27 Feb
2013
27 Feb
'13
2:57 p.m.
Wait. They squeezed every _cent_ from the BOM and you
are surprised that
the results are less than ... impressive?
Exactly. It;'s like those vile Sinclair machines of 30 years ago.
It's jsut too cheap. If they ahd sold it for, pewrhaps, tiwce the current
proce with enough I/.O to he useful, etc, then I could ahve found
applciations for it. As it is, I can't.
On a more generaly note, it looks a mess. There
are a lot of bits to plug
together for the complete system. The board has conenctors all round it.
And it needs a case, there are SMD components on both sides of the PCB.
Software : Unless you have a fast internet connection that you can
connet the Rpi to, it's pretty much unusalbe. The suppleid Raspbian does
not include sources, and there is no obvious pointer as to where to get
Yes, that information was cleverly hidden at:
http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianFAQ
or, for just the package sources:
http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianRepository
and:
https://github.com/raspberrypi
has the kernel and various other bits. Yes, the GPU specific code is
still binary only - you can thank Broadcom for that.
Alas yes. I do wonder about havign a so-called educatuional machine where
a major section is covered by an NDA, but...
them (since this is supposed to be an educational
machine, it fails
spectacularly here). There are also all sorts of thigns misisng form the
standard distribution. YEs, you can install them, but. you ened the
internet conenction.
The packages you consider important and the packages that I consider important
and finally those that anybody else considers important probably don't have
that much overlap. What should they do? Install the world and require a
32 GB SD-Card (guessing on the size here). Offer a 16 GB download (compressed)
for the "base image"? Similiarly for not including source in the standard
image. The checked out kernel tree alone is several hundred MB.
So: you can easily get the stuff, but it needs an Internet connection.
Big deal. So complete and test your Raspberry Pi setup before you wander
off in the woods where there is no network connection ;-)
for 'wwods' read 'my workshop' :-)
More seriosuly, I think it should be stated that the darn thing is
net-to-useless without a fast internet connection.
I have seen countless devices that say on the backing 'requires 2 AA
batteries [1], not included', for all priamry cells are easy to get in
just avout any shop, and most people I know keep the common sizes at home
anyway. And yet for th Rpi there is no mention of it needing any other
resources to be useful.
[1] Strictly that's 'AA cells', but most packaging is not precisely worded!
Docuemntation : What documentation? Yo uget a bit
of paper telling you it
doens't meet the EMD directives (!) and a single sheet telling you how
to set it up. The latter is very incomplete. For a machien aimed at
beginners, there should be a set of instruciton of ghte form 'plug this
in here'. Look at the original BBC micro user guide.
People seem to mistake the Raspberry Pi as the second coming of the BBC Micro.
It assuredly isn't. There is no
docuemtnation on msot of the linux commands. No problem for
us, but... In particular, there is no docuemtned way to back up the OS.
Yes, you can connect a USB card readeer, put in another SD card, and dd
it over. Fine if you know how to use dd. Not fine if you don't. Again,
The Internet exists. So does Google. Seriously. there needs ot be a specific set of instructions
on how to do this.
Especially as it's all too easy to mis-configure the machien so it won't
boot.
And that is one key thing they got right with the Raspberry: if it doesn't
boot, you swap the SD card and you're done. No need to hunt down the JTAG
gear.