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(edited) transcript of Raspberry Pi Hack Chat PART 2

A event log for Raspberry Pi HackChat

Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi!

lutetiumLutetium 03/03/2017 at 21:000 Comments

Arsenijs says:14 minutes ago

@Brandon Aaskov Elelemt14 had this customization service exactly for the reason you're mentioning.

Nick Sayer says:14 minutes ago

(I guess maybe that doesn't alter the price)

Brandon Aaskov says:14 minutes ago

@Arsenijs that makes sense. Thank you!

steverobillard says:12 minutes ago

@brandon Aaskov note elemt14 customiztion 5000 unit minimum we get this question a lot on http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions

Roger Thornton says:12 minutes ago

@Arsenijs AH I see your issue. So 2835 is a mobile chip, but the Pi software doesn't take advantage of any of those features. There is a lot of clever gating, where you turn of sections of the chip not being used, or wake them up only when there is data ready. There's no need when we are plugged into the wall (the assumed use case). We also leave the SMPS and LDOs on all the time, again in a phone everytihng is turned off when not in use. Designing a board for a mobile and a Pi are quite different. HDMI is also a big power drain (processor time wise)

Lutetium says:12 minutes ago

Next question is from @王: Are you planning to release light weight linux distros?

Roger Thornton says:11 minutes ago

@MobileWill CM3 LITE (no eMMC) is failry cheap at $25!

erik pax says:11 minutes ago

I dont think they (element14) do custom zeros, only a/b

altometer says:11 minutes ago

Jeeze, I wonder how much 5000 units would set you back

Arsenijs says:10 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton That's what I suspected. Is there any way a person unaffiliated with Raspberry Pi Foundation could solve these problems? I know some interfaces are exposed to Linux, while some aren't and even the registers aren't documented, which is a problem.

h3liosphan says:9 minutes ago

@Arsenijs yeah pretty facetious of me, NASpi wud be awesome tho

Roger Thornton says:9 minutes ago

@Brandon Aaskov @Arsenijs is right and Farnell have a custom Pi Program. They have the license to take the Pi boards and add / remove anything you don't want. You would pay them for their deicin time and be expeceted to payt for an initial build but opens up a world of opportunities.

clarkhensley says:9 minutes ago

Trying to fill in my project proposal and questions in the spreadsheet, on the cost of being able to read the chat

Edgar says:9 minutes ago

@Arsenijs what is your current goal?

Evan Juras says:8 minutes ago

@Arsenijs just curious, whats the mAH capacity of the Li-ion batteries you're using?

Arsenijs says:7 minutes ago

2000mAh, single 18650 Li-Ion cell.

Roger Thornton says:7 minutes ago

@王 There is a lot of work going on with our distibutions, we already offer Jessie Lite whch removes a lot of the programs we bundle with the standard Raspbian image. How light are you thinking?

Stefan-Xp says:7 minutes ago

@Arsenijs

Thank you for the Link. In my experiences it worked a lot better in December 2016... The main issue seems, that there are not a lot people who are willing to use it. I downloaded and used the VS Studio 2015 community version and was up and running with some simple apps in the matter of hours. But I'm also a bit sad, that you cant use the os like WinCE

Arsenijs says:7 minutes ago

Pi Powered directly from the cell.

altometer says:6 minutes ago

@Arsenijs Not using a boost converter or anything to step up from the cell to 5v?

Arsenijs says:5 minutes ago

Yeah, it's an approach which works, but the one which brings me to my second question.

Edgar says:5 minutes ago

but how? are bypassing the LDO? those are 3.7 batteries

Roger Thornton says:5 minutes ago

@Arsenijs It's an interesting idea but you are going to hit a lot of power related issues be it board design or Software.

erik pax says:5 minutes ago

if i won the lottery I would make a custom pi (https://hackaday.io/page/2909-pi-zero-plus)

Evan Juras says:5 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton How many hardware engineers are on the Pi's design team?

h3liosphan says:5 minutes ago

But WinCE sucked! It's also probably a bit architecturally old for the platform?

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton I know, but I'm willing to spend time, and I have people with expertise willing to help me with advice and even participate in the development of my project.

Neil Cherry says:4 minutes ago

I hated WinCE, got into our lab and we discovered it need virus protection. ARGH!

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

However, there's a question - is it possible right now, without the missing datasheets?

Arsenijs says:3 minutes ago

And here's my second question. "Are there any technical problems which could arise when powering a Pi Zero with a Li-Ion battery connected to 5V input? Provided I'm not using USB devices and I have a battery low-voltage-cutoff set at 3.3V."

M.daSilva says:3 minutes ago

@王 You can also try Buildroot, I don't think you can go any lighter than this ^^

Roger Thornton says:a minute ago

@Evan Juras Currently there are two Hardware Engineers, Mike Stimson and Me. James Adams is the COO and previously used to do the hardware development and so is still heavily involved but it is a great small team and means between the three of us we produce all the designs (and oversee test, compliance, production) that comes out of Raspberry Pi.

joram says:a few seconds ago

how do you do quality control on the produced boards?

do you also design test fixtures?

erik pax says:a few seconds ago

M.daSilva: unless you port it to vc4 directly.

Evan Juras says:a minute ago

@Roger Thornton Cool! I was expecting at least 4 or 5.

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

Here's some information on "Pi-from-LiIon" - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=127210&start=25, this got me started. It currently works very well with #ZeroPhone , and I'm going to run extensive stability tests in the near future.

h3liosphan says:2 minutes ago

thank you for the hack chat roger, im off!

steverobillard says:2 minutes ago

Weare allowiing patrons to check a Pi out of the library is there a test suite we can run on return to verify that it is not broken

Edgar says:2 minutes ago

How many Pi's have been made? I have at least 10 doing all sort of things, from bitcoin mining a while ago to high altitude ballooning, one runs my asterisk and one does ham radio packet.

Stefan-Xp says:2 minutes ago

Maybe you are right, but in contrast to Windows 10 IOT you had a lot more freedom (Filesystem, Starting of applications, COM, etc.)

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

@Arsenijs The board is powered from 5V and there is a SMPS that is powered from this to produce 3V3 and 1V8, I don;t know how low the cut off for the SMPS is but running it any lower than 4V is likely to be bad news. HDMI needs 5V and on Zero it is powered from the 5V DC IN, you'll hit HDMI issues without a good 5V.

Roger Thornton says:a minute ago

@h3liosphan hope it was useful, any other questions you can reach me here or on twitter @andy.speers

Roger Thornton says:a few seconds ago

No not @ andy .spears

Lutetium says:a few seconds ago

Next question from @Francisco Dominguez: Do you plan any low power library for the Raspi Zero W?

Roger Thornton says:a few seconds ago

@ Roger_Thornton

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

Yeah, I know about the HDMI problems, already discussed them with one person. Isn't there still a diode in line with HDMI power?

h3liosphan says:a few seconds ago

thanks! It was.

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

@Edgar We've just hit 12 Million

MobileWill says:2 minutes ago

@Arsenijs Last night iw as able to power a pi from hdmi

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

@Francisco Dominguez there isn't anything planned.

MobileWill says:2 minutes ago

i unplugged power and it was still running

MobileWill says:a minute ago

the hdmi was connected ot a iogear hdmi switch

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

Yeah, I had this, it was more or a problem than anything - I needed to power-reset a connected display, replugged the MicroUSB but the display continued to work and show characters =D Had to re-plug HDMI.

Edgar says:a minute ago

that is a feature @MobileWill

clarkhensley says:a minute ago

I saw someone asking about lightweight linux distributions on the spreadsheet, and I would like to recommend the yocto project stuff which allows you to create very minimal systems while it's made easy to keep a finger in the soup for further developement , for example with eclipse, examples on how to create a gui can be found with the operating the nextthing is offering with the pocket chip or asteroid os for smartwaches. Tutorials about wayland and OT5 are already available with grea detail.ç

clarkhensley says:a minute ago

I saw someone asking about lightweight linux distributions on the spreadsheet, and I would like to recommend the yocto project stuff which allows you to create very minimal systems while it's made easy to keep a finger in the soup for further developement , for example with eclipse, examples on how to create a gui can be found with the operating the nextthing is offering with the pocket chip or asteroid os for smartwaches. Tutorials about wayland and OT5 are already available with grea detail.ç

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

@Roger Thornton Any schematic of current HDMI circuit on the Pi Zero?

MobileWill says:3 minutes ago

the hdmi was connected ot a iogear hdmi switch

Arsenijs says:3 minutes ago

Yeah, I had this, it was more or a problem than anything - I needed to power-reset a connected display, replugged the MicroUSB but the display continued to work and show characters =D Had to re-plug HDMI.

Edgar says:2 minutes ago

that is a feature @MobileWill

clarkhensley says:2 minutes ago

I saw someone asking about lightweight linux distributions on the spreadsheet, and I would like to recommend the yocto project stuff which allows you to create very minimal systems while it's made easy to keep a finger in the soup for further developement , for example with eclipse, examples on how to create a gui can be found with the operating the nextthing is offering with the pocket chip or asteroid os for smartwaches. Tutorials about wayland and OT5 are already available with grea detail.ç

clarkhensley says:2 minutes ago

I saw someone asking about lightweight linux distributions on the spreadsheet, and I would like to recommend the yocto project stuff which allows you to create very minimal systems while it's made easy to keep a finger in the soup for further developement , for example with eclipse, examples on how to create a gui can be found with the operating the nextthing is offering with the pocket chip or asteroid os for smartwaches. Tutorials about wayland and OT5 are already available with grea detail.ç

Arsenijs says:2 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton Any schematic of current HDMI circuit on the Pi Zero?

MobileWill says:2 minutes ago

It was kinda cool but idk how safe

Roger Thornton says:a minute ago

Newer standards of HDMI will actually supply quite large amounts of power over the 5V which is an exciting thing for TV connected devices

MobileWill says:a few seconds ago

all we need now is usb over hdmi

Roger Thornton says:a few seconds ago

@Arsenijs it's the same as Zero and the schematic is on the website I believe, if it's not it will go on my list of things to do

Arsenijs says:2 minutes ago

Thank you! If the part I'm interested in is not included, could I ping you on email or something?

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

@MobileWill There is Ethernet in older versions but I would need to check for USB

Jay says:2 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton Can you talk a little more about the antenna?

\

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

@Arsenijs yes, get me on twitter @ Roger_Thornton

Roger Thornton says:a minute ago

@Jay Whaty would like to know?

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

Oh, I can jsut ask now. 5V from HDMI is connected to H5V net but there's no clue on the schematic sheet on where it goes.

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/RPI-ZERO-V1_3_reduced.pdf

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/RPI-ZERO-V1_3_reduced.pdf

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

There's the 5V net, but I don't see it connected to H5V anywhere

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

I saw it on previous schematics, but I can't be sure the connections would be the same.

Jay says:6 minutes ago

@Roger Thornton I guess I'm curious if you guys had any other original implementations for the W's "antenna" , if you tried any other designs, what problems you ran into, and or why you decided on the final design.

sfrias1 says:4 minutes ago

@Arsenijs you probably have a primary problem performance related for step-up power, because 3,7V to 5V is too wide gap, and conversion is less efficient as the gap widens.

Arsenijs says:5 minutes ago

@sfrias1 there's no step-up in my deigns.

Roger Thornton says:5 minutes ago

@Arsenijs 5V DC in is connected through a Diode to H5V (HDMI 5V)

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

Which way does the diode point?

erik pax says:4 minutes ago

up

sfrias1 says:2 minutes ago

@Arsenijs Ok. too low voltage then.

Arsenijs says:3 minutes ago

Is that the only component there, on H5V? Is that the D6, I see it near the board edge on the Zero v1.3, between the HDMI and USB, closer to HDMI.

Roger Thornton says:3 minutes ago

@Jay We worked with a company called Proant who we license the Antenna design from. We initially used the Chip antenna used on the Pi3 but Proant offered us a smaller, slightly better performing antenna and also because the design is purely based around the copper cutout very cheap.

Arsenijs says:2 minutes ago

@sfrias1 *designs. ZeroPhone has no step-up, for instance - apart from the one powering the full-sized USB port. And, thank you but this is not the case.

sfrias1 says:a few seconds ago

@Arsenijs Ok.

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

Unless you're talking about margins, which I'm going to test extensively soon - this isn't standard usage, after all, hardly anybody uses Pi Zero like that.

Jay says:a few seconds ago

Nice to know thanks Roger

Arsenijs says:a few seconds ago

But thank you!

joram says:a few seconds ago

@Roger Thornton do you also design test fixtures for the produced boards?

Edgar says:a minute ago

Just curious, what is the cost of the BOM alone for the Zero W?

sfrias1 says:in a few seconds

@Arsenijs :-)

Evan Juras says:a minute ago

@Roger Thornton I second @Edgar's question!

Roger Thornton says:a few seconds ago

@joram During manufacture there are a set of automated test machines that take the Pi from the production and using a custom jig connect HDMI, USB and SD Card into the Pi,. run a comprehensive set of tests to check the board is running correctly and then package it up into the final box

Roger Thornton says:a minute ago

@joram the whole test line it Wales is now automated from pouring parts in at the start to a finished product at the end. IT's a true marvel of engineering and Sony deserve a medal for the work they've done

Roger Thornton says:a few seconds ago

@Edgar as anyone knows in this industry that's hugely sensitive and confidential!

erik pax says:a few seconds ago

no manual soldering at all?

Arsenijs says:15 minutes ago

Yeah, seems like D6 is the diode (and H5V is also available on PP20), and the power flows from 5V to H5V. Theoretically, a HDMI monitor shouldn't be able to power a Zero - but could power a B+/2B/3B, due to the RT9741. Would that be a right assumption, @Roger Thornton

Roger Thornton says:15 minutes ago

@erik pax Zero W is purely SMT (one wave of reflow oven), Pi3 goes through a solder bath (for through hole components) and then two (top and bottom) reflow oven passes

joram says:14 minutes ago

thanks, that sounds like a big automation task, and quite some follow up to keep it running

Edgar says:14 minutes ago

Ok, i was just wondering. The economics of a $10 computer is just mind boggling.

spencer says:14 minutes ago

@erik pax if Pimoroni can do hammer-in headers, I'm surprised they don't also do hammer-in hdmi, usb and sd card ;-)

Roger Thornton says:14 minutes ago

@erik pax Sony has a bunch of robots to place all the through hole parts, it's amazing, I am visiting them next week to cahtch up on things and if they permit me I will post a video on tiwitter of the robots

joram says:14 minutes ago

;-)

clarkhensley says:13 minutes ago

Ay finally up t date with this page

13 minutes ago

there's a transcript

steverobillard says:13 minutes ago

you missed my question

steverobillard says:12 minutes ago

We allow library patrons to check out a Pi. Is there a test suite we can run upon return to check everything still works? Do you have a test jig that goes along with this?

joram says:11 minutes ago

+ the question about a test suite for users outside the factory

Roger Thornton says:10 minutes ago

@steverobillard Sorry for missing a good question! At the factory we have test jig that runs a set of test but these are to find maunfacturing defects. I would suggest you boot it up and connect something to USB, if all that works then basically everything is working

Edgar says:10 minutes ago

How many layers are on the Pi 3 B?

j0z0r pwn4tr0n says:10 minutes ago

6

Roger Thornton says:10 minutes ago

@Edgar 6

steverobillard says:10 minutes ago

Thanks Roger

Arsenijs says:9 minutes ago

He said they're using a custom jig, it's probably not open-source. You could probably make one yourself - four flash drives, one "3.5mm audio input" speaker, HAT with solder jumpers on GPIOs, one HDMI monitor and some Python code =)

joram says:9 minutes ago

that sounds like a cool hackaday.io project

erik pax says:8 minutes ago

how does testjig boot the pi, does it emmulate an sdcard? or via jtag?

steverobillard says:8 minutes ago

@arsenjis I am thinking of connec tmp102 to test I2c and some LED arrays to test the GPIO's

Arsenijs says:7 minutes ago

You'd also need to check WiFi and BT - I've actually got one Pi3 that I didn't properly handle and dropped in a box with other random components. Under the magnifier, I can see that a small, small corner of the WiFi+BT chip broke off, and it isn't detectable.

Roger Thornton says:7 minutes ago

It 's a big set of linear actuators that physically pluc things into the ports.

Edgar says:6 minutes ago

How many revisions before the first PI was officially in the market? I remember reading somewhere that the first py was going to be based on at atmega micro.

Arsenijs says:6 minutes ago

@steverobillard you don't need that. Just make a header that connects GPIOs in pairs. Say, GPIO2 to GPIO3, set GPIO2 as input and GPIO3 as output, toggle the GPIO3 and check the state by reading GPIO2, then swap roles and repeat. Shouldn't take much more than one second for all GPIOs, and should be fully automated.

steverobillard says:5 minutes ago

@arsenemutumbu1215

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

By automating, you make the testing process easy even for somebody technically illiterate - pulg in HDMI, the shield with jumpers, SD card and power, wait one minute, get test results on HDMI monitor.

steverobillard says:4 minutes ago

@Arsenijs Rozenbahs

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

Don't forget my question about the diode =)

Roger Thornton says:4 minutes ago

@Edgar The Pi was born with a Broadcom powered board and it made sense to carry that on and use a chipset that the founders knew and had worked on

Arsenijs says:4 minutes ago

Oh no you summoned my friend again =D

steverobillard says:3 minutes ago

yeah the arthritis is acting up and my typing is not the greatest today

Roger Thornton says:3 minutes ago

@Arsenijs You're exactly right on the GPIO testing, what was the Diode question?

Arsenijs says:3 minutes ago

"Yeah, seems like D6 is the diode (and H5V is also available on PP20), and the power flows from 5V to H5V. Theoretically, a HDMI monitor shouldn't be able to power a Zero - but could power a B+/2B/3B, due to the RT9741. Would that be a right assumption?"

Roger Thornton says:2 minutes ago

Yes you shoudn't be able to power the Zero through the HDMI without some modifcation

clarkhensley says:2 minutes ago

Would it take a different setup to produce wearable electronics? Is there smth like a smaller package size for the smt components to scale everything down?

Arsenijs says:a minute ago

@steverobillard no, it's that chat sometimes is weird like that, don't mind =)

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