Final PCB artwork
As promised, here are the Gerbers (a visualisation of the printed circuit board or PCB) for the finalised version of the Raspberry Pi. I get several messages every day asking what it can possibly be that we are still working on: I hope you will understand on looking at this why the routing, which has to be quite spectacularly complicated to minimise expensive PCB features and to keep things tiny, took as long as it did! That snarl in the middle is the signal escape for the BCM2835, the chip at the heart of the Raspi. The elves have been working overtime.
The Raspberry Pi is exactly the size of a credit card – 85.60mm x 53.98mm. You can’t tell where the ports are from this picture, but I should have measurements and precise placements for you next week some time (Pete Lomas, who has done the insanely fiddly work on this, is away for the week for some richly deserved time away from Pi and to try to recover what’s left of his eyesight).
This design is almost certain not to change, but we have to reserve the right to make changes if the boards are poorly yielding in manufacture – so please be aware of this if you’re making a case now. We’re in the process of making a very small initial test run of what you see above (to preempt the obvious question, no, you can’t buy one), and will move to larger production when we’re happy that there are no early-life bugs. Because we can’t predict whether or not there will be any, we can’t give you a firm release date, but Pete has engineered what you see here nigh unto death, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for an easy ride.
See if you can guess what my desktop wallpaper is now!
Edited to add: One of our forum members has mocked up a 1:1 scale card model of the board, and put it next to a quarter for scale, with some components like those you’ll see on the real board laid on top. Drop into the forums to have a look and to get a feel for the size of the real thing.
214 comments
Michael Hepworth
Wow, now thats a piece of electronic engineering. Cant wait :)
max1zzz
Awesome guys! Always good to see a even smaller board.
Good to hear Pete is getting some rest, i wouldn’t want to be doing his job.
I’m guessing it’s safe for me to assume we’ll see some pics when the first test boards come in.
Keep up the good work guys, can’t wait to get my mits on one of these
Martin
Really exciting stuff!
Can’t wait to see the final thing :D
Bacan
YAH !!!
Santa will have em in the sack for going under the tree. :-)
Thunder__X
Wow, props to Pete for this work of art!
Waspinator
you call 429px × 284px embiggened?
liz
I’ve just replaced it with a higher-res pic (Eben was refusing to send me one until I threatened not to make his breakfast).
Montekuri
What had he for breakfast?
Raspberry pie? :D
liz
Cinnamon toast and very strong coffee. And thirty stamps to lick.
jojopi
It is still so small that many adjacent tracks and even some pads have run together! Are you scared that we are going to try to beat you to market?
And the correct term is “screenshot”, not “Gerber”.
JE Bailey
the correct term would be “picture” a “screenshot” is a “picture” of an entire “screen.” This would be a “picture” of what the “Gerber” file looks “like” :)
Jimmy Merrild Krag
It’s still not big enough
Jimmy Merrild Krag
Can you by any chance post a vector (svg) image of it? Then we could scale it our selves :)
liz
Not right now – we will be doing when we release the full design, though.
David
Embiggen isn’t a word. Not even a perfectly cromulent one.
UnderSampled
Good Job Pete (and the rest of the team)! You’re almost there!
Tinternetz
Will this layout be used for both the A and B models ?
liz
Yes, it will (although obviously the Model A doesn’t have the ethernet port and USB hub).
UnderSampled
Are there any mounting holes?
liz
There are no mounting holes in this iteration of the design. We hope to ship with some (hopefully 2) mounting holes – there are places on this board where we can fit them in, but that’ll need to wait for Pete’s return. See, for example, the top right where there are lots of leds – holes are cheaper than leds and we reckon we can get by with just 1 or 2 leds. (1 led can be on for power, and blink on and off for when it’s accessing the SD card, for example.)
Leds have caused great argument around the Upton dinner table. Stuff like using a mag jack without leds is a good example where we’re trying to cut down on the pennies.
UnderSampled
Cool. Thanks for the reply. In the meantime, we can always resort to adhesive squares (presuming they don’t mess with the electronics).
Jan
Hmm, I wonder is dual LED (in one package) cheaper than two separate LEDs? If you don’t have in in Magjack, put two on the board instead. One could indicate power/sleep/system alive, the other general activity like USB/SD/Ethernet. Just please don’t put there blue ones, they are expensive anyway :)
argtrak
I absolutely agree with the “please no blue led”. They annoy me to no end. Hard on the eyes, focusing on them is a pain, and they’re all you see in the dark. :(
Give me red, yellow and green all day long (and night) and I’m a happy camper.
jamesh
I’m afraid European legislation means all electronic devices must know have at least one bibbly bobbly blue LED. Extra bright.
kme
Yes. Blue LEDs is very annoying.
pauldow
When I commented about using magenta LEDs in the forum I thought there was some type of inside joke about some clueless EU bureaucrats requiring blue LEDs, but you’re serious!
There are 7 billion people on this planet, and I would think that everyone would have something to contribute to humanity, but as I age it becomes more clear to me that some people just aren’t needed here. Unfortunately there’s some cosmic force that sends them to work for government.
Sancho
Excelent.
Can you share the layers? Seems like incredible effort, congratulations.
Btw, is this the board version A or version B?
Sancho
Sorry, the comment of mine took me 5 minutes of reading and marveling – in the meantime you already replied the board version ;)
liz
We can’t share the layers at present. We’ll probably do that as part of a full release of the design of the board in due course.
Sancho
Understand. Congratulations again anyhow.
UnderSampled
Something’s not adding up, I am trying to print out a 1:1 version, but when I try scaling your picture in photoshop, It comes out to either 85.6mm x 56.48mm or 81.81×53.98, depending on which dimension I am setting. Am I missing something?
liz
(Sums, sums…) I think Eben’s clipped off an edge on this picture. This means the white line isn’t in quite the right place, but the bits inside it are. The measurements in the post are the right ones, FWIW!
Montekuri
I thought something about conversion from inch to mm.
UnderSampled
I accidentally left of the units for my second measurements. They were both in millimeters (the second pair is if I set the height exactly to what Liz specified, having the width match proportionally), so I don’t know where any Imperial measurements could have crept in.
Montekuri
Sorry. What I wanted mean is that the software that created the gerber file use inch.
And when converted to mm there are some errors (roundings).
Jan
Wow, that looks really nice, maybe even too small for the work involved :)
OK, nice material for speculation, I can tell what is basically where, the SD card socket is really huge :) Then I see the micro USB (fused, nice), Ethernet, double USB, maybe the audio jack, analog video on top? Then I’m not sure what is the header/connector on bottom and the other two groups of pins witch fine pitch, something like for FPC? And of course there looks to be some 2.54 mm headers which would be so good for hacking. :) I guess the 2×13 is for general I/O and the smaller for JTAG. For what looks like 4 layer board it is indeed very impressive design.
Now what I don’t see there: any button, maybe for reset (is it really needed though?) and no mounting holes, that kinda bigger concern. I’m sure many folks would get slightly larger board with some holes to embed in some system. I’ll just hope I don’t see the whole board yet and they’re in corners outside. :)
OK, that’s enough for my amateur spotting, I could be wrong on many things.
liz
You’re right on all of those. The header/connector on the bottom (in the middle?) is part of the connection into the HDMI connector.
The two equal-sized fine-pitch connectors, one on the left and one on the right, are managed impedance surface mount connectors for, respectively, CSI-2 camera and DSI display.
Top left, you’ve got some 2.54mm headers. The 2×13 is for GPIO, and the smaller for JTAG. It’s actually a six-layer board – we’re not showing the power and ground planes here.
Jan
Oh right, I forgot about the HDMI. But I’m mostly happy for the GPIO pitch, it will much easier to hack around and build add-on modules for it, thanks.
It’s funny that for my main project for RasPi I don’t need the cool featured GPU at all, but I need the GPIO for some sensors and to drive quite large LED matrix panel. I have it ready for like a year and made some experiments with 8-bit driver but for more functions and better ecosystem I actually chose to go with networked Linux board and RasPi is perfect, cheaper and I’m sure more accessible than any other Linux board.
Burak
As you talk about the camera socket,
will there be -maybe at some time later- a compatible camera in the shop ? Or a list of compatible camera modules somewhere?
liz
We’re hoping to produce a few add-on boards next year, one of which will be a camera module. (Actually, we’ll probably make two – one high res and one low res, at different price points, for different projects.)
MmmPi
Could you give a general idea of what the price for the low & high res cameras might be? Of course subject to change. Even a vague range like 15-35 for low res.
clive
Value Gadgeteer :D
hippy
“Top left, you’ve got some 2.54mm headers”
That’s excellent news for hardware hackers. 2.54mm = 0.1″ in old money. Thanks.
hamjudo
Are you planning on shipping the boards with male headers, female headers, or with the GPIO holes empty?
liz
They’ll be empty.
Zalma
That’s a small disappointment. Having to solder those manually can be quite hard job for small board that is packed full.
I hope you reconsider since headers are practically free and also helps connecting future add-in boards.
But other than that looks awesome.
liz
Good grief, you guys are hard to please! There will be other people who are chuffed to bits that there’s some soldering they can do on the board, and we’re aware we can’t please all the people all the time. (And “practically free” is very far from actually *being* free 8) .)
Zalma
That is maybe true. I hope there isn’t many heat sensitive components nearby or we may see many destroyed boards.
jamesh
@Zalma. Components are a lot less sensitive to heat than most people realise. For example, you can heat gun a BGA SoC until the solder melts and it should be fine. (after all, that’s how you get them off a board!)
Niels
Great work! Can’t wait to get my hands on one.
Will it be possible to use the HDMI pins for something else than HDMI?
liz
No.
Josh
As I believe it to be, the chip only supports HDMI. Not VGA or Composite, unfortunately.
Only downside I can find to this awesome board.
kme
So, did it end as a four or six layer board?
liz
Six. We’re not showing the ground or power planes in this picture.
Shish
I didn’t know that PCBs could have more layers than just “top” and “bottom” :O
RPi is teaching me new things about computing already :-)
Kendall Baker
It looks amazing. I’m not sure how you all managed to pack all that hardware into a credit card sized pcb. Truly amazing. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
Shish
Credit card is a nice description for the height and width, but I presume it’s going to be slightly more deep than a credit card?
Though that does make me wonder, how long until PC components are all ~1mm thick and they clip together like jigsaw pieces rather than plugs and sockets as we know them now…
ansbaradigeidfran
The USB ports will have to be…
liz
It will – it’ll be the same height as 2 stacked USB ports.
Nightwing2012
One single word…. Wow! ^_^
Thank the person that did this and the team over there!
Wonder if any of the jacks/connectors could be use as mounts for the board? Just wondering…
Panyk
As a budding EE myself, I solemnly swear I will stop whining about having to trace and debug my ‘difficult’ circuits. Holy snarl, batman D:
Bikko
When the final product is done what are you going to do with alpha boards?
Josh
As far as I know, they all went to different testers back in the Summer
duncan
I think liz said in the past that they are going to be signed by the guys and galls at rasPI and ebay’d
liz
Not the alphas, but some of the production boards. The alphas are staying with the developers who’ve done so much work on them.
mounter
Holes for mounting the beast would be nice, even for the cost of a bigger board.
mounter
And if you have mounting holes and a angled GPIO Connector you can stack up boards and connect them via a ribbon cable.
That gives much more functionality then just being small :-)
Jongoleur
Mindblowing stuff – congratulations all round!
(Now we see why its taken so long to finalise the board layout…)
Here’s a thought – you’re going to auction off a small number of signed special edition Pi’s on eBay, and they’ll get a lot of interest. How about a similar thing for those with smaller pockets? Having seen the board layout image, I’d suggest eBaying some A4 sized framed giclée images of the layout signed by the development team.
Its definitely a work of art!
(Unsigned unmounted prints could also be an interesting bit of merchandise for the store too…)
matt_heys
+1 Nice idea
Plus it’s something that can be done fairly cheaply in small batches to judge demand.
If they number them too I want the 2nd one after you.
Jacques Richer
+1 Hope this idea doesn’t get lost…
Just thinking about laying out a board this tight gives me headaches.
Barnaby
Wow.
I had never really believed the whole ‘size of a credit card’ thing before. I always thought that was a nifty marketing term that you would eventually say “Ah, we couldn’t quite do it”. But that’s awesome. Puts my double layer, hand-drawn-on-the-copper boards to shame!
meltwater
Hi,
Any chance you could release the PCB silkscreen, would love to have an accurate idea of where everything is placed. With that and the released image of the Alpha board should give a good idea of what to expect.
From reading on the forums am I correct in understanding all the header pins/switches will not be populated on the board (no issue for me, just handy to know).
Thanks.
liz
That’s right. We’ll be releasing the silkscreen at some point when Pete’s back from his travels.
meltwater
Excellent. Thanks.
Davespice
Exciting stuff guys, good luck for the first batch run!
jena
Do you thing that the “operating system” we’ll use will be speed (optimized specialy for the “ra-pi” ?
liz
It will be, yes. Several distros are creating Raspi-specific spins for us.
Hazor
The FAQ says Debian, Fedora, and Arch from the start. I use Arch and would like to run it on the RPi, but a quick search of their forums the other day revealed no information. Presently they only officially support i686/x86_64, not ARM. Will the ARM port be specifically configured for the RPi’s hardware, or will it be generic to support many ARM devices?
liz
They’ve set one of their devs on it. He posts here as PepeDog – if you look for him in the forums you should be able to find out.
asb
You want to look at archlinuxarm.org
zashi
Even if there’s no official port, I’m working on my own arch-based derivative.
I need to setup more hardware to get a dedicated build system up and running, but I’ve got an ARM arch root FS running in a translator. I’ll get the customized kernel going once I have some more info / more examples to work with.
EdgarMCFalken
Gaudemus Gaudemus, habemus final PCB :)
liz
Floreat!
yetihehe
But I hope there will be NO smoke…
Ed Jason
Playing with the schematics image . . . by accident I found a Puppy . . .
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1771/gerbers4.png
Puppy Linux is coming to Pi and the board is welcoming us . . . [Well that is my story until the medication wears off]
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM
liz
That is *surprisingly* adorable. ;)
Kevin
Where did you get the source for that image? It looks much more detailed than http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gerbers2.png, which is what’s currently posted.
Ed Jason
It comes from Tmxxine the Open Source Time Travel project, which uses Puppy Linux http://tmxxine.com/ The future is rosy. The future is raspberry. Pi ‘r squared.
Eggn1n3
WOW! You have all done a great job! I am already having fun with this board without having it ;-)
jena
Liz You’re very prompt ! Thank You :D
sonicase
cool
Tulio Adriano C Muniz
Posted on my website in Brazilian Portuguese, news about the new layout of the PCB Raspberry Pi: http://www.tulixlinux.org/?p=66
John
My take: start shipping something. Almost anything so long as it actually works. Size not important. Double the price would be fine. Use any profit to fund the future ones.
For many, bigger size would be an advantage.
liz
For our target market, it wouldn’t. And nor would doubling the price. If we went to market selling something for $50 when we’ve been promising $25, we’d deserve to fail.
Perhaps you haven’t factored in the fact that if we’re selling something, we need to abide by the Sale of Goods Act. Which means that if we sell a bug-ridden product (which is what you’d get if we were to skip testing, as you suggest), customers would be well within their rights to send them back and demand refunds. Which would swiftly bankrupt us. I’m kind of glad you’re not one of our business advisers!
bacterio
The fact that you weren’t be able to make the pcb with 4 layers and needing 6, will the raspberrypi be more expensive than the price planned?
I’m really astonished with such good electronic components, and a 6 layer pcb with such a price.
I think you will do a kind of revolution if you manufacture large quantities of this gadget.
liz
No – we’re well within the price margin with six layers, and we’ll definitely be selling at $25 and $35. And there’s no upper limit on the number we plan to make, as long as people buy them.
meltwater
It is when the hidden chip is activated after the first 5 million are sold you find out the real purpose of the venture….of course that is joke…
Going to be interesting to see how many make it into the wild, can I request a counter on the shop for every official board shipped?
I hadn’t appreciated it is now smaller than the Alpha board. Good luck with the testing, you guys & gals have done an incredible job.
jamesh
How did you hear about that information? We have a leak somewhere it seems.
liz
Damn it. There goes my smallpox time bomb.
Patrick Couto
Who is manufacturing your PCBs?
liz
Pete, who laid out the PCBs, is MD of Norcott in Cheshire, where we’ll be manufacturing the boards.
duncan
I hope there factory has good security now you have said that, Sometimes I wonder how far some Raspberrypians would go to get one early !
Smulders
Mmmm, that’s only a nine hour drive plus one very large tunnel away. I might take a couple of weeks of unpaid leave to snag me some Raspberry….
Jongoleur
Rather closer for me, I use the M56 quite regularly….. 8-)
(actually, if you Google “Norcott”, it says its Warrington, but I always think of that area as more Runcorny….)
Josh
Hooray for the GPI/O!
vfrico
I cant wait…
Kumar
Amazing , waiting to get my hands on this
electrodacus
Great hope it will be available soon. The 2.54mm GPIO is great.
I think there are 26 pins on the GPIO connector do you know the pin-out ?
Anthony
I’ve made a drawing of the I/O component placements for all to see, it is here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49705216/raspberrypi_io-placement-11-15-11.png
I’m not too thrilled with it due to the SD card being at the opposite end of the USB and Ethernet. If HDMI and power had been at that end, it would “flow” better for wiring and mounting.As it stands, every connection of this will be a right angle cable mess. I was so looking forward to a pass-through design where most used connections for I/O run in a straight line though the board.
I miss the original USB stick, that is what captured my attention. This design while very very impressive for size, suffers from a lack of I/O foresight. If it were my design, I’d move the SD card to the side and put HDMI and Mico-USB together on the opposite end of the USB and Ethernet. The would allow for simple connections on the back of a HDTV that has USB and HDMI all together in the rear recess.
Sorry, that’s just how I view it from an engineering perspective having made hundreds of electronic computing projects.
Love what it can be and do, but I absolutely hate/despise/loathe the I/O placement choices made.
liz
I have tens of things to say in response to that, and I’m not saying any of them because I am an astonishingly polite woman. Not to mention passive-aggressive.
Anthony_
Liz, you shouldn’t take my comment personally, I’m thrilled with the idea, but just unhappy with the cabling arrangment due to the I/O placement.
Try to imaging connecting this thing to the back of the HDTV keeping everything neat and tidy. I could make this work with two small cables, one for Micro-USB power, and on for HDMI, with a WiFi dongle on the other end. It could all hang in the recess, supported by those tow cables.
Now due to the right angle for HDMI, that won’t work.
JohnoFon
Since RasPi is a charity set up to provide a source of low-cost computing, rather than a corporate money-maker, I’m guessing they would be happy for you to develop your own, improved, version.
And then, five years into the project and within a month of the target release date, you can publish your schematics and someone will come along and rubbish your design because it doesn’t suit an application they’ve got in mind. :-{
(Oh dear! Does this count as a flame? I’ve never been rude on a forum before, and I was aiming at ‘sarcastic’ but my lack of skill may be showing.)
jamesh
If you can make it work with two cable, fill your boots. On the other hand since the layout for this took over a month of ‘tinkering’ by a professional layout dude perhaps, just perhaps, it’s a bit more difficult than you seem to think.
guru
Would a right-angle HDMI or Micro-USB adaptor spoil the aesthetic for you?
Seems like a viable solution to route cables in the right direction even if it’s not the most elegant solution for you.
http://u.guru.gg/rightanglehdmi
bob
“… an engineering perspective having made hundreds of electronic computing projects…”
lol. please state your engineering credentials. htpc builder and arduino tinkerer does not afford you an “engineering perspective”
please ignore complaining from unintended end users who are crying about how your design doesn’t fit their plans to toss xbmc on it and “design” themselves a cheap “custom engineered” htpc.
Jon Smirl
Is Broadcom going to put the BCM2835 into disto so that normal people can buy it?
liz
Not as far as I know. They were going a *long* way outside their usual practices in selling us the chips we’re using in the quantities (a few tens of thousands at a time) that we buy them in. Most of their customers buy in batches of many millions, and my understanding is that it doesn’t make commercial sense for them to sell them to individuals, partly because of margin, and partly because of the support liability.
jamesh
What Liz said – it’s not cost effective for Broadcom to sell in that way – their entire sales and support structure is built on a different mechanism.
Kyle Erickson
Cool project!
Will you guys be looking at the multipack setup for these cards to optimize assembly throughput and minimize fab cost?
Based on your board dims it looks like a 3 board x 3 board multipack with outriggers on two sides would replicate 4 times on a typical fab vendor panel (commonly 18″x24″). A multipack that fits 4x on the fab vendor panel is often a sweet spot to getting good throughput in assembly while still getting decent yield from the fab vendor side of things. Maybe you are already considering this part of cost optimization or know more about it than me, but if not it’s something to look at!
liz
Yes, we are doing. It’s particularly good for optimising the manual elements (i.e. carrying boards around) – we found that you can actually end up spending a noticeable chunk of money on a guy putting boards in a machine, and multipack minimises this.
davnel
Being an engineer and PCB designer myself, I can appreciate the work in this board. Is there any chance of you publishing (or sending me) the Gerber files, fab, and assembly drawings for it? Fab and assembly can be in Gerber form or AutoCAD DWG, if you like. I use Protel 99SE for layout.
Also, and most important, multiple units mean only one NRE and programming charge for an 8 or 16 board setup. Makes pick-n-place much more efficient, too. Just remember to have them sand off or mill the edges of the boards where the units join or they may not fit the cases if they’re tight.
liz
We should be publishing the lot later on for everybody when we release the whole design.
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Jamie Lokier
Just a passing thought: I hope the micro-USB port is bonded strongly enough to the board. I’m thinking of Nokia N900, whose USB socket broke off for me and a lot of other people after about a year of normal use due to inadequate bonding.
liz
We through-drill everything (these ports get a lot of abuse from the developers, who have to swap cables around a lot) to make sure that won’t happen.
RaJa
It’s great! I’m waiting for a ready device to use it in my robot.
Гаджети. Пристрої для гиків / Остаточний дизайн схеми Raspberry Pi » Цікаві гаджети » infia.net
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cameron
Looks great! Thank you for these updates. I feel like once a company stops updates and is slow coming out with new stuff everyone looses interest in what the company is doing. Once again thank you!
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Final PCB artwork | Raspberry Pi | arm | Scoop.it
[…] Final PCB artwork | Raspberry Pi […]
john
What PCB layout software did you use, Cadence, Mentor, Altium?
liz
I don’t know – that’s a question for Pete when he returns.
Anthony_
My goodness, all that vitriol because I point out what I consider a weakness in the design which might be improved even at this late stage, and no thanks from anyone for offering the pictorial to help everyone visualize the layout.
And I’m accused of being ungrateful. Sheesh. As for Bob’s mention of “unintended end users”.
So this project is only for the pure and anointed then?
I produce systems ranging from small dedicated PC’s and the way up to server level rack mounted products, and the story is almost always the same, especially from China, thoughts about cable management are generally not considered in the final design.
Don’t get me wrong, I want this project to succeed, and I hope millions are produced. Over on the forum Liz bemoaned people asking questions about why it doesn’t look like the original USB stick design. Well, that had some very distinct advantages of layout that the current product does not. Thousands, perhaps millions saw that design and liked it. So did I.
If people are happy with a rats nest of wires coming out at all angles from this new unit, then they’ll be happy with it. That doesn’t mean everyone has to be, and people who have alternate ideas shouldn’t be demeaned for saying them when the intent is to help make the product better and more widely applicable.
liz
The keystick format prototype was a proof of concept. It does not have the features we need to satisfy our intended user group. It can’t. It doesn’t have enough room around the edges for ports, and it doesn’t have space for memory.
Measure the length of the ports that are required, and the space required for things like GPIO. Measure the periphery of the board itself. Consider that we have to keep things as small as we can for reasons of cost. And if you really still believe we can make changes which would require a) redefining the rules of physics and b) rerouting the entire board at this stage in development, come back to me!
Anthony_
The point about GPIO speaks to tinkerers, people who will adapt this board to purposes.
That’s a very strong point for making the I/O work with commonly available electronics enclosures, like extruded aluminum and plastic boxes where the ends can be milled for ports with widely available hobby level CNC machines.
EWH
Thanks for posting that picture with the connectors labeled. I’m really interested in getting the exact dimensions and placement of the ports for mocking up case designs, so I hope that happens soon. This is going to be a high-volume item with an unusual shape – I think a custom plastic case is really the way to go, and I have some ideas for how that could be done without a huge up-front investment in tooling.
From the perspective of case design, the current connector layout could certainly be improved, and I think it could be done without raising costs.
It does look as if the SD slot and HDMI could be swapped without changing the card dimensions, though the entire BGA rat’s nest would have to be shifted up a bit. That would be much preferable to the current layout, and might free up space on that edge, allowing the RCA video out to be next to the HDMI, which makes more sense. (The routing on that last might be particularly difficult, though.) The details usually make these things more difficult than they look at first, so the HDMI and SD might have to stay put.
Swapping the position of the audio jacks and the LEDs would be nice, too, and certainly looks possible given that they are right next to each other off in a corner. That would allow all the most commonly plugged/unplugged I/O to all be on the same side. OTOH, the current design has the audio next to the RCA video, which also makes sense. If the RCA video and the HDMI are moved to the left edge, it looks like there is still room to put the audio on the left edge as well. (Is it just me or is there a new microphone jack on this design? Definitely a nice thing to have.) Also, 5 LEDs seems more than is really needed – 2 LEDs would be enough, I think\ and should save a few cents. How are users supposed to tell 5 different LEDs apart when they are within about a centimeter of each other? Any labels so short and closely packed would be practically illegible anyway. Ideally the different LEDs would be widely spaced, and each located next to the bit on which it is reporting. but perhaps there is a manufacturing reason to cluster them. (In opaque cases the LEDs will generally be hidden anyway, but I’m thinking of using a transparent blue material.)
The lack of any provision for mounting is a real shortcoming but I’m not sure where the holes can go as it is now. Perhaps the GPIO could be shifted slightly to the right, to free up the upper left corner for a screw hole? It looks like it would be pretty easy. The diagonally opposite corner could likely be freed up if the ethernet can be moved up a bit closer to the USB jacks. That would allow a much sturdier case design. Bringing out the ground plane to the outer surface area around the screw holes might be a nice touch, but it likely wouldn’t really be needed.
The design is very exiting, and I hope it can continue to be improved.
Anthony_
Liz mentioned that some mounting holes are being considered. That is very important too and I hope that doesn’t fall by the wayside.
Another thing to consider (and part of why I’m so adamant about I/O being on the ends) is the venerable extruded aluminum electronics box like this one:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/6008h-85.html
Using a box like this would have been super easy if the HDMI was on the end with the power, but the current design makes it near impossible to use a common box like this.
It would have been super easy to take off the shelf boxes like this and setup a CNC run to mill the holes for I/O.
James Basoo
Awesome…Looking forward to this. You guys should put this on shirts, something like this http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40671103/RaspberrPi-Shirt.jpg
Anthony_
Liz, redefining the rules of physics? No, it’s just routing. I don’t understand why you are getting so angry about this. I’m trying my best to help you make this the best it can be.
The Alpha boards had the SD card on the longest side. A good place for them.
See my comment below about project boxes and how the current design precludes one of the world’s most common electronic project boxes from being easily used.
Question for you: have you personally ever built up any electronics project like this?
If you have not, perhaps then this is why you don’t understand where I’m coming from.
liz
Not angry; if stuff like this made me angry I wouldn’t last long doing what I do here. You are not being particularly helpful, though, whatever your stated intentions; I think you’ve missed what Raspberry Pi is for. This is a very CHEAP computer. Cheapness is paramount, and as you’ll understand if you’re a PCB engineer, silicon costs money, so the board has to be as small as we can make it and still fit all the components around the edges. It’s small because it has to be cheap, not cheap because it has to be small. Because cheapness is so important, the cases we make will be made of plastic, not of more expensive materials. Ideally, we’d like to be able to bundle them with the boards themselves when we come to the educational release.
I’m only a hobbyist when it comes to electrical engineering, but I have built motor controllers on breadboard and messed around with Arduino. It’s beyond the point. You know very well that I’m not a professional engineer; I have a suspicion that you’re trying to tickle me.
Fortunately, the guys building the Raspi *are* professional engineers (and they’re more ticklish than I am), and they have built this board not for beauty, or ease of fitting behind your telly, but to minimise cost. The low price is absolutely paramount in what we’re trying to do here (namely, reaching the largest possible number of people who can’t currently access computers). The routing that we have is optimal for cost. I may not be able to route a board myself, but I do understand that there are issues like EM interference which dictate placement as well as issues around complexity which affect cost, and I’ve seen the various iterations we’ve been through to try to chase that cost down.
A question for you. Have you ever built an electronics project like this where optimising as hard as you can for low price has been the biggest issue at the table? If you have not, perhaps then this is why you don’t understand where I’m coming from.
Adam Riley
Anthony_ – That box looks plenty big enough for you to buy some extensions cables and reroute all the connections to the front, no?
Anthony_
Yes, but that’s just an example, much smaller versions exist. If the RasPi was designed to I/O on the ends, a small version of the box in plastic or aluminum could be produced that would be a custom fit with snap on ends milled for the connectors. It would be a thing of beauty and simplicity.
If the goal was to make it credit card sized, then the need to put it in a much bigger case and add I/O adapters rather defeats that advantage don’t you think?
Adam Riley
It works fine for me as it is (I don’t need a case) and in my opinion it *will* be a thing of beauty. A credit card sized computer makes my mind boggle.
But at the end of the day the goal was not to make “a thing of beauty and simplicity” nor was it to make “it credit card sized”; the goal was to make it cost $25 and that is what they have done. If the foundation say this is the best layout that they could get for the cost then I believe them.
Anthony_
Liz, I count pennies on every circuit board I’ve ever designed, including some smaller than this, though not quite as cool.
Please don’t conflate my issues with cabling and I/O placement with my respect for what has been accomplished.
Clearly your heels are dug in, and the considerations I raise for ease of mounting, enclosures, and cabling are falling on deaf ears. So I’ll shut up and go away now.
jamesh
Not deaf ears at all. Ears that have already spent a long time figuring out how to do this, and don’t appreciate someone coming in at the last moment complaining about something which nothing could be done about. I fear that your knowledge of these things doesn’t quite stack up to the task in hand. (Like Liz, I am not a layout person, I leave that to the very experienced professionals who sweated blood and lots of their personal time over the design). Having plugs out in all direction may be a PITA to a minority, but if there is no alternative……there is no alternative. And certainly no alternative in the 3 or so weeks left to manufacture.
Once the diagrams are released, perhaps you would like to have a go at making the design work how YOU want it. Then come back to show us how it’s done. Who knows – it might even be possible! And we will thank you for the design, and plaudits will rain down on you from heaven. Or at least the Raspi office.
EWH
Having plugs in all directions is a PITA for more than a minority, and quite likely there is an alternative (see my reply to Anthony above). Getting feedback from the users is a good idea before declaring a design final, no matter how great the designer, and particularly the designer should be available to listen and respond to comments. Likely there are reasons why some improvements are impractical, but we have no way of knowing. I think Anthony’s comments are valuable, and he deserves thanks.
jamesh
Show that there is an alternative and I am sure we would listen. At the moment all I hear is people complaining but not coming up with anything better, apart from ‘move the connectors’.
I think people are underestimating the sheer complexity of fitting everything on a board this size (which is necessary because of the cost limitations). I believe it took over 6 weeks to layout this board. It went from 4 to 6 layers and even then was difficult to get to this stage.
As to listening and responding, we listened, we’ve responded. “Yes, it’s a PITA for some, No, we can’t do anything about it”. However, I would ask how many companies actually get feedback from their users prior to finalising a design like this? I cannot think of any to be honest. All it would do would be delay the final design, designing something like this by committee would be painful to say the least, and probably for no perceivable benefit for the majority of users.
liz
I’m with James on people underestimating the complexity of what Pete’s done here. It’s not just careful jigsaw puzzling, although I understand that that’s many people’s first reaction to seeing layout. There’s considerably more to it than that – he’s had to use as little high-density interconnect as possible for cost reasons (hard, this, on six layers, especially when the BGA is so small). The track and and gap size has to be kept large (again, this means cheap), and there’s electromagnetic interference to route away, along with a bunch more stuff I don’t understand well enough to enumerate.
Put your money where your mouths are: if you think you can do better, do better. One thing we want to see come out of this project is a market for many computers around this price point. If you believe what we’re doing isn’t optimal, you should feel free to go and compete.
AJ
Can it be used for high end image processing ….
jamesh
Well, what do you mean by high end image processing? It’s a pretty large subject….!
Andrew Senior
Hey I don’t want to pour coldish water on a Brit project but this pales against http://arduino.cc/en. Open source and everything else you guys are fighting for. Dig around. If you follow the links to British sites you’ll even find ARM boards at twenty quid or so complete with tools to learn from.
Katawa
They’re really different beasts, arduino is a microcontroller which is more for robotics and other sensory/automation tasks, it includes many i/o pins and add-on options for achieving more varied tasks and excellent customization.
RaspberyPi is a, cheap, powerful, computer that has been designed from the start to enable children, 3rd worlders, or just people on a tight budget, enjoy and learn from computers that thy normally just couldn’t afford. It’s built in ability to plug into just about any type of television a person might have adds greatly to its ability to reach an audience anywhere in the world. Combine that with well supported software options like linux, the ability to get someone on the internet straight out of the box(huge), and its powerful gpu, it really outshines arduino for the role it’s been designed for.
I can’t imagine ever getting an arduino with that kind of capability for the price Pi comes out at, especially when you consider the usb and networking options which are their own add-on shields you’d need to buy seperately for an arduino-type board.
I love arduino for its i/o options and customisability but Pi out of the box at the price it’s at is much more suited to bringing technology to people. And given time I’m sure people will breakout the Pi boards, and we’ll be using them for what used to be arduino tasks anyway.
Jules
“If you follow the links to British sites you’ll even find ARM boards at twenty quid or so complete with tools to learn from.”
All the ones I’ve seen in this price range are based on the STM32 range of microcontrollers, which while great, aren’t in the same league as we’re talking here. Most notably, they are not powerful enough to run Linux, as they typically only have either 16K or 32K of RAM. To pick on the first site I find by following your instructions, a typical example of their £20-ish boards is this one: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23_29_41&products_id=837 which at about the same price as the model B raspberry pi has 16K of RAM and runs at 32MHz — the only board on that site that comes even close to the pi’s spec is http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23_29_43&products_id=111 which has half the memory of the model A, lacks the GPU and display drivers, runs at about a quarter of the speed and costs ten times as much.
jamesh
I’m thinking you haven’t really looked in to this enough to make that cold water comment!
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Adam Riley
Really? How exactly does it pale against Arduino? And where can I buy an Arduino board for 20 quid?
John Griessen
Congrats on getting close to release at your target price! Wish you luck in the yields. I am interested in future uses as the core of lab instruments. Do you think of selling mere hundreds of Broadcomm chips or doing any special board runs a year or so from now? If so, what software did you use for schematic and layout? Open tools like gEDA or KiCAD? What layout DRC rules were needed for that BGA package?
About the orientation of connectors complaints — I can see making a 3D printed enclosure of plastic or maybe ceramic that would get around that quite well. If printed by a makerbot, it would be a little rough, but good for a test and then make a mold and fab some. Even some rough plastic enclosures could be fun if painted as an art class project for the school to use in other classes. So, I don’t see so much to complain about, and I’m an experienced engineer with creds.
hamjudo
Yes. A populated board will be approximately 10mm thick. On a level table, if a r-Pi is placed under one end of a monitor, it will make that the “high end”.
But that is just one definition for “high end”.
Back in 1978, I wrote my very first computer programs on an Apple ][ (or sometimes written as Apple II), computer with 4k bytes of RAM, and integer basic. That computer had two graphics formats. The “Lo Res” format was 40×40 pixels with 4 lines of text, or 40×48 pixels. The “Hi Res” format was 280×192 pixels. Therefore, based on my extensive personal experience, all of the graphics options of the r-Pi are significantly higher resolution, than high res.
hamjudo
Oh dang. I replied to a somewhat rude, sarcastic question, but that question was deleted. So now my rude sarcastic response is left dangling without context.
Is it possible for me to delete my response? If not, could the moderator make it go away?
liz
Er – not sure we’ve deleted any comments (James doesn’t usually, and I certainly haven’t.) If it’s the one about high-end graphics, it’s a few inches up, but it’s still there!
hamjudo
My bad. The dangers of tabbed browsing and distractions. I clicked on “reply” in one tab. This created the correct “Leave a Reply” box. Picked up a child from school. Returned home. Entered my reply in a superficially similar looking “Leave a Reply” box. Then I panicked when things weren’t nested as I expected them to be.
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Diego
Hi!
Will you ship to South America?
liz
Yes.
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Anon
Steve Jobs would say its ugly. Build it again!
jamesh
But them he would charge $599 for it, and would patent it so no-one else could make one!!!
meltwater
This device could be the start needed for the next Steve Jobs, it’s aimed at very similarly minded people after-all.
Anthony_
@jamesh “…don’t appreciate someone coming in at the last moment complaining ”
I hadn’t planned on commenting again, but that’s a bit unfair. If you don’t want people commenting about the design, then don’t offer a forum for us to do so.
I’ve mentioned the issue of connector placement twice before on forum and on this blog, even before Alpha boards were complete, and got no substantive response.
“…about something which nothing could be done about. ”
Liz tried to tell me the laws of physics had to be changed, now you say nothing can be done about it. It seems like it is a matter of choice rather than impossibility.
In the remote solar power applications that I envision for this product, boxing it will require a bigger box with bulkhead connections to get around the angle problems of wiring, so the credit card size really has no value.
Ditto for the dedicated video display application I envision, which would allow this device to be powered by USB ports on the back of the TV set. It will have to be reboxed with bulkhead connectors to get around the right angle problems of the HDMI.
I’m just wondering why the new mini/micro sized HDMI connector wasn’t chosen instead of the full sized one. People will have to buy/provide an HDMI cable anyway, so there’s no cost impact there mini to full size cables can be had on Ebay for just over $2, and the smaller amount of real estate the mini HDMI uses might have allowed for better I/O placement in the board.
I fully understand the issue of why you didn’t choose the micro sized SD card, due to cost and availability at this stage. That makes sense. The HDMI placement and connector choice does not, especially since third world computers for classroom applications are likely to use the composite video connection rather than HDMI.
So let me ask this respectfully.
Will there be a version 2 of this board where perhaps the I/O placement considerations will change?
Or perhaps, a slightly more expensive version of this board done differently, where OEM’s/system integrators like myself who see this platform as exciting and useful for a variety of embedded devices might get a slightly more adaptive friendly design? Right now I can envision three, but the HDMI placement give me fits in trying to case it. It means that each case would have to be custom molded, where if I could get the HDMI, power on one end, USB, network on the other, I could drop this onto a carrier board and put it into an extruded case with board rails like this with only CNC machining for the end caps I/O ports.
Casing is far more difficult than wiring. I’d rather give money to buy one/get one than have to tosh it to custom casing that is more expensive than a simple CNC job on a stock case.
Or, barring that, could I design a daughter board to mesh with the GPIO connectors and get all the things I’m looking for there, and add my own connectors?
I’m sorry if I come off as a PITA, but when you see what applications I have plans for, I think you see me as one of your biggest fans.
Thanks for your consideration.
themysticalneo
“I’m just wondering why the new mini/micro sized HDMI connector wasn’t chosen instead of the full sized one. People will have to buy/provide an HDMI cable anyway, so there’s no cost impact there mini to full size cables can be had on Ebay for just over $2, and the smaller amount of real estate the mini HDMI uses might have allowed for better I/O placement in the board.”
Don’t you think that if the intended User had eBay access then they wouldn’t be needing a computer. Defeating the purpose of this project entirely?
Anthony_
@themysticalneo
Those are the people who would be using a composite video cable and a TV monitor. Anyone who owns am HDTV cabale of HDMI likely has Ebay/net access either in their home/work or available via a net cafe.
Jessie
So you pretty much want the foundation to build you a specific model just for your needs? I guess I don’t see your point. They sell right angle connectors and adapters for all these ports if you want to make a “bulkhead” go ahead. Furthermore, no one is stopping you from using some solder wick or a solder sucker and putting on whatever connectors you want. I plan on doing some solder work as soon as I get mine to suit my needs. It is just a tad rude to complain to a non-profit about a $25 to $35 computer. That is like standing in line at the soup kitchen and complaining that they couldn’t make you some Kobe beef medium-rare.
AntiAnthony
“Liz tried to tell me the laws of physics had to be changed, now you say nothing can be done about it. It seems like it is a matter of choice rather than impossibility.”
Unless you live somewhere where the laws of physics can be changed, I don’t see the disconnect from their two statements.
Where I do see the disconnect is from your perspective, it’s just a matter of physical real-estate and should be a simple matter moving traces from one place to another. But have you considered that with a densely populated multi-layered board, it’s not so trivial since they have to compensate for things like parasitic capacitance or cross talk from inductive coupling?
jamesh
I’ll try and cover all the points raised above in one go…
Mini HDMI. Not robust enough, and although cables are getting cheaper, full size HDMI is much more common. Also the sockets are more expensive.
Very experienced board designers have been working on this board for some time. There are many many issues making a board of this size, which have been covered above. I’m not saying the board is perfect for everyone, but for its intended audience it will do the job. I’m also not saying that a different layout with connectors in different places (perhaps more appropriate for some tasks) is impossible. What I am saying is that connector placement was not at the top of the list. When you have a list of priorities, you start at the top and work down. By the time connector placement gets considered, it might be impossible to move them without breaking some higher priority requirements. What is annoying is people coming in saying that can do a better job of placement when they have no idea how complicated a job it was even getting to this stage, or what priorities were given to the board designer. Now you could argue that the priorities were wrong. But that only applies to whatever YOU want to use the board for, not what the foundation want to use the board for.
It’s possible a new board design would move connectors. But it would also change processor, memory, pin outs etc, so would be a completely different kettle of fish. The same design rules for the board will apply unless priorities change. I doubt, but have no visibility, that a more expensive board will be designed to sell alongside the A and B, since they already cover the target market.
As I said before nothing can be done with the current incarnation of the board. We have a deadline to meet, so any change now is too late (the board took some weeks longer to design than expected because it was so damn difficult to do) and the board meets the foundations requirements, so we don’t need to change it anyway.
As I said above somewhere, once the schematics are done (and released), people are welcome to re-layout the board as they want. If you can do better then you are more than welcome to try. I think you might be quite surprised at how difficult it will be to get connectors exactly where you want them and still maintain the price point required by the foundation. You could do it by making the board bigger, almost certainly, and using different connectors, but those both increase cost too much.
Powerpuff
@Jamesh,
First of all, thanks for all your efforts and the great job that has been put into this design. I can see where you’re coming form but at the same time I too wish there was an alternative to the star-like distribution of the connectors.
You mentioned that at some point the schematics will be available for those of us who would like to redo the board layout. Have you considered the possibility of selling only the components as a kit (minus the PCB) in large quantities so we could OEM our own boards while $25 or $35 worth of components per board would still go to charity via RasPi? Using your BOM order quantities and volume pricing on the SoC it will be a win-win to everyone.
liz
See http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=1135.0 – unfortunately we won’t be offering that as an option. It adds extra cost and admin by introducing new manufacturing and fulfilment steps.
bacterio
@liz, what is proposing powerpuff it’s very very interesting, and can’t be overseen.
It’s not to give pcb’s with some components not soldered, it’s just giving all components desoldered so the pcb doesn’t need to go to the assembly fab.
I know me and other few people like me are extreme cases, but making the advanced users happy, would be another power differentiation respect other boards. And some of us probably will develop advanced hardware or soft applications to raspberry.
I myself produce hdi boards at home, there are a lot of crazy people out there. :-D
jamesh
Don’t blame me for the efforts – that is entirely down to people who know what they are doing!! Board layout is like magic to me!
We hope the schematics will be available eventually.
Check out this picture – shows how small the SoC is…
[IMG]http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w143/JamesHughes_photos/RaspberryPi/2011-10-01-018.jpg[/IMG]
Not somethig you could solder at home, and if you want to buy the SoC itself you would need to go to Broadcom, and they only sell in large quantities.
bacterio
@jamesh
that picture is poetry, i see why it was difficult to route that bga :D, i would use microvia-in-pad here and i congrat the engineer that has routed the board with 6 layers and without hdi goodies.
Can you post the picture on the other side to see the pop memory connections? Just curiosity.
Thankyou, and keep the good work
jamesh
Actually that is a picture of a BRCM2727, which is a smaller chip than the 2835, but the BGA pitch is the same. The 2727 just has a Videocore 3 GPU in it, no Arm. So the 2835 has even more balls….
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Anthony_
Thanks for the update, please tell me that you’ll have two mounting holes at least. Without that, it really becomes a nightmare to do anything in a box, and makes it almost DOA for OEM dedicated device projects with no way to secure it in a case.
Thanks for your efforts.
jamesh
I believe that we are waiting for the layout guy to get back from a well deserved rest to do something about the lack of mounting holes. If however, they don’t make it on to the final design, we suggest sticky pads! Unless you are in a real harsh vibration environment, they should be OK for most use cases.
Homer Hazel
In the event you have a bad run of PC boards, don’t just throw them away. If there are bad PC boards, I want to add one to my collection for use in a piece of ART. I have motherboards in picture frames and a bad raspberry pi motherboard would make a nice addition.
MmmPi
I would be interested in a few bad boards too.
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Anthony_
While you guys went away from the USB stick format and poo-poo’d anyone who kept asking about it, somebody else has gone and done it.
Article via Slashdot:
Is that a USB key in your pocket or a dual-core computer? Today, Norwegian company FXI technologies showed off a USB stick-sized portable computer prototype, complete with a dual-core 1.2-GHz Samsung Exynos ARM CPU (same as in the Galaxy S II), 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI-out and a microSD card slot for memory. Codenamed Cotton Candy because its 21 gram weight is the same as a bag of the confection, the tiny PC enables what its inventor calls “Any Screen Computing,” the ability to turn any TV, laptop, phone, tablet, or set-top box into a dumb terminal for its Android operating system.
The Cotton Candy has a USB 2.0 connector on one end and an HDMI jack on the other. When connected to an HDTV, it uses the HDMI port for video, the USB for power, and Bluetooth to connect to a keyboard, mouse, or tablet for controlling the operating system. The device can output up to 1080p so even a full HD screen can display the Candy’s preloaded Android 2.3 operating system at its native resolution. The dual core CPU is powerful enough to play local 1080p video or stream HD clips from the Web.
…
Though the current prototype runs Android 2.3, Borgar told us that the ARM-based hardware can run Ubuntu Linux currently and future versions should be able to run the ARM version of Windows 8. Future versions of the device will have a USB 3 connector and faster processors.
###
And, it has linear inline connections, just like I’ve been talking about. While you’ve got them beaten hands down pricewise, they appear to have taken the best ideas of the RaspberryPi and improved upon it and made the package even smaller. No case required either.
Details:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-computer-turns-any-screen-into-an-android-station
jamesh
Well, we are quite aware of that device, and have been for some time. We are not sure which SoC it uses though, perhaps a Samsung one. Nvidia are also looking to get a patent on that form factor, which should cause a few ructions. Interestingly we were talking about a device like this at work a couple of years ago, so it’s not like it’s a new invention.
That device is expected to cost around $200 by the way – smaller size and quad cores comes at a price which is why we went away from the stick format. It’s designed for a different market to the Raspi.
And I think you will find we haven’t poo-pooed anyone about the format and have always said why we have moved the the credit card size. In fact, I poo poo your poo poo. To quote a phrase.
It all comes down to…if the cotton candy fulfils your needs at the price it is, you should use it. If the Raspi fills your needs at its price point, use that. It’s quite a simple choice. Although you will have to wait a bit longer for the cotton candy, no release date yet AFAIK.
jamesh
Oops. Article says its an Exynos – we did wonder, and only 2 cores. Sorry. It doesn’t have ethernet of course, and no extra USB sockets, but does have Wifi and Bluetooth. Like I said – aimed at a different market.
And of course they are going to licence the design rather than make it themselves. So you won’t get one for some time.
liz
It’s the Samsung one. ;)
Very different beast, for a very different market, Anthony. I know you don’t post on the forums, but you might like to swing over there, where Cotton Candy has been discussed.
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DPG
Anthony, please stick to your original comment (I hadn’t planned on commenting again) and stop banging on about which direction the ports are. Thanks.
Anthony
Ah yes, quash the dangerous ideas of people who want extravagant things like mounting holes and manageable cabling.
jamesh
Not dangerous ideas at all. What’s dangerous is you banging on about it all the time. You don’t like it. We understand. It doesn’t fit what your requirements are. We understand. If you don’t buy one because of that, we understand.
What we don’t understand is why you feel the need to bring the subject up every 5 minutes when it has been clearly explained why things are like they are at the moment. It’s not like we need reminding. All comments are taken in to account, and may or may not result in board redesigns as and when time permits.
DPG
Forgot to say to you guys: keep up the good work! Can’t wait to get my board. Will take me back to my Vic-20 days! Can you make a tape recorder interface?!
Tulio Adriano C Muniz
Possible competing raspberry Pi?
http://www.fxitech.com/products/
jamesh
Already discussed on the forum.
pcb assembly
Good and such a appreciable work.. I like this pcb design work. Keep it up.
Final PCB artwork | Raspberry Pi | Raspberry Pi | Scoop.it
[…] Final PCB artwork | Raspberry Pi As promised, here are the Gerbers (a visualisation of the printed circuit board or PCB) for the finalised version of the Raspberry Pi… Source: http://www.raspberrypi.org […]
Eric Baird
I know it’s too late for this now, but if the board ever gets redesigned, it might be nice if the components didn’t go all the way to the edge, and there were a few square millimetres at each corner that didn’t have any circuitry.
That way there’d be a little “corner nubbin” of unused circuit board at each corner available for corner pillars or case mounting slots, and if the board was put into a tiny box, you wouldn’t need a cutout for sockets etc., that went right to the end of the box, weakening the case.
Plus, more importantly, that way we could file off the corners to make them rounded, and make it genuinely credit-card shaped! :D
jamesh
Board space costs money – not sure how much a couple of mm would add, but cost is paramount.
At the moment we recommend sticky fixer style attachment! I’m still not sure if the final board has mounting holes, I think not.
liz
I should add that we are still hoping to round off the corners – but that we’ll only be doing it if it doesn’t cost us a single penny.
Final PCB artwork | Raspberry Pi « Bestbuysino Outdoor Blog
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jeff
i need more and more .
Raspberry Pi From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | WorldWright's …
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Rich Purdey
My 7 year old daughter and I are going to have some proper geek out fun with one of these, many thanks for giving back !
Can you please confirm this bit of info :
Liz is responsible for all the They Might Be Giants lyrics
liz
“…that found their way into LT Scotland.” When reading for comprehension, we recommend finishing sentences.
Rick
Can you tell me what PCB design software was used for your circuit board layout and if the design files are available for download?
Thx
Rick
Rich
Hi, just to say that my calipers show 56mmx85mm. Did the board grow slightly since this was written?
Dirk
Is there a Raspberry Pi Model B Altium File or file of Raspberry Pi Gerbers