First RasberryPi PCBs ready | Hacker News Reader

First RasberryPi PCBs ready

raspberrypi.org

53 pointseasp14 comments

I'm really excited for these things. Growing up (5-12yrs old), I had an old Commodore 64, hooked up to a small TV to play around with (so I wouldn't mess up something on the fancy 486 machine my dad used). The simplicity and lack of distractions (like flashy games) that machine had, made it easy for me to experiment and eventually learn how to program.

RasPi seems like that same 'old c64' experience I had, only better. I could give one of these things, with a keyboard and mouse to one of my younger relatives to play around with. They can tinker around with it all they want, without their parents worrying about them breaking something or loosing important files.

I love these, but I'm a bit crushed that there's no WiFi.

I notice that that's a reoccurring thing with hobby electronics. It has taken Arduino's a long time to get boards that support WiFi and they are quite expensive. (comparatively)

So I'm guessing there is some fundamental reason.. anybody know why? Does it have to do with getting licensed by the FCC or somesuch? Are the chips crazy expensive? It seems like the technology has been around long enough that it wouldn't be more than a dollar or two by now, but apparently that's not the case.

ECEs, spare a clue?

Wifi is such a huge pain in the ass. Eliminating wifi will remove a significant headache--going with just Ethernet is a far easier proposition, as long as you don't go with on-board USB ethernet.

Plus, for the stated goals, I don't think wifi is essential.

Yes, I gathered it is a pain in the ass, but I was hoping for a bit of insight as to WHY exactly.

Care to elaborate?

It's a matter of dealing with WPA and such. There's a reason why Plan 9 doesn't have support for anything past WEP, and why even on Linux, wifi support can be kinda iffy.

If you don't offer wifi, there's no let-down when it doesn't work properly :)

IANAECE but to me there's 2 issues:

1. FCC Licensing: There is an issue with FCC licensing in that you have to make sure your equipment has proper shielding, broadcasts in the right frequencies, etc. As long as the thing is considered one unit physically, even if the radio parts aren't yours and were already certified, it still has to be certified. Laptop manufacturers can get away without it by having the wireless card be a separate board that plugs into a slot under the laptop. Could Raspberry Pi do the same? Perhaps, but that's still a change of design, possible extra costs in design/layout, software, and parts.

2. Software: As anyone who's used linux for over a few years can attest, much of the firmware of wifi chips are a sort of black box and making software to work with a given chip is a nightmare unless you are working with the manufacturer. Why they didn't partner with a particular chipset manufacturer could boil down to price. They got lucky with the cheap licensing for the CPU and perhaps couldn't get something similar with wifi or didn't feel that it was worth the effort for all the extra space, cost, and design issues for this first version.

They suggest using a USB wifi thingy. Their forum has a list of models that should work with ARM chips running linux.

The other issue with RF certification is related to production volume--the certification costs related to WiFi in your phone/laptop is spread over millions of units. For comparatively low volume standalone WiFi modules the same cost is more likely to be spread over some multiple of thousands.

I found it particularly surprising because Broadcom are supporting the project so enthusiastically.

This is the part where they are going to need a bunch of money to ramp up.

Let's hope these boards work ok, and that RaspPI manage to get their hands on some bridging.

> This is the part where they are going to need a bunch of money to ramp up

What makes you say that? I've not seen anything about them needing money. From the FAQ:

Are you accepting pre-orders?

No. We are adequately funded, and don’t want to take your money until we have finished hardware.

They also announced that the first boards are not $35, but will be sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to buy some before xmas.

> They also announced that the first boards are not $35, but will be sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Some might be put off by this move, but I like it. I really like how straight-forward raspberry pi is about having no problem of making a profit with people who just want one for geeky reasons. I certainly don't need one, but I want one and I will certainly bid at an auction and hope that this move benefits the goals of the project in a long run.

those aren't really the first boards; they're selling off the assembled results of the test run (assuming no problems with them)

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