be easy to position where you want. Optionally solder the other end (since this isn't a "real" capacitor)
• That's it. Perfect results every time.

Handling these tiny parts (0603 / 0.5mm BGA is as low as I go) is trivial if you get a pair of these. They look as dorky as you could ever hope to not appear, but they really (*really*) work well. At going-on 45 my vision just isn't up to placing 0805 / 0603 by hand any more, but these things really help line things up perfectly.

Also, get non-metallic tweezers, and a well-lit area :)

Simon

Re:Assumptions

[Beardo the Bearded]

Double extra points if you're wanking with that other hand.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

> Since it's an open design

Nope. Show me the link to the design docs.

And the SoC? Don't even think of asking. The documents are not for distribution.

Re:Assumptions

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yes, it would be trivial to solder on normally.

Production had the pin order flipped, so the chip had to be soldered upside down.

Re:Assumptions

[torgis]

Yes, it would be trivial to solder on normally.

Production had the pin order flipped, so the chip had to be soldered upside down.

Oh yeah? Reminds me of when I used to solder QF44 PICs upside down, uphill, in the snow, both ways. :)

Seriously, some people are just hard to impress and feel the need to one-up no matter what.

Re:Assumptions

[ColdWetDog]

Here's how I do it:

Order the damn Raspberry PI board.

I win!

Re:Assumptions

[ColdWetDog]

The chips are not available from digikey, only directly from broadcom, in large numbers.(tens of thousands)

Well, given the fact that you'll waste a few getting your technique up, probably not such a big issue. Besides, once you get them put together, you'll want to give one to everyone on your Christmas list!

Re:Assumptions

[allanw]

Since the raspberry pi itself is pretty cheap, they could just desolder one off a working board.

Re:Assumptions

[Space cowboy]

[sigh] I have no intention of getting a Raspberry PI board. I was talking in general terms.

Enjoy your "win"...

Simon.

Re:Assumptions

[viperidaenz]

Have you ever reflowed a BGA package that sits on top of another BGA package, with 0.3mm pitch? It wasn't stuck down a tiny vibration moving it in to your toaster oven could mis-align it.

Re:Assumptions

[queazocotal]

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.

Re:Assumptions

[queazocotal]

The chips are rated for one thermal cycle.
Doing multiple ones is beyond the manufacturers recommendations.
In addition, you have to replace the 'balls' on the BGA after you desolder it, and you end up with a part that's - probably - going to work.

It will never be as likely to solder on without errors as the original part was.

Re:Assumptions

[symbolset]

Well I'll give him that it's an interesting challenge akin to building a ship in a bottle or painting on a grain of rice. I might give it a go, in a year or two if I have a few spares of this laying around and that much spare time. But at $35, it's cheaper than a kit would be so I would depopulate the components myself. After taking very hi rez photos of course. But the smaller components are really tiny. Just a faint breath will blow them away. And at this scale everything is incredibly sticky so it can be frustrating.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

I see. Thanks for the link. I haven't had to work with chips like that.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get samples of this chip unless you can commit to buy at least 1 million chips a year. Broadcom won't even let you see the datasheet.

The only reason this thing is happening is that at least one of the devs on this works for Broadcom and is smuggling the chips out in his lunchbox~

Re:Assumptions

[allanw]

Ah, you're right. Reballing can be annoying but the people in China do it all the time, somewhat reliably. No telling what effect the PoP will have though.

Re:Assumptions

[sjames]

Well, lets see, the gerbers, schematics and BOM are all out there. Were you hoping to fab the SOC yourself in the kitchen from sand too?

Re:Assumptions

[limaxray]

This is totally incorrect. You only need an oven, stencil, and fresh solder paste if you're doing large quantities of boards. Doing small quantities of boards by hand is fairly easy with some practice. All you need is a syringe with SP, a basic ($100) soldering station, a cheap ($100) hot air rework station, some solder wick, and a flux pen and you can solder just about anything.

I can comfortably and reliably solder parts down to 0.5mm pitch using these tools and I do it all the time with great success. I actually think it is easier than stuffing through-hole parts and generally try to stick with SMDs in my designs. And the smaller the better.

I have a big ass cartridge of Kester No-Clean 63/37 paste that has been sitting in the bottom of my refrigerator for the past year and a half. I fill syringes with it and it still worked just fine the other day. I often need to touch up some of the finer pitched parts by hand, but that isn't much of a problem in small quantities. Having to hand solder a few thousand boards wouldn't be acceptable, and that's where you need that oven, stencil, and fresh SP.

Would I want a kit of the Pi? Probably not. While I enjoy stuffing PCBs and find it quite relaxing, a good chunk of that enjoyment comes from it being my own design and having to do my own programming and troubleshooting to get it to work. The point is I think the suggestion that SMD assembly is outside the reach of hobbyists is total ignorant bullshit.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Leaded solder is illegal for use in consumer electronics in the EU (still available for hobbyists though) largely because of the pollution involved in recycling the stuff. Which is ironic, as it's largely responsible for reducing the lifespan of electronic goods to about 3 years before the solder gets too brittle and cracks, and the massive increase in electronic waste this has caused.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. I have read there's some applications where it's actually better because of the higher heat necessary (i.e. high-heat applications), and that some formulations of lead-free solder don't have the embrittlement problem as bad. The other problem is that, without lead, the lead-free solder grows "tin whiskers", which cause a lot of failures. These can be mitigated though by using a conformal coating, but that adds a lot of cost and also makes repairs difficult or impossible. Most consumer electronics don't worry about this, though, because it takes several years for problems to occur, and by that time the warranty's over, so they expect you to pitch it and buy a new one. So much for reducing waste....

If they want to deal with the pollution involved in recycling, the answer is simple: get people to properly dispose of electronics (like we do with other recyclables), and then develop a recycling process which safely handles the materials. There's a lot of valuable metals in electronics; it shouldn't be that hard to grind them up and melt them down, separating the gold, lead, tin, and copper out. In a properly-designed facility sealed from the atmosphere, this should be perfectly safe and clean.

Re:Assumptions

[gmhowell]

Freedom? Why do the most idiotic Americans always bring up liberty in every goddamn discussion?

Because so many of our ancestors were enslaved and murdered by the ancestors of self-righteous Europeans, especially when American ancestors tried to get a few liberties.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok... Do it by hand with a Package-on-Package configuration. Best of luck.

Re:Assumptions

[adolf]

I tried to reflow an Xbox once, using the electric skillet and heat gun method. Things were looking good, and then I heard the world's quietest -clink- as a tiny, flea-sized capacitor fell off of the bottom of the board I was working on.

I've got a steady hand, but there was no way I was ever going to get that cap reinstalled without it disappearing in a puff of smoke.

How to successfully and predictably accomplish the task of melting solder on only one side of a board with components on both sides is a mystery to me.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

SMD capacitors are pretty to solder with a proper iron and conical tip. A lot easier than most multipin packages (esp. the fine-pitch ones).

For double-sided boards, it's not that hard. You solder the bottom side first, and then as long as all the components on the bottom side are small, the surface tension of the solder holds them on when you solder the top side. The board can't be jostled, however, as they can fall off. For larger components, you have to use adhesive to hold them on; the large-volume places have a machine that places a drop of adhesive under each chip or other large component to hold it in place when it's inverted.

I'd say the electric skillet method sounds like the wrong method to use for double-sided boards, since the idea is that you're relying on surface contact between the board and the skillet to heat up the board, and that isn't possible if there's components already on the backside; I've heard of people doing them in toaster ovens, by clipping binder clips to each side to hold the board up off the rack and not touching anything while it's hot.

Re:Assumptions

[hairyfeet]

Well the answer is simple, if you want those chips and would have the skills to actually assemble the thing desoldering it shouldn't be a problem. Oh and for those that do like to DIY, may i make a suggestion? Try BGMicro they have good prices and great service. I have an engineering buddy that does a lot of robotics design work for the local college and he's been going there for years, has nothing but good things to say about them. be sure to sign up for the emails as they have some pretty good email only sales.

Re:Assumptions

[currently_awake]

The board pattern and parts list is publicly available, if you really want to impress us.

Re:Assumptions

[fluffy99]

The point is I think the suggestion that SMD assembly is outside the reach of hobbyists is total ignorant bullshit.

I think the point is that reliably mounting such fine pitched SMD parts (stacked no less) work is beyond the reach of a significant portion of their customers. Certainly enough that they made the safe decision to just pre-mount them. Otherwise, they'd be knee deep in people calling to complain that their board didn't work after they eyeballed the placement and reflowed them with a hairdryer.

Re:Assumptions

[retchdog]

i just don't understand this. it's not even an electronics project; it's sticking two totally arcane black boxes together. there's no particular logic or thinking or knowledge involved beyond the chip layout. it's just a tedious process involving luck, dexterity, and a very specialized skill that doesn't generalize much.

why the hell would anyone want to do this? it's certainly not curiosity, since that's generally about not doing things which a fucking robot can do 1000x better.

if you wanted to start a cottage industry repairing the sure-to-be ubiquitous raspberry pis (lol), that's a reason i guess, but you can just wait until it happens and you'll have plenty of junked parts to practice on.

Re:Assumptions

[adolf]

Well, apparently the surface tension trick didn't work, because it fell off anyway. :) I kind of figured that being even slightly jostled would ruin the process, so I worked and stepped lightly, and instructed others in the house to stay away.

I've got a proper iron with a real thermostat and a nice sharp tip, but I could barely even see the capacitor: When I said it was flea-sized I wasn't exaggerating. I've dealt a bit with SMD parts and had fine luck with them, but this cap was perhaps 1/15th the size that I'm comfortable handling.

The skillet method involves using nuts and bolts in the mounting holes of the board to act as spacers, and targeted application of a heat gun topside. It'd probably work better with a good infrared thermometer, which I don't have.

Re:Assumptions

[retchdog]

huh? how?

Re:Assumptions

[viperidaenz]

Try touching up one of the 240 odd balls on the bottom of the broadcom bga package, or the 100 odd balls on the sdram that sits on top of it. They're 0.3mm by the way, not 0.5mm.

Re:Assumptions

[mrbill1234]

Well, you seem to be going back to that at the moment.

Re:Assumptions

[thegarbz]

So, anyone who does it successfully would achieve a rare accomplishment, through hard work, diligence, and skill.

Call me crazy but the type of person who could achieve soldering of a BGA package would unlikely feel a sense of accomplishment from building a kit, and likely has the technical know how to almost make a RaspberryPi from scratch.

Re:Assumptions

[gmhowell]

Well, you seem to be going back to that at the moment.

Not even close, we're trading European enslavement for Chinese enslavement.

Re:Assumptions

[mrbill1234]

You are being enslaved by your own government - forget about anyone else.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Pre-fab sand!?

I am perfectly capable of putting together my own molecules, thank you very much!

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

please explain, The American Revolution, the US basically gave up liberties, the British rulers where far more tolerant and fairer tax then the immediate US governmental systems that followed.Fundamentally the US revolution was Brits fighting Brits for a system that was less fair then the existing system, very peculiar.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. If your ignorance isn't willful, pick up a child's history book- nobody here has the time to start from scratch with you.

Re:Assumptions

[Monchanger]

He's trying to move the conversation off-topic by citing DMCA. This isn't about rooting an iDoohickey, or reverse engineering a network protocol. DMCA doesn't apply here since the point was about unsoldering components, not breaking an actual security mechanism.

Re:Assumptions

[limaxray]

Never had a problem with the 515 pin VFBGA on the OMAP3530, that dinky Broadcom package looks easy in comparison. BGAs and POPs aren't all that hard, they're actually fairly easy and never need any kind of touching up since they provide their own solder. Just flux and go.

And where did you read it was 0.3mm? From the picture it looks like 0.5mm on the POP side and 0.65mm on the board side to me. Can't find a datasheet though. Doesn't matter, my 0.5mm limit is with regard to comfortably soldering individual exposed leads which isn't a concern with BGAs.

Again, my only point is that people can assemble these types of components, and it drives me nuts when ass holes like yourself who have clearly never tried it proclaim that it is impossible. Please, stop speaking out of your ass.

And just to be clear, I am not suggesting the Raspberry Pi should be sold as a kit - if they don't want to deal with that headache, then that is perfectly reasonable and I wouldn't buy one anyway.

Re:Assumptions

[Grishnakh]

I agree entirely. Doing your own toaster oven reflowing is OK if you don't have an alternative (i.e., you're making your own custom PCBs, and having them assembled by another company is prohibitively expensive because of the low volumes), but if you can get the board pre-made cheaply with robotic precision, why on earth would you want to do it by hand? It's kind of like digging ditches by hand vs. using a Ditch-witch.

Re:Assumptions

[retchdog]

ah, yes. thanks.

Re:Assumptions

[viperidaenz]

Fine, I'll lift the quote directly from the faq

Will you sell a self-assembly kit?

No. It would be too expensive for us to provide kits alongside finished boards, which would mean introducing another step in manufacturing; and a kit would be impossible to hand solder. We use special equipment (robots!) to solder on the BGA package and other tiny components.

Re:Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

All those assholes are dead and rotted. What they did may have historical implications today, but other than that it doesn't fucking matter. Get your own life and let the dead rest in peace.

That, or come up with a single good reason to bring up liberty in a discussion where it otherwise clearly doesn't belong.

Re:Assumptions

[ejasons]

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."

Yes, some people even spend their time whining about other people whining -- can you believe that!

Before the trolls and idiots who can't google

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=raspberry+pi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

Re:Before the trolls and idiots who can't google

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck em. If they don't know then wait for them to ask.

Besides you'll still have fucking idiots who won't bother to read your post before they post their stupid fucking questions.

You have done nothing helpful.

Re:Before the trolls and idiots who can't google

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck em. If they don't know then wait for them to ask.

Besides you'll still have fucking idiots who won't bother to read your post before they post their stupid fucking questions.

You have done nothing helpful.

And neither have you.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lmgtfy

Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we stop posting a Raspberry Pi story every goddamn blog post and save the talk for oh... I don't know... when the god damn thing actually ships?

I've been throwing my money at the screen for months and NOTHING'S HAPPENING!!!

Re:Just an idea...

[Samantha Wright]

Well, we tried that, but we ran out of Apple and Google stories to run during the interim.

Re:Just an idea...

[SomePgmr]

Fortunately there's always plenty of contentious YRO material for us to bicker over.

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, I already subscribe to the Raspberry Pi blog.

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

haven't seen a bitcoin story in a while

Re:Just an idea...

[QuantumLeaper]

Microsoft is always good for a laugh..

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you it's not contentious!

Re:Just an idea...

[jeffmeden]

Bitcoin jumped the shark when it, oh, nevermind let me just coin a new term: it "tv lawyer verdicted"...

http://www.avclub.com/articles/bitcoin-for-dummies,67658/

Re:Just an idea...

[b5bartender]

Fret not, there's surely a flood of Facebook IPO stories coming down the pipe as we speak.

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to the MS stories?

Re:Just an idea...

[utkonos]

Is there a hardware version of vaporware, or does the word cover hardware as well?

Re:Just an idea...

[boley1]

I'm obviously not getting my fair share of R Pi stories. Only one a week or so gets modded up to a level where I notice. I'd like one a day modded up to say a level 3 or higher. Can we automate that like with the Apple and Android posts?

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

Re:Just an idea...

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

What ever happened to the MS stories?

M... who?

Re:Just an idea...

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

How about we stop posting a Raspberry Pi story every goddamn blog post and save the talk for oh... I don't know... when the god damn thing actually ships?

Right... at just the same time as all the inevitable Packt books about it* ship? There won't be time then!!

* "Raspberry Pi CMS", "Raspberry Pi Joomla!", "Raspberry Pi Moodle", etc etc.

Re:Just an idea...

[SomePgmr]

I should've guessed a bunch of socialist nazi fascist hippie muslim extremist zionists would show up to disagree.

Re:Just an idea...

[identity0]

That's because we don't talk about dead technologies.

Haven't seen a BSD story in a loooong while... ;)

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an online purchase - you have to stick the money under the modem.

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a hardware version of vaporware, or does the word cover hardware as well?

Phantom.

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit lumping me in with the Zionists.

Re:Just an idea...

[AmiMoJo]

At current exchange rates a Pi is worth about 5 bitcoins. Given the speed of the processor and the cost of electricity how long would it take for one to pay for itself?

Re:Just an idea...

[randomsearch]

Does BitCoin run on Raspberry Pi?

I can't wait for my Raspberry Pi.

Google is evil. No, wait, it's good.

Apple are evil. No wait, they're good designers.

I for one welcome our new story meme overloads.

Recursive post is recursive.

RS

Re:Just an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the business we call that an exit. pay attention to these things (first publicity through last mention), you might learn something.

anal dildos

[Anonymous Coward]

Can i use these to power some anal vibrators?

Re:anal dildos

[Anonymous Coward]

Can i use these to power some anal vibrators?

Well, there was a video of a motor running with the PI. You could build a sex machine with it I guess.

Re:anal dildos

[Anonymous Coward]

1. "Raspberry Pi
An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. "
2. "You could build a sex machine with it I guess."
3. "ARM inside" logo
4. ?

"Most people" would mess this up?

[Lashat]

Should read EVERYONE without the nimble fingers of a child, the steady hand of a special forces sniper, and the sharpest soldering iron this side of the sun.

Re:"Most people" would mess this up?

[Synerg1y]

You can always do stuff to steady your hand temporarily, but I'm not sure where the discussion is: who would want to? Even if you can, the price point might be lower than your hourly wage so why bother. There's plenty of other stuff to solder, like your friend's gaming console :)

Re:"Most people" would mess this up?

[mrmeval]

I perform that level of soldering on a daily basis. I do not appreciate the closed source drivers and will not embrace this.

BGA packages are intimidating

[vlm]

BGA packages are intimidating, even to a guy who's been hand soldering other SMD packages since around/before 1990 (that being me)

Plain SMD is easy to do by hand, even the 0402 stuff.

The thing with BGA is its an alignment problem. Some entrepreneur will likely invent a magic clamp that holds the chip in perfect registration to the PCB, at which point it'll be dirt simple to solder BGAs.

I donno where the "if you're a millimeter out, your chips are fried" stuff comes from because thats /.ed. I've done analog microwave RF work where that is actually true. That is not possible on a logic level board. "oh noes, /ce has been grounded, whatever shall we do?" Well just fix the solder bridge and stop whining. Its not like you just shorted out a 20 amp 24 volt power supply thru the bias/bypass network of a microwave FET amplifier, nothings going to blow up on a digital ckt.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[SomePgmr]

I have a hard time with the smd stuff. Probably not enough practice, but even with reasonably steady hands and a magnifying lamp on my workbench, I tend to screw things up. And these things are so cheap to begin with, I'd have bought the assembled model anyways.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[allanw]

I don't understand why people even want a kit at all. The assembled version is already ridiculously cheap due to high volume. There's tons of surface mount parts that would be annoying to even package for people. Why ruin a perfectly good small form factor to make it a little easier for a few people who want to solder it themselves? Also, it would take you hours of your own time assembling it. Why don't people design their own hardware instead?

The much bigger problem is the lack of documentation on accessing the GPU (which is a more modern design and pretty powerful compared to the older ARM CPU core they're using)

Another issue is that it is very hard to debug an assembled board. If one of the pads on the BGA doesn't make contact it's nearly impossible to diagnose. A power to ground short would be very difficult to locate. They can't use their automated test jig to sort out defective parts or errors in assembly, etc. And then the manufacturer will be prompting tons of support requests by people. It really isn't worth the effort.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

I donno where the "if you're a millimeter out, your chips are fried" stuff comes from because thats /.ed.

Probably because you've put vcc/gnd on the wrong pin which fried the thing. This is easy to do for hobbiests on far more robush IC and modules. I have no idea why you would even begin to imagine a BGA SoC is somehow so hardy it can easily withstand such abuse. The editor's comments seems to be extremely accurate in spite of your contrary statement.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

the alignment isn't really the biggest problem, bga's are to a large extend self aligning as long as you get pretty close the surface tension of the solder will align the chips on its pads

but you'll need a stencil to put solderpaste on the pcb and then a reflow oven to solder those pads, getting all the pads soldered and not melt the chip in the process
is delicate.

with determination and practice sure it is possible to do but there is really no point

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[TheGratefulNet]

I want one assembled AND TESTED.

I'll pay for that.

debugging a software bug (my own code, say) is hard enough without second guessing the hardware.

csb: a friend of mine is trying to convince me to use an arduino mega (high density smd-only chip) where I'm currently using the skinnydip28 version of the regular 328-style arduino (which is .1" thruhole and easy to deal with). at the very least, if I was moving to a mega (25xx class), I'd insist on it being on a carrier board AND that board being built to high spec and the cpu tested on the board before being delivered to me for assembly into a larger system. I refuse to have to worry about the cpu AND the rest of the system (being a small company). I cannot find good mega-class chips already on carriers (.1-friendly carriers) AND tested AND by a company I'd trust to actually care about quality. being able to buy it pre-tested is key, to me.

back to r-pi: I'd want this to be known and tested as a FRU of its own. the thing is small enough to be its own field-replaceable-unit in a larger embedded system; and if any part on it is bad, the whole thing gets replaced.

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.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[CaptainLard]

nothings going to blow up on a digital ckt.

What if the chips have different I/O and core voltages? This is true for many processors and FPGA's that come in BGA form. I'd bet the ball pitch is .5 or .4mm so if you're off by a mm you could easily connect 3.3V to the 1.2V core. That would indeed fry the chip. Or 3.3V could go straight to ground which could fry the actual PCB since the traces are 5 mils or less and can't handle 500mA for long. Also, that "magic clamp" exists as a $60k CNC heat column in my lab at work. Once you program the reflow profile, the board layout, and the chip pressure it is indeed dirt simple.

Disclaimer: All board stats listed are pure speculation

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[vlm]

Yeah my alignment idea is to hold it in place while doing the hot air rework station thing. Agreed, don't need that alignment jig to hold in place for reflow oven, but I've never used a reflow oven, not planning to start any time soon. Supposedly you can rely on surface tension on a vibration free basically immobile horizontal within X degrees where X is pretty small. But I wanna use an alignment jig so I can just flip it onto the desk and use the rework blower (or, maybe, nudge it by hand if I've got vias to all the pads.

soapbox time: Some of the "agony" of SMD seems to come from history... Early leaded factory assembly was done by hand exactly like the dude in the basement; wave soldering and leaded pick and place came decades later so no one freaks. Early SMD factory assembly never had a "done by hand" assembly line, at least outside of aerospace and microwave RF, so people think the only way to do SMD is to own a reflow oven, stencils/paste, and a picnplace... yeah sure just like the only way to put a leaded pcb together is to own a leaded picnplace and a leaded wave soldering machine... hmmm. You wanna learn how to leaded solder, you learn how factories did it 60 years ago. In sharp contrast, don't waste time studying how factories used to do smd, if you want to do it at home... learn how the rework guys do it by hand today, if you want to learn how to do SMD at home. After the rather sharp learning curve, its pretty easy.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

BGA's with rework gel self-aline pretty well when then hotair is controlled as per the reflow curve, with smaller chips you don't even need the preheat the board.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[gknoy]

Giving your kid a Raspberry Pi, letting him hook in a keyboard and plug it all into the TV, and then get started programming makes it seem pretty compelling. Of course you might not be building large apps and games, but come on -- nearly every toy or educational program one might write will run just fine in an interpreted environment, and would likely compile very quickly.

Being able to run XBMC and hardware accelerated 3d graphics are neat, too, of course.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[vlm]

csb: a friend of mine is trying to convince me to use an arduino mega (high density smd-only chip) where I'm currently using the skinnydip28 version of the regular 328-style arduino (which is .1" thruhole and easy to deal with). at the very least, if I was moving to a mega (25xx class), I'd insist on it being on a carrier board AND that board being built to high spec and the cpu tested on the board before being delivered to me for assembly into a larger system. I refuse to have to worry about the cpu AND the rest of the system (being a small company). I cannot find good mega-class chips already on carriers (.1-friendly carriers) AND tested AND by a company I'd trust to actually care about quality. being able to buy it pre-tested is key, to me.

I haven't worked w/ that hardware, but can't you do your software work on some dev board, even if you have to really hack the heck out of the dev board with wires laying everywhere? I've certainly done stomach turning things to poor defenseless dev boards in the past. I agree doing hardware and software dev at the same time is ... overly exciting.

I donno if you like or hate seeeed studios or whatever but slapping together a simple single chip carrier PCB and having them solder just one chip to one simple board can't be all that complex for them. I've bought stuff from them that turned out OK. Maybe the killer would be lead (oh, bad pun in a SMD thread) time?

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[allanw]

Of course, you're buying a final product from the Raspberry Pi guys. It's understood to be assembled and fully tested. I was talking about a "kit" version where they sell you the PCB's and let you assemble it and test yourself.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[dissy]

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.

You do have to admit that there would be a ton of people purchasing the kit for no other reason than to save $3, and then break it and attempt to return it for a refund or hound their support email.

Perhaps if it was legal to sell kits specifically with NO warentee at all and a no return policy, then it may work... But in many countries that isn't even an option.

To take your puzzle example, yes people who do puzzles as a hobby are fine, just as people who actually like to assemble circuits like this would be fine.
But the people trying to do nothing but save a buck are the exact type who would purchase a puzzle, put most of it together, then bitch that it doesn't at all look like the poster due to the wavy lines between the pieces, and return it demanding more than a full refund at the puzzle makers expense.

I would like to believe after the first few production runs of fully built units, that later on they would put some effort into selling the specialty parts (PCB, pre-flashed chips or roms, harder to source components like odd freq crystals, etc) and put up the parts for sale individually along with the BOM and schematics.
That's the only way around the warentee problem with kits, and the only way to make it too much trouble for the people trying to only save three fifty. For electronic hobbyists, working from a BOM and schematic is business as usual, and not really any extra work we weren't expecting anyway.

Then everyone is happy!

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[dissy]

Maybe the killer would be lead (oh, bad pun in a SMD thread) time?

That's why I prefer 4chan for my PCBoard needs!

I can haz RoHS? *coughsolderballs*

Whatz? Iz ESD safe! I promiseses!

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

It is .3 pitch, iirc. A millimeter would have you over 2 pads.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[pnot]

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.

Right. So in your analogy Raspberry Pi are selling posters, not jigsaw puzzles. And a bunch of people are complaining that this poster-printing company does not sell a jigsaw puzzle of their poster.

And, to complete the analogy -- if you want a jigsaw puzzle of this particular poster so badly, and none of the other puzzles on the market will do, there's a simple solution: buy the poster, paste it to a board, and chop it up yourself.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[retchdog]

some of these problems would be solved if they just priced the kit $0.50 over the unit.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[L4t3r4lu5]

You do have to admit that there would be a ton of people purchasing the kit for no other reason than to save $3

Those people are idiots. The time taken to unpackage the damn thing would cost more than $3, even if you did it with a can of hair spray and a Zippo.

This should absolutely not be a kit. If you want to build your own gear, there's Arduino.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why you expect somebody to cut a perfectly good poster up into little jigsaw pieces for you. A true hobbiest would cut the poster themselves, then reassemble it.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[Anonymous Coward]

How are people supposed to learn, if they don't try things themselves? Or are we only supposed to consume mass produced stuff containing proprietary IP?

It's not like you would be wasting $100's of dollars if you screwed up anyway, it's only $35.

I think Raspberry pi are getting flak because of their dubious claim to be encouraging education. Cynics might say that the it's more a case of Broadcom finding a new market for some of its SoCs. It's like OLPC all over again.

Re:BGA packages are intimidating

[unixisc]

First of all, I'm not aware that BGA packages can even be hand soldered. The last package I saw that could be hand soldered was PLCC. Things like TSOP, SOIC and BGA were always machine soldered.

Besides, this package ain't just a BGA - it's a POP (package on package) - where the bottom package is probably the ARM and the top package is either other support logic, or the memory. Even contemplating hand soldering of such a package is insane!

Don't forget

[nweaver]

Don't forget the reflow oven, so not only do you need superhuman skills, but you need a specialized tool that effectively nobody has.

Re:Don't forget

[Wesley Felter]

Haven't people been reflowing PS3s and Xboxen in their kitchen ovens? Or does that only work for re-reflowing?

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Who doesn't have a toaster?

Re:Don't forget

[Achra]

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

Re:Don't forget

[petscii]

SMD is actually easier than through hole in my opinion if you factor in the time/cost to to drill 400 holes(called vias) in a through hole pcb and the lack of easy plating of vias at home. Also a lot of components are just not available as anything but SMD.

http://hackaday.com/2012/01/01/a-very-detailed-reflow-oven-build/

That reflow oven works, and was built by a lowly technical college dropout (myself) with great success. You just need to get the data sheet for your solder and set up the various temperatures required for the solder paste to do its thing. You also can't use the toaster oven for pizza afterwards. But it's 80 bucks all in.

Like Ball Bearings, SMD is the future son.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Tin/Lead solder melts at 370F. Most lead free solder melts around 420F-430F. So yes, you can re-flow boards in a conventional oven. The problem is you probably can not apply the correct amount of solder paste to the pads beforehand. I have a lot of experience soldering small packages and would not even bother attempting a BGA. A bad one would just go right back to the factory.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no BGA's there. I think the smallest parts shown are only 0805 which are huge. I'm also assuming they aren't going to ship a solder stencil with every kit. The stencil they used there cost almost as much as the fully assembled board.

Re:Don't forget

[sjames]

To some extent, that does only work for re-reflowing where the chip is already well placed and tinned. Even then, you are likely to shorten the life of the components somewhat since you won't have good enough temperature control.

Reflow soldering involves heating the components much hotter than they like to be even when powered off. The heating and cooling times are carefully controlled to keep the stress of that to a minimum while still making reliable connections (usually).

Re:Don't forget

[Microlith]

But have people been doing package-on-package BGA assembly?

Seriously, I think that's one huge thing people are missing. This isn't one chip package on the board, it's two stacked.

Re:Don't forget

[Megane]

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.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter, it's not more complex for that.
Any technique you don't master can seem almost impossible, but BGA is not really a big deal with a toaster oven and a magnifying glass.
Oh, and some experience ;-)

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

vias are for getting connection between copper layers on a pcb, unless you plan on doing a single sided design you still need vias with smd

Re:Don't forget

[smellsofbikes]

I put BGA's, LLP's, and SON's on boards by hand all the time. I use a hotplate that goes to 260C rather than a toaster oven because I can place it and then look at the edge with a boom-type microscope set at 45 degrees. With a BGA you can see slightly under the package to make sure the balls are on the pads; with an LLP or SON you can see the edges of the chip leads and make sure they're aligned with the pads. Check all four sides, because it's not uncommon to have one side lovely, the two adjacent sides slightly twisted, and the opposite side almost one whole pad off. If you're using leaded solder it'll tend to self-align, but you can't trust that. Bolting insulative material (we used old FR4 boards) to each side of the hotplate prevents you burning your hand from touching it by mistake and provides you a place to steady your hand while adjusting the rotation/placement with a dental pick. We place 0.5mm pitch BGA's (which we call microSMD's) this way on a regular basis, when our BGA rework station is busy or down.
AND! it is possible, although painful, to check continuity to the chip from the board, in many cases, without an x-ray. Check for a diode drop from each node to the substrate.

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Vias are not the through hole pads. Vias are interconnects from layer to layer. Through hole pads are called "through hole pads". Vias are still used even if there are only SMT parts unless it's a single layer board.

Re:Don't forget

[gmhowell]

I've seen several references to being unable to use the toaster ovens for food in the future. Is this due to gassing of the lead solder or something else?

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe a word you say.
Post a link to a video with you talking and mounting a 0.5mm pitch BGA and quoting this post and I'll buy you a Pi.
Otherwise...shut up.
Hugh

Re:Don't forget

[smellsofbikes]

Yeah, that sounds like a great idea: spend several hours making a video, for a $25 computer I don't want, on the off-chance that you'll come back and read this, and knowing full well that since you're a mouthy anonymous coward you'd just claim I faked or photoshopped the results. Sounds like a *great* use of my time. Tell you what: get an account, respond to this, and make it $75 in cash, and I'll film that video.
Though what good it would do, I have no idea: watching someone put a board on a hot plate, load on a chip too small for the video camera to see, reflow it, look at it under a microscope, probe it with a multimeter, and announce that it worked is going to do what, precisely, that my description of the process didn't do?

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't I just use the soldering iron I bought at Radio Shack for $14.95?

whatever...

[spidercoz]

I still want 10 of them...

Re:whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I want a few too but I have to admit that my interest is starting to wane in a big way. It seems that we get a new gizmo like this about every 9 months that we hear story after story about how cool it is and they either never materialize or we find out that the claims were over the top in respect to the reality of the situation.

Re:whatever...

[jcreus]

For a price which would be one millionth of the typical Apple product.

Re:whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you planning on making a Beowulf cluster?

Just asking.

Re:whatever...

[spidercoz]

I am now!

Hand-soldering BGA packages is hard

[normaldotcom]

Correctly soldering BGA packages requires a reflow oven or a good heat gun with some solder paste. This is intimidating not only for customers with basic soldering skills, but even those who have extensive experience soldering other small SMT packages. Nevertheless, releasing the PCB as open hardware would allow people to fabricate and assemble their own boards, without placing an additional burden on the company.

Re:Hand-soldering BGA packages is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Placing additional burden?

The Foundation (not company) turns a profit on every unit. They *want* to produce as many as can be sold! (see forum threads), to increase funds, develop it further, sell more, world domination, etc.

Fix this, MacGyver!

[Chemisor]

And to think that only 30 years ago a resourceful fellow could fix a circuit board with a silver dollar, pliers, and a car battery. With today's electronics, MacGyver would be dead.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[93 Escort Wagon]

And to think that only 30 years ago a resourceful fellow could fix a circuit board with a silver dollar, pliers, and a car battery. With today's electronics, MacGyver would be dead.

Fortunately Ben Browder would still be available to play his replacement.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[Anonymous Coward]

He can't even fix his own car.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2073702/MacGyver-actor-Richard-Dean-Anderson-looks-clueless-car-breaks-down.html

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[Anonymous Coward]

A 2012 MacGyver would just "hack the firewall".

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[TheGratefulNet]

serious answer: you 'fix' this by having shelf spares.

when one breaks, you replace it. maybe send the bad guy back but definitely swap it and you need to have spares on the shelf.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[gman003]

With today's electronics, MacGyver would just do it all in software.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[CaptainLard]

Not if he had Jack Bauer's writers:

Terrorist: Fred, Rewire the CI-Plot Device to blow up the eastern sea board or I'll tell Suzie you cheated on her!

...6 min later...

Fred: Jack! the terrorist just escaped via submarine helicopter!

Jack: Chloe, patch me through to the Deap Sea satellite imaging array!

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he used a nickel, jumper cables, and a car battery to *escape* being held hostage. Way cooler than repairing a PCB.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[Chemisor]

Speaking of which, have you SEEN today's software? Hordes of programmers work on it around the clock and still can't fix it.

Re:Fix this, MacGyver!

[WCLPeter]

Did you even watch 24? Here, let me fix that for you.

Terrorist: Fred, Rewire the CI-Plot Device to blow up the eastern sea board or I'll tell Suzie you cheated on her! ...6 min later...

Fred: Jack! the terrorist just escaped via submarine helicopter!

Jack: Dammit Chloe, patch me through to the Deap Sea satellite imaging array! Dammit... DAMMIT!!!!

Import/Export Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the main reason they couldn't build the Raspberry Pi in the UK was there were prohibitive costs to importing the needed components whereas the completed device was taxed differently.

Isn't this the same problem?

Re:Import/Export Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 2.5% is so burdensome. And we're talking 20-30% total increase in cost to produce one item in the UK even with no attempt to optimise or directly employ local labour but simply using well-known local manufacturers who haven't geared their production toward mass consumer devices since the '80s.

So instead of $32.50 for a locally built product sold to people who might be inspired to create the next generation of Western electronics we have another $25 China box built by slave labour sold to kids who are taught that the way to compete is by outsourcing to slave labour.

Fuck you, Raspberry Pi project members. May your project fail as the West is failing for relying on the false and inhumane economy of Chinese labour.

Enough about this board

[Animats]

The stories about this board need to stop, at least until they ship the thing. "We bought the parts". "We soldered them on", etc. do not each need a separate story.

Of course you don't ship kits of SMD parts, especially ball-grid array parts. Such a soldering job is cheap in a production environment, and a huge pain even with the right equipment in a small shop. (It's done in production by printing a solder paste layer on the board with a mask, and the final alignment of the pads is done by surface tension in the molten solder. It's all about temperature control and solder paste depositing. Once the production line is tuned right, it works quite consistently.)

Re:Enough about this board

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Raspberry Pi Foundation would agree with you there.

Each time an enthusiast submits a story, damn Slashdot runs it and the Raspberry Pi site gets swamped by numbskulls popping over to see what the fuss is about. Believe me, the folks in charge have better things to do than submit teaser stories here.

As for all this business about "kits", someone, a long time ago, took it into their head that the Raspberry Pi was going to be shipped as a kit and its become one of those damn internet memes. Bunch of effin lunatics with too much time on their hands, if you ask me.

Re:Enough about this board

[Alioth]

Why do the stories need to stop? It is actually "news for nerds". Just don't read the stories if you don't like them. The rest of us who DO like them and want to talk about them will not be upset if you aren't joining in.

Re:Enough about this board

[L4t3r4lu5]

You really are on the wrong website, dude. This is absolutely "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."

Re:Enough about this board

[Anonymous Coward]

"News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."

See?

News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[AceJohnny]

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.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, also I have serious qualms about this being a Broadcom platform. It really needs to be more open, can't have a big binary blob in the middle of the thing. Of course, with enough minds, reverse engineering is a possibility, but I doubt Broadcom would respond kindly to that.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Inconveniently, SoC GPUs that aren't driven by huge binary blobs appear to be pretty thin on the ground. It makes the PC scene look like a haven of pure openness(in that you can get intel stuff if you don't care much about performance, the AMD stuff will be here one of these days, and nouveau sometimes works on the right Nvidia chips...)

With BCM certainly doesn't have an overly cooperative history; but PowerVR, ARM's own Mali, and the not terribly long list of others are not exactly more helpful when it comes to mobile GPUs.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[Creepy]

I suspect contractual obligations to Broadcom require them for building in hardware acceleration, as in perhaps they get a discount rate on licensing the codecs if they require them. Tegra 3 (Kal El) has built in hardware acceleration for them and I think Snapdragon 4 as well.

Definitely not the fastest GPU, and certainly not the fastest SoC, but I don't know about when they started cobbling it together, or if they were trying to say fastest they could get at the price point they wanted to meet.

Reflow ovens... wow, didn't know they were even still used, but I guess I haven't done anything in electronics manufacturing in about 20 years. One of my first jobs was pulling boards off the etching machine and put them into the component and solder applying machine (it had a name, too, but like reflow oven, I won't remember unless I see/hear it again), which I believe automatically put them on the reflow oven's conveyor belt (or maybe someone else did). I figured technology would have moved on by now. These were big boards used in cash registers and I guess I didn't realize the technology scaled. It was a horribly boring job (and one easily replaced by a machine, I'm sure) so as soon as I found something better I was out of there.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[boley1]

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.

HW-accelerated versions of MPEG4 and H.264 isn't news either except its on a board that cost $25!
(and only those), well the last time I licensed MPEG2 it cost me $14.95, so getting a complete board and a codec that is hardware accelerated and including the license fee for $25 - I agree, that interesting and news.

That all the libraries are closed source - Not news since practically all commercial grade GPU libraries are closed, but since the API is public and directly mapped to the normal Linux Graphics Libraries as I understand it, seems like news to me.

(Just following the discussion not claiming to be an expert.)

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are the only HW accelerated codecs(at this time) that can do 1080p30

Dom has said it is possible to do software (but still vector accelerated) decode of VP8 and Theora at DVD resolutions.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not pleased with it either. Perhaps version two will eventually be Stallman approved. But this one is a good first step. I'm in.

Re:News isn't the soldering, but the OSS libraries

[jokkebk]

I find it really hard to understand all the people who are so obsessed about this. "Oh my, the pureness of this project has been tainted by the horrible non-OSS nature of GPU drivers and now I have to respond to every post about Rasp-Pi about this!!!". Come on people, it's a $25 computer, it is running Linux, you can do great stuff with it and unless you have an altar devoted to Richard M. Stallman in your home, you can hardly complain about the influence this small issue will have to your kids learning experience with the device.

I understand that the closed nature of this part of Rasp-Pi may be a personal letdown for some 1 % of geeks who are mainly interested to hack the graphics drivers, but I could bet that nine out of ten people who constantly whine about it when any possibility surfaces would not personally ever tinker with that part of Rasp-Pi even it were completely OSS - they just have the unrealistic world view where no compromises need to be made to provide a cheap learning platform with "sexy" graphics functionality for education.

To end with a car analogy, if there was a non-profit organization making a $100 electric DIY moped that could, thanks to a closed design of the battery circuit (everything else of course would be completely open), achieve a speed of 30 mph instead of 5 mph open designs, the same people would probably be here pointing out how their kids enthusiasm for DIY projects and the usability of the whole moped would be compromised because this one part was not open for everyone.

DIY kit

[mmontour]

If you really want a kit you can buy an assembled board, de-solder all of the components, and *make* a kit.

Re:DIY kit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a kit kit. Brilliant!

Worthless as a media streaming device

[JDG1980]

This article also confirms that the Raspberry Pi will likely be worthless as a media streaming device - at least for those of us who care about video quality.

It is now official that only H.264 (and MPEG-4) will be supported for hardware decoding. That means that playback of ripped Blu-rays that use VC-1 and MPEG-2 (not an inconsiderable number) is impossible, since the weak ARM CPU will almost certainly not be able to decode them in real-time at 1080p.

I'm sure the Pi will work fine for people who play back transcoded crap downloaded from TPB, but for anyone who actually cares about video quality, the lack of these essential codecs is a death sentence. We can only hope that at some point in the future a different (even if more expensive) model will ship with them enabled.

It's really a shame that there is currently no open-source-friendly SoC platform that supports HD video decoding and HDMI 1.3 audio bitstreaming in all its forms. HTPCs mess with the signal in all kinds of ways (YUV->RGB conversion is forced, even if you select YUV, it converts to RGB then converts back) so SoCs are really all that can provide decent quality. And the firmware on commercial media streamers is almost all crap.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying if you care about video quality you should spend more than $25?

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Hatta]

HTPCs mess with the signal in all kinds of ways (YUV->RGB conversion is forced, even if you select YUV, it converts to RGB then converts back)

RGB to YUV is lossless in both directions.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

SoC platforms for video decoding are always crap. Work alright for 60% of files, not too badly for another 20%, and either fail or suck hardcore for the last 20%. VC-1 shares a lot of features of H264, so it might unofficially accelerate VC-1.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

HTPCs mess with the signal in all kinds of ways (YUV->RGB conversion is forced, even if you select YUV, it converts to RGB then converts back)

RGB to YUV is lossless in both directions.

But you lose the overtones.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

RGB YUV is only lossless in analog. Once you have to round the result to 8-bit, it is lossy.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Microlith]

I'm sure the Pi will work fine for people who play back transcoded crap downloaded from TPB, but for anyone who actually cares about video quality, the lack of these essential codecs is a death sentence.

That's fine. The Raspberry Pi isn't really even intended for use as a media streaming device. Considering how much the h.264 license probably cost, I can imagine they happily put the other codec license fees on the back burner to retain the target price of the platform.

It's really a shame that there is currently no open-source-friendly SoC platform that supports HD video decoding and HDMI 1.3 audio bitstreaming in all its forms.

Trade secrets and software patents are the name of the game in the mobile SoC space.

HTPCs mess with the signal in all kinds of ways

Being an HTPC, you would be able to configure this? I'm confused as to why an undesired conversion would take place, given that HTPCs tend to be custom built by the user.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd you discount H264 over MPEG-2 and VC-1. MPEG2 is inferior quality than H264 at the same bit rate, VC-1 is about the same. Rip your whatever at a high enough bitrate to H264 (and the SoC support Bluray bitrates, which uses H264 or VC-1) and you will have no quality problems. Certainly better than MPEG2.

MPEG2 is also a very expensive license ($2/device) compared with H264. That's nearly 10% of the cost of the Model A.

Ever wondered why there are no open source friendly SoC's that do this? Because SoC and the software on them cost a lot to develop, and all the manufacturers who make them need to get the dev costs back. It's a very competitive market.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

That means that playback of ripped Blu-rays that use VC-1 and MPEG-2 (not an inconsiderable number) is impossible, since the weak ARM CPU will almost certainly not be able to decode them in real-time at 1080p.

You DO realise that Blu-ray's are encoded in h.264 High-profile, right? Transcoding them down to VC-1 and MPEG-2 doesn't gain anything but size and artifacts along the same lines as the ones you allude to going the other direction... If it was to play on hardware that's not capable of doing MPEG4/h.264, I might be willing to give you a pass. But if that's not the case...heh...better not own up to it because you just made yourself look beyond foolish there.

In either case, I find that it'll be hard to get anyone to be concerned or believe your position on media streaming.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Svartalf]

Depends on the profile more than anything else. And it's not hardware in the normal sense for most of them- they're using a DSP based codec.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[boley1]

Mod this up. Good one!

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

er, no.

perhaps you could create a pair of complementary transforms that don't lose any *more* data when flipped back and forth between each other, but since you're going from (typically) 8-bit numbers to 8-bit numbers, there's loss in precision.

just look at the equations used to perform the transform, it's not too complicated.

see http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel/60699 and http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=14892&hl=& for some starter material. and yes, i trust people who are actually av programmers more than joe random on slashdot who provides no evidence whatsoever.

and no, your software is most likely NOT storing all intermediate data in 32-bit-per-channel floats.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Trogre]

I wish I had mod points right now...

Brilliant!

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

The closest 1080p playback device that handles lots and lots of codecs is the WD TV Live HD/Plus for $65-$90.

There's an OSS firmware available that does work, except that Netflix stops working when you do. That is to be expected.

I own one and routinely stream 1080i to it over a wired 100baseTX network over samba. I don't own any bluray (and never plan to ever), so I don't have any 1080p content besides HD movie previews. Meh.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[JDG1980]

You DO realise that Blu-ray's are encoded in h.264 High-profile, right?

You DO realise that H.264 is only one of the three supported codecs under the Blu-Ray standard, right?

Granted, it is used on most current BD releases. However, "most" is not "all." To give one example, my "T2 Judgment Day: Skynet Edition" Blu-Ray disc is encoded in VC-1. This can easily be verified by ripping the original disc with AnyDVD HD or a similar program and then examining the resulting stream. So if I wanted to watch this on the Raspberry Pi, I would have to transcode it to H.264, losing quality along the way.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[JDG1980]

Being an HTPC, you would be able to configure this? I'm confused as to why an undesired conversion would take place, given that HTPCs tend to be custom built by the user.

You'd think this, but it isn't true. You can choose YCbCr from the video driver on some solutions, but testing shows what it is actually doing is converting from YCbCr to RGB for the framebuffer and then back to YCbCr for output! (See this thread for some additional information.) This, of course, is a lossy process since 8-bit quantization is used for all these values. There is no way to tell a HTPC to keep its dirty hands off your signal.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[JDG1980]

RGB to YUV is lossless in both directions.

Only if you're working in infinite-precision floating point. In the real world, this is a lossy conversion.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[JDG1980]

So you're saying if you care about video quality you should spend more than $25?

No, I'm saying that there is no media streamer at any price which offers everything videophiles need, and it's disappointing that Raspberry Pi can't leverage open-source to fill the gap due to its lack of needed codecs. HTPCs mess with your colorspace; you can't get them to output a 100% untouched signal to your video scaler. Media streamers using Sigma chips can output the correct signal and decode all the needed formats, but their user interfaces suck ass, and none of them except the now-discontinued SageTV HD300 support source direct mode (so if you want untouched output you need to manually change the resolution whenever switching from DVDs to Blu-Rays and back). What is really needed is a full-featured video playback ARM SoC that is open-source friendly so we don't have to put up with the horrible stock firmware every company designs. The upcoming ARM Google TV will use a Marvell Armada 1500 chip with a very good built-in scaler, but it is not clear whether end-user applications will be able to talk to the chip and tell it what to do directly. To do it right, a bare-metal C/C++ API for the SoC is needed. Nothing at any price currently gives this.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[L4t3r4lu5]

HTPCs mess with the signal in all kinds of ways (YUV->RGB conversion is forced, even if you select YUV, it converts to RGB then converts back)

RGB to YUV is lossless in both directions.

But you lose the overtones

Resolved by using a Monster HDMI cable.

Re:Worthless as a media streaming device

[Anonymous Coward]

I reckon you should give up with your videophile tendencies. They will only make you unhappy. What you ask for isn't available, won't be available and to be honest, if you actually ran your 'messed up colorspace' stuff through a proper analysis, you would find that the differences are imperceptible anyway. Even transcoding from VC-1 to H264 (both similar performance codecs) would show very little is any perceptible reductions in quality.

I suggest avoiding the $25 Raspberry Pi that you are disappointed in even though you never tried it. You obviously don't understand the concept of licencing codecs on GPUs which is nothing to do with open source either.

I suggest Monster Cables.

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:The response from the RPi forum

[locallyunscene]

Well played.

Re:The response from the RPi forum

[15Bit]

If by "x-ray machine with microscopy" they mean an electron microscope with x-ray analysis system (EDS), i do actually know someone who has such a setup at home. He is a bit geeky though...

Re:The response from the RPi forum

[Hatta]

Those people were never going to be customers in the first place. The binary blob is a real problem for a lot of actual customers though. I have a fully open source HTPC already, I was hoping for something smaller, quieter, and less endergonic. If I have to sacrifice open source for it, that might be a deal breaker.

Re:The response from the RPi forum

[Svartalf]

I can't say I blame Liz on that score.

She's right- unless you're REALLY good, you're going to need all of the things she's talking to- and MOST of us over here won't have them.

I view the only shame being that the state engines are going to be closed source blobs. It seems that NOBODY out there in the embedded/mobile space has the forethought to open things up a bit. First one to open up an ES/VG/etc stack on their GPU will gain a lot of design wins, based on what my clients in the past have indicated.

Re:The response from the RPi forum

[L4t3r4lu5]

Does he have a 4 digit UID?

3?

2?!

Re:The response from the RPi forum

[Anonymous Coward]

How many, 10 million chips sales? That's the sort of level you would need. And the level that Broadcom already achieve doing exactly what they do now.

And why are the standard OpenGL ES/VG API's not good enough for your customers? Why do they need the stack source itself?

Why are we talking about the Pi seriously?

[Rogerborg]

They have a limited initial run of devices, half of which will be defective in some way, and the returns will kill them off before they ever get a chance to ship in volume. 3 months and we'll be reading about how it all went wrong, and the lessons they learned.

so that's how you send money

[ozduo]

I have been pushing mine into the slot in my computer box thingie, you know the one just below that opening cupholder.

Save your fork. There's Pi:

[Hartree]

Actually, I prefer gooseberry Pi.

"I've been throwing my money at the screen for months and NOTHING'S HAPPENING!!!"

Patience. Soon we'll be able to say "Stick a fork in it. The Pi's done."

Departmental AI project:

[Hartree]

But. But.

I AM a pick and place robot, you insensitive clod!

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

Re:Stop whining

[Gaygirlie]

So your solution to everything is "do it yourself and stop whining." Well, if you want good movies, do them yourself. If you want proper laws, get to an appropriate position and do them yourself. And so on and so forth.

Point being that it's easy to just use "do it yourself!" as an excuse to dismiss all complaints. The fact however remains that not everyone has the resources or skills needed to do everything and as such that is nothing more than a silly excuse. Of course, demanding stuff from RPi people is out-of-boundaries, but healthy criticism should be allowed.

Re:Stop whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I wish I could send you a beer!

Re:Stop whining

[Anonymous Coward]

You people act as if the motto of Slashdot was News for crybabies, Stuff that sucks

The motto is actually "News For Turds, Shit That Splatters." I can't take credit for this though, saw somebody attach this a LONG time ago... laughed my ass off, though!

Re:Stop whining

[Anonymous Coward]

But you need the hot air to solder the BGA parts by hand!!!

Re:Stop whining

[randomsearch]

Difference being we CAN do the stuff that Required Snark was talking about. Whilst I'm quite happy to solder or write assembly code, I'm not so hot on legal issues (but I have made a few movies and am about to make a few more).

I think "do it yourself is just a silly excuse" only works when we can't do those things ourself - but we can. We are the geeks. If we don't do it, sure as hell no-one else will.

RS

Re:Stop whining

[Gaygirlie]

That is nothing more than poor generalisation. I for example cannot reverse-engineer GPU and DSP drivers, especially on a platform I have no experience with and when the blob weighs in at ten megabytes. That is to say that being geek isn't some magic bullet that you can use as an excuse for telling people to sod off and do everything themselves.

No Documentation

[garlicbready]

One of the main problems at the moment I can see is the lack of docs
and I'm not talking about the GPU, but the GPIO pins for SPI / A/D etc
it's pretty clear looking at the forums that they're not targeting it at the hobbyist for interfacing, but instead at just being used as a basic terminal in 3rd world countries

Reading through the forums the SoC has no datasheets available for it for interfacing
the SoC can't be purchased separately outside of the site (less of an issue given the soldering problems)
They've suggested that there will be docs later on for the GPIO's but that it's going to come much later on
So if your planning to use it as something other than a cut down PC your out of luck

A shame really as I wanted something like this for the .Net Micro Framework as a sort of more advanced version of the netduino (64K Ram vs 256Mb Arm11)

Re:No Documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

The pinouts you need are given in the Wiki http://elinux.org/Rpi_Low-level_peripherals

Re:No Documentation

[s0litaire]

They are working on the docs.

They have mentioned many times on their forum that they are holding back on the documentation till just before the boards ship to customers.
They are creating it all from scratch and there's only a hand full of people working on the R-Pi Project, as well as their full time day jobs (few of them work for Broadcom)

Once it ships they will be releasing all the Open Source information they can, They also have Legal issues to work through regarding what Broadcom info they can release and other annoying copyright stuff like that.

What computer DOES come as a kit?

[sunderland56]

Seriously - what computer does come as a component-level kit? Yes, the Altair did, but that was a long time ago. Does anyone really sell a bare motherboard??

Re:What computer DOES come as a kit?

[northerner]

You can build your own microcontroller kit. Many of them have more memory and power than the early PCs.

Plans, bare boards, or complete parts kits are available for many types of micros.

Some options are:

Buy a PCB and add parts: http://kornakprotoblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-avr-3u-dev-board-for.html

Build it on StripBoard: http://www.xappsoftware.com/wordpress/2011/12/16/build-your-own-arduino-for-under-10/

Build it on a BreadBoard: http://gargiullo.com/2010/10/build-your-own-arduino/

AVRs and PICs are popular because they are available as easy to solder thru-hole parts. The newer Arm-Cortex chips offer much more memory, peripherals, and horsepower but are almost all SMT parts.

The local Techshop just got a reflow machine

[tlambert]

The local Techshop just got a reflow machine; also a reballer.

It also has an Acuna Lathe with full CNC, you know, in case you need to carve a full size Darth Vader mask out of aluminum for some reason.

You join for a monthly fee, and then play with things that can cause you to lose fingers to you hearts content.

-- Terry

Re:The local Techshop just got a reflow machine

[Anonymous Coward]

My heart's pretty content with keeping all the fingers that I have, thanks.

Re:The local Techshop just got a reflow machine

[Megane]

And that demonstrates my point exactly. Only the rare few electronics gearheads who will buy into a hackerspace like that would even want to try to assmble this as a kit, after fully understanding what it takes. (I mean, BGA is bad enough, but stacking a BGA chip on top of another chip?) This is the equivalent of buying into a gearhead garage where they have stuff like cranes to lift an engine out of a car... only with a little less force involved.

Not to mention that to do SMT properly with a reflow oven, you still need a solder paste mask. And solder paste, kept in a fridge between uses. Even SparkFun wasn't trying to get around that.

It looks like anonymous was right

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't leave a lasting impact. (Score:-1)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, @12:34AM (#38468480)

as a short penis
thrusting inside receptive anus
come raspberry pi

Trepanning

[bdwoolman]

Oh, Come on! Trepanning can still be needed and very much to the point.

Modern medical practices

Trepanationis a treatment used for epidural and subdural hematomas, and for surgical access for certain other neurosurgical procedures, such as intracranial pressure monitoring. Modern surgeons generally use the term craniotomy for this procedure. The removed piece of skull is typically replaced as soon as possible. If the bone is not replaced, then the procedure is considered a craniectomy. Trepanation instruments are now available with diamond coated rims (Diamond Bone Cutting System), which are less traumatic than the classical trephines with sharp teeth. They are smooth to soft tissues and cut only bone.

w00t.

The Slashdot effect has downed raspberry.org

[Jerry]

nt

"The post also addresses the use of closed source"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't. It says "oh, there's some closed blobs in there, lolz". Seriously, why do vendors feel like they have to get shitty about having proper open drivers?

Hot air

[Prune]

Considering you can buy a hot air soldering system for little over $100 on eBay, I call BS.

Re:Hot air

[BenJaminus]

$100 on ebay and time learning how to use it and get it right etc etc. Considering their target is to advance computer/programming in schools the same way the BBC micro did and that most teachers in UK primary schools don't have time (or money) to photocopy all the resources they want for lessons (and have a life), I'm not at all surprised that it's not going to be available in kit form (at the start).

kit price would be more

[pbjones]

with the automated assembly vs kit form, I would guess that a kit would be 3 x more, because of all of the manual handling required to get kits together. Electronics like this has really moved on from kits.

Darn electron flow...

[Qubit]

Reflow soldering involves heating the components much hotter than they like to be even when powered off.

Yeah, whenever you turn off a system with a processor inside it, all of the electrons have to flow back out of the processor, and over the next hour or two it can heat up even hotter than when the processor was operating.

Easiest way to deal with that is that if you have a 2-prong device and it's not one of those polarized plugs, you can just pull it out of the outlet, flip it around, and plug it back in the other way for an hour or two. That will send the electrons flowing the other direction through the circuit (and the processor), and then you'll have a much smaller cool-down time.

Even without the GPIO you can easily add extra HW

[AC-x]

I'm sure they will release documentation in good time, but even before that it would be easy to add additional custom hardware interfaces through USB in the form of Arduino or other USB supporting hardware platforms.

Also the idea behind the project is not to be a cheap terminal for 3rd world countries (tho it would serve this purpose very well) but as an ultra cheap programmable computer for English school children to encourage more programming in IT lessons and bedroom coding like in the days of the ZX spectrum and C64.

Re:"The post also addresses the use of closed sour

[AC-x]

Complain to Broadcom, as they're the ones forcing the use of these, not the Raspberry Pi guys.

You want a BGA kit?

[AC-x]

Name a single low-cost micro-controller system that is sold in kit form with stacked BGA components.

It IS possible to solder some BGA parts by hand

[scharkalvin]

With a properly designed prototyping board you can solder some kinds of BGA parts by hand.
http://www.schmartboard.com/index.asp?page=products_bga
This is good for experimenting with new parts and engineers use these kinds of tools to bootstrap new hardware designs by saving upfront work laying out a prototype board. Not the kind of thing someone who likes to build 'Heathkits' might want to do though.

Breaking News!

[randomsearch]

I just heard that the Raspberry Pi website CSS has been tweaked.

A new element "checkout_button" has been referenced in the CSS.

Rumours that this is an indication that the Pi will launch soon have reached fever pitch!!!

It's like iLaunch hysteria, but for techies! Yey!

RS