Raspberry Pi layout | Hacker News Reader

Raspberry Pi layout

raspberrypi.org

57 pointscpswan25 comments

Some critique towards design:

- Too many different fonts. Three typefaces (seems like League Gothic, Arial and some rounded one) and four fonts (multiple widths for that rounded). Use two typefaces at most, and create strong identity with that.

- Logo sits without a place, without alignment. Put it to the right corner, above or even before the text, just align it somewhere.

- Status LEDs should be light grey? This label kind of ignores otherwise consistent colors.

Thanks for the critique, I always appreciate informed opinion :)

- The rational is that the rounded (Quicksand) is for the logo and branding only. Using it for body titles as well weakens core branding in my eye.

League Gothic is doing the heavy lifting for most of the chart.

Helvetica is for a couple of incidental labels. I should really use League Gothic for the dimensions too, there's no good reason not to, so will bear that in mind for future revisions.

The power supply in Helvetica is more a standard labelling convention. It could easily be dropped from the design.

- As for the logo placement, this is not meant as a finished layout, more an example of elements for reuse in other contexts. Still, that was lazy of me :-)

- The light grey is for 'techie' bits of the design. The LED's should be black as they're indicators for all users, not just the hardcore. So yes. Well spotted, that's an inconsistency I'll fix it future.

Thanks again for taking the time.

Drop a WiFi chip there and it's a hacker's dream router.

Model C? :)

Cheap USB Wifi dongle supported by Linux I think :-)

Surely there's one or two that are tiny and will work?

Maybe this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/7dayshop-Wireless-150Mbps-802-11n-Ad...

How much power can the RaspberryPi give to the USB device? Maybe you need a separate powered USB hub.

It depends on the (micro-USB) power supply. For the Model B (with ethernet) a 5V 1A output is recommended.

At 2500mA this should be enough to supply 500mA to each of the 2xUSB ports.

Many popular mobile phone chargers are micro-USB and support 5V 1A upwards.

This might not be the best place for this, but since you're posting on here it may seem worthwhile. I noticed you were planning on doing a couple test runs of the machining/pressing process to work out any other bugs. Are these quantities being taken out of the initial batch of components? Should there be no errors in the design, will these devices be sold off with all the other "regular" ones? If not, is there any plans to get them out to more developers? Are there any other additional dev kits to be given out prior to their release?

Thanks!

I'm afraid I only draw pretty pictures and I'm not part of the foundation or engineering team so I know as much as has been publically posted.

I imagine the 100 being made up now come from the common pool of parts. However, yields of the components and the manufacturing process could affect the initial batch size. Then again, the foundation may have accounted for this :)

What about Power-over-Ethernet support?

My recollection from previous queries about this was that PoE was considered too fringe to merit the additional effort. It would complicate the PS design, since you have to convert from 48VDC or 24VDC.

You are probably right. Since it is a fringe feature, it would probably raise the cost quite a bit.

I was thinking it would be great to have a network of these as remote sensors, or to distribute synchronized video or audio. Instead it of it being powered via the USB interface it would provide enough power via PoE to power other USB devices.

Anaything with a ralink chipset seems to work fine. That's lots of realteks and generics available for less than $10 on amazon.

I for one am happy the raspberry pi team isn't delaying their release to fiddle with wifi. The regulatory non-sense can literally take years per country.

I've had remarkably less than optimal experience using USB wifi dongles with rt3572 and rt2870 chipsets (IIRC) with Ubuntu kernels 2.6.28 thru 2.6.38 or so, even with the modules downloaded from Ralink directly. Inconsistent thruput, inability to change channels, and random disassociation from the AP. Plus, their modules vomit lots of pointless debug info to syslog, with no options to disable it.

I'd recommend Atheros arl9170 instead.

I guess I should have mentioned that. Ralink is a starting point, not a finished product. Everyone manufacturer who uses them messes with the driver in their own way. The generics are the worst.

Simply using the built-in drivers in ubuntu or a prebuilt module from ralink yields an almost unusable link.

You have to be on your toes and willing to compile your own drivers (and even learn about the source and make tweaks) to really get ralinks to sing. The good news is that ralink makes this source freely available.

Atheros's work great but they cost more (like $15 or $20 instead of $7) and you still have to be careful to get the right "mad-wifi" drivers. There are less of them though and most versions work out of the box at least acceptably.

Your advice is sound though if you're just looking to get your one ras-pi on the air with minimum fuss you probably want this : http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN821N-Wireless-Adapter-WPA...

If you're preparing your robot army for world domination on a budget, its probably worth putting in the time to figure out a ralink. I've had great luck with this sub $7 beauty http://www.amazon.com/150mbps-Wireless-Adapter-Wifi-802-11b/... but it did take considerable effort to hack the driver into shape.

Unless you're trying to make an Airport Express clone, you'd need at least one more wired ethernet port.

I'm looking at it as a potential NAS device

EDIT: Just realised there is no e-sata, which I misremembered it having, still a USB2 NAS device is OK and far cheaper than anything currently available.

Unfortunately radio take a long time and a lot of money to get approval for, and the process is different for every country. And it's the entire 'system' that needs approval - you can't just say the chip is already used by everyone else.

That's why your laptop will often have the wifi+bluetooth model as a little simm card under a cover, it allows them to get the radio 'system' approved separately from the computer and use the same radio in different models without repeating the process.

Never thought of that. Of course, it explains why even super integrated, cost-engineered laptops like the MBP and even the iMac have a little PCIe card running the WiFi.

One benefit of this, is that there is a thriving marker for these things, to the point that you can get a pulled card off ebay for $12, a suitable PCI carrier card, and build a great little WiFi n card for cheap.

http://raspberrywifi.com/ WiFi usb adapters

I wonder if you could run the Boxee software on it? Presumably the key factor would be if the software would take advantage of hardware HD video playback.

What is so good about it that is missing in Beagle Board or in its many clones ? Just curious.

Theoretically price. We won't know till it actually ships, though.

The price is still looking solid at $25 and $35 (you'll need an SD card and power supply on top of that)

Compare with the BeagleBone which is $89 and has no video outputs on board, but does have a better ARM Cortex chip.

Personally I want both for different reasons :)

This is a pointless complaint on my part, and I'm going to burn karma, but....

Wouldn't it be nice if all the I/O ports were on one edge! Cases could be much neater...

I realize the interference makes that too hard on a board that small, but I can wish.

That looks impossible unless they make it a 20cm long "stick-computer".

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