Raspberry Pi

[matt303]

I'm enjoying mine if only for the reason it's forced me out of my comfort zone of Windows and .NET development, I'm enjoying getting my head around Python and has made me look at linux distros again.

[wanye]

ive been playing with raspbmc recently, and i'm pretty impressed. it has played any 1080p and 720p x264 video i've thrown at it flawlessly.

although dropping a 1080i mpeg video through it crippled the machine, as did some 720p xvids i had lying around. the UI is a bit sluggish, but as a second media player, it is pretty damn good, and more than suitable for use in the bedroom when coupled with the (slightly buggy) xbmc remote for andriod/ios

gonna try throwing a 1080p x264 halfsbs 3d video at it next week when i get another chance to play, see if it barfs...

[Firefox]

The USB problems have been outed on Slashdot. Can't be long now before the mainstream media pick up on it...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/0 ... spberry-pi

[adam]

it was pretty slow on an early video... hopefully people knew what they were getting

from the comments is sounds like the closed broadcom chipset may not have been the best choice, but thats who eben works for iirc, well, broadcom licensed the drivers from someone else and don't even have access to the source themselves it seems.

as for making revisions... if rs & farnell are manufacturing hopefully they can stop using certain components fairly easily, they're making 4000 a day at present, there is the question of having new pcb's made and how many left over they have, one of those things, if problems are widely reported and a revision announced, then sales stop, but all depends, they may be churning the pcb's out as and when rather than making hundreds of thousands at a time.

[Firefox]

There are a couple of interesting Raspberry Pi -like boards coming out in the next month or so; both are based on the Allwinner A10/A13 which features a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU and 400MHz ARM Mali GPU.

The first is the cubieboard, which is very similar to the Pi in form factor but is built around an Allwinner A10 with 1GB of RAM and lots more I/O pins broken out to two headers. It'll cost slightly more, though, at $49.
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/08/31/ ... ent-board/
http://cubieboard.org/

Olimex have their Allwinner A13 board available now from their web shop, which is a rather larger and more feature-packed board than the Pi (and costs Eur 55 + VAT), but they've just blogged that they're working on a stripped-down micro version with a target retail price of Eur 35.
http://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/ ... ino-micro/

I've used tons of Olimex boards over the years and they've always been top-notch, plus they're available from the big component supply companies like RS/Farnell/Mouser nowadays so I can use them at work, so I'm especially pleased by this news.

[teamonkey]

Finally bootstrapped my pi. Hooray! It's weird that they didn't include a tool to configure a wlan device, but after a lot of digging through obsolete info I found what I needed.

Next step: Finding out why it will only display at 640x480, then XBMC.

[disciple]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1929

Upcoming board revision
Posted on September 5, 2012 by eben
Update: A lot of people are asking when revision 2.0 boards will appear in the wild. They’ll be filtering out over the next month as the last stocks of the revision 1.0 at each distributor and in each geography are exhausted. I’m aware of at least one person who has received a revision 2.0 board already (from Farnell, in the UK).

We don’t believe that the changes are large enough to make it worth “holding on” for revision 2.0, unless you have a specific requirement to add an audio codec or you need mounting holes for some industrial application.

In the six months since we launched Raspberry Pi, we’ve received a lot of feedback about the original board design. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be gradually rolling out a new revision 2.0 PCB which incorporates some of the most popular suggestions. You can determine which board revision you have by typing cat /proc/cpuinfo at the command line and looking up the hardware revision code in the following table:

MODEL AND REVISION CODE(S)
Model B Revision 1.0 2
Model B Revision 1.0 + ECN0001 (no fuses, D14 removed) 3
Model B Revision 2.0 4, 5, 6
There has been a small change to the GPIO pin out of revision 2.0, to add ARM JTAG support and to present a different I2C peripheral from that which is (heavily) used on the camera interface. Users wishing to produce portable GPIO code should either avoid using the these pins, or add code to check the board revision and behave appropriately.

Reset

A reset circuit has been implemented, although in the standard build the required header is not fitted. Users wishing to use this circuit should fit an appropriate header to P6. Shorting P6 pin 1 to P6 pin 2 will cause the BCM2835 to reset.

USB Output Power

The resetable fuses protecting the USB outputs have been removed. This feature was implemented on some later revision 1.0 PCBs by replacing the fuses with links; revision 2.0 permanently implements this modification. It is now possible to reliably power the RPI from a USB hub that back feeds power, but it is important that the chosen hub cannot supply more than 2.5A under fault conditions.

JTAG Debug Support

Two GPIO pins have been interchanged to allow a missing debug signal (ARM_TMS) to appear on P1 pin 13.

Originally the connections were:

CAM_GPIO [BCM2835/GPIO27] routed to S5 pin 11
GPIO_GEN2 [BCM2835/GPIO21] routed to P1 pin 13
The new connections are:

CAM_GPIO [BCM2835/GPIO21] routed to S5 pin 11
GPIO_GEN2 [BCM2835/GPIO27] routed to P1 pin 13
I2C Support on P1/P6

The primary and secondary I2C channels have been reversed.

Originally the connections were:

SCL0 [BCM2835/GPIO1] routed to P1 pin 5
SDA0 [BCM2835/GPIO0] routed to P1 pin 3
SCL1 [BCM2835/GPIO3] routed to S1 pin 13
SDA1 [BCM2835/GPIO2] routed to S1 pin 14
The new connections are:

SCL0 [BCM2835/GPIO1] routed to S5 pin 13
SDA0 [BCM2835/GPIO0] routed to S5 pin 14
SCL1 [BCM2835/GPIO3] routed to P1 pin 5
SDA1 [BCM2835/GPIO2] routed to P1 pin 3
Version Identification Links

The four GPIO signals originally used for version identification have been removed. These were never read by the system software and were redundant.

Additional I/O Expansion

To utilise GPIO signals released by the removal of the version identification links, a new connector site P5 has been added. This carries the four GPIO signals [BCM2835/GPIO28 – BCM2835/GPIO31] named GPIO7 – GPIO10 respectively, along with +5V0, +3V3 and two 0V. Currently this connector is not populated.

This GPIO allocation provides access to one of:

SDA0, SCL0 (Operating independently of P1 SDA1, SCL1); or
PCM_CLK, PCM_FS, PCM_DIN, PCM_DOUT or I2S; or
Four GPIO signals.
This connector is intended to be a suitable attachment point for third-party clock and audio codec boards.

+5V0 Leakage from HDMI

Some users have found that connecting an unpowered Raspberry Pi to an HDMI television interferes with the correct operation of CEC for other connected devices. This was fixed on some later revision 1.0 PCBs by removing the ESD protection diode D14; revision 2.0 fixes this issue by connecting the top side of the diode to +5V0_HDMI.

SMSC +1V8

The SMSC 1V8 power has been disconnected from the system supply.

Mounting Holes!

Two 2.5mm non plated mounting holes have been provided to assist with ATE test mounting. Warning: If used to permanently mount the PCB – do not over tighten screws as this may lead to damage to the PCB.

LED Marking

Two minor changes have been made to the silk screen:

D9 (Yellow LED) graphic changed from the incorrect 10M to 100
D5 (Green LED) graphic changed from OK to ACT (Activity)

[Firefox]

Does the USB work on the new ones, then?

[Baggypants]

It seems to be getting better.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 56#p164656

[toxibunny]

Got my version 1 through the post a couple of days ago. Haven't done a hell of a lot with it yet, but haven't had any problems either - setting up the SD card was a doddle, wireless keyboard and mouse 'just work', the sound and picture seems fine, and so does the ethernet. Tried SSH for the first time ever, which was pretty cool - done a bit of python fiddling through the wire, and set up a gameboy emulator. Linux is a hassle, but I suspect I'll get used to it. not bad

[Colonius]

Really pleased to see this announcement:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925

In summary, up until now China was making all the Pis, now (like all good retro games) they can be made in Wales.

[Cloudane]

Should make them in Cornwall. They usually make all the best Pi's.

[Surfr]

Really pleased to see this announcement:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925

In summary, up until now China was making all the Pis, now (like all good retro games) they can be made in Wales.

I might order another one in response to that! Great news and good excuse to get a 2.0 board.

[everklear]

Very nice.

[dom]

https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore-IV-Programmers-Manual

I just wish I understood it all, looks handy though.