[HH] Raspberry Pi stuff: enclosure, Pi NAS, closed source not good for education

[Nilanjan Palit]

 > But it also says that documentation on the ARM architecture is not freely available, and that indeed could be a problem. Did the author of that article even try to do a basic search of the documentation or is he trying to make his point by obfuscating the facts?Here's is the full Technical Reference Manual, including the programmer's model (for those inclined to roll their own assembly code), for the ARM11 core used in the R-Pi. You can download the full PDF (all 728 pages) if you wish peruse it offline. http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0360f/index.html In general, I'm not sure I care much what CPU/SoC a system uses as long as we have a gcc port that can compile to that platform. What I'm really interested in is what kind applications/tools can we build to make these systems actually reach the target (education) market. Or even better, intuitive tools for kids to use to build their own applications. -Nilanjan > -----Original Message-----
> From: hardwarehacking-bounces+nilanjan.palit=intel.com at blu.org [mailto:hardwarehacking-bounces+nilanjan.palit=intel.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Tom Metro
> Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 1:35 PM
> To: hardwarehacking at blu.org
> Subject: [HH] Raspberry Pi stuff: enclosure, Pi NAS, closed source not good for education
> 
> Thanks to Stephen Adler for filming and posting his Raspberry Pi
> Video/Tutorial:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/hardwarehacking@blu.org/msg00487.html
> 
> (I haven't viewed it, but will take a look when/if I get a Raspberry Pi.)
> 
> 
> Here's a fairly introductory Raspberry Pi tutorial that end with how to use a Raspberry Pi as a NAS:
> http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/raspberry-pi-tutorial-how-to-do-more-1095946
> 
> 
> adafruit is promoting a colorful new Pi enclosure that is made of a rainbow assortment of laser cut acrylic that stacks up and is sandwiched between a top and bottom layer of clear acrylic:
> http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/09/20/in-stock-pibow-enclosure-for-raspberry-pi-computers/
> 
> 
> Why One Person Thinks Raspberry Pi Is Unsuitable For Education http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/25/2056240/why-one-person-thinks-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-for-education?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
> 
> (Quoting Slashdot, which quotes the original article,
> http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-for-education/)
> 
>   "Raspberry Pi was designed for education. As any popular product is
>   bound to, Raspberry Pi has been criticized a lot for things like lack
>   of a box, absence of supplied charger or even WiFi. Raspberry Pi has a
>   much more fundamental flaw, which directly conflicts with its original
>   goal: it is a black box tightly sealed with patents and protected by
>   corporations. It isn't even remotely an open platform."
> 
> The "proprietary GPU blob needed to boot" is mentioned, which has been discussed here before. The article also touches on the ARM being patented, which I don't have a problem with. But it also says that documentation on the ARM architecture is not freely available, and that indeed could be a problem.
> 
> It goes on to list some completely open source CPU cores, as well as pointing out other proprietary vendors, like Atmel, have freely shared their documentation without onerous licensing restrictions.
> 
> The author recommends the more open Beagle Board or Samsung ODROID-X as a Raspberry Pi alternative. He also recommends the fully open hardware Milkymist One, but it costs $800 and thus isn't a practical alternative.
> I guess he wasn't aware of some of the other open hardware boards that are in the same league as the Pi and still fairly cheap.
> 
> Rhombus Tech (http://rhombus-tech.net/), a company creating an open hardware platform, was mentioned in the Slashdot comments. (Not terribly unique. I posted about another Raspberry Pi-class device recently
> (OLinuXino-Micro) that was open.) The Rhombus Tech products will use a PCMCIA-like metal-enclosed card design, and their first model will use an Allwinner A10 CPU.
> 
> The full article is worth a read.
> 
> The Slashdot blurb also references:
> 
> Raspberry Pi's Secret: 'Sell Out a Little to Sell a Lot'
> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/09/raspberry-pi-insider-exclusive-sellout-to-sell-out
> 
>   ...if other manufacturers copied the design, our partners would lose
>   their investment, which was approaching several million dollars.
> 
>   How could we enable hacking while preventing cloning? Holding back the
>   schematics altogether troubled us. Not being open would impede
>   people's ability to interface and hack the hardware - defeating the
>   very goals we had set out to accomplish with Raspberry Pi in the first
>   place.
> 
>   So we decided to publish the schematics, but hold back the detailed
>   Bill of Materials (BOM) and physical PCB design or "Gerbers" for a
>   limited amount of time. After all, hardware is just one part of our
>   overall plans. The schematics alone don't provide enough information
>   to clone the Pi without expending considerable effort re-laying the
>   PCB and figuring out the exact part used in each location.
> 
> Ummm...if Broadcom is one of the partners, and the product depends on the Broadcom SoC that in turn requires a proprietary software blob, it would seem they already had two hard to bypass barriers to cloning:
> Broadcom could refuse to sell the SoC, or it could shut down the clones for copyright violation. Was Broadcom not cooperative?
> 
> Here's an interesting bit on the board fabrication:
> 
>   ...we had 253 connections to bring out (the BGA escape) in an area
>   much smaller than the size of a dime. And while there are special
>   high-density interconnect (HDI) techniques for densely layered PCBs,
>   those would just reduce yield and increase processing steps not to
>   mention the costs. ... What if we could steal the idea of "blind micro
>   vias" from high-density interconnects, but apply it cheaply enough for
>   the Pi design?
> 
>   Instead of going through all the PCB layers, we made human-hair sized
>   holes (micro vias) that go through only the first couple of layers
>   (blind) - saving just enough space on the other layers for wiring up
>   the other PCB components. At high volumes, these holes could be made
>   quickly and efficiently with a laser. And it only cost a few cents
>   extra. Making these tradeoffs resulted in a relatively simple
>   six-layer board that didn't compromise power distribution. And it
>   enabled manufacturing at scale.
> 
> Seems like another good way to ward off clones, unless this technique is widely known.
> 
>  -Tom
  		 	   		  
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