

How do you make Raspberry Pi? [video] - junto
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24430558

======
theunixbeard
On the subject of "Trying this at home", it turns out you can approximate this
type of manufacturing process at home with under $500 worth of tools!

The uncommon things you need are:

1\. Custom PCB ([http://oshpark.com/](http://oshpark.com/) $1.66/sq. in., min.
only 3 copies of board)

2\. Stencil for your custom PCB
([http://www.oshstencils.com/](http://www.oshstencils.com/) $.60/sq. in.)

3\. Solder paste [different than regular solder, it's glue-like at room
temperature rather than solid]
([http://www.smtsolderpaste.com/](http://www.smtsolderpaste.com/) there may be
better vendors for paste, I've used these guys. Anyone have suggestions?)

4\. Heat Source, for on-the-cheap use either a high-wattage toaster oven or
hot plate (never to be used with food again!) See Sparkfun's writeup on it
here:[https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59](https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59)

As you can see, as pg said the hardware renaissance is coming
([http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html)). As
an example oshstencils.com just launched a few months ago and before that it
was a minimum of $30+ for even the cheapest mylar stencil vendors. Things are
moving fast!

~~~
asb
I agree that a lot of this stuff is surprisingly affordable and doable with
low-cost equipment. That said, it's worth noting that in the case of the
Raspberry Pi the BGA package of the BCM2835, even were it available in small
quantities makes it infeasible to work with at home. For instance to break out
the pins from the BGA you're going to need blind vias (OSHpark doesn't support
this, plus the pi needs a 6-layer PCB). The RAM is soldered on top of the
BCM2835 in a package on package configuration. I found oshstencils just
yesterday, it looks great! As you can say, you can make some seriously
impressive circuits at low cost with vendors like these.

------
danellis
"Don't try this at home?" I know it's a throwaway a line, but that's exactly
what people should be doing!

~~~
Create
While schematics are available, board layout for the Pi is not, and I see
precisely no reasons for not distributing it openly. Raspberry Pi has nothing
to do with open hardware.

The whole system cannot function without the GPU as it’s the first component
to boot and controls some vital peripherals, and the GPU can only work with a
closed-source firmware.

Oh, and before calling this a conspiracy theory, take a look at the sister
site of Pi Foundation. That’s right: instead of promoting free, open and
royalty-free standards like WebM, the Foundation sells licenses for two
proprietary and obsolete video encoders. Also, if you want the Foundation to
send more documentation to you, they require you to provide a business model.
This has nothing to do with education and everything with marketing.

Fortunately, not Beagle Board nor ODROID-X require GPU drivers (or, for that
matter, any proprietary code or binaries at all) for regular operation. You’d
only need them for rendering accelerated graphics.

If you are looking to develop truly open hardware, take a look at Milkymist
One. It isn’t cheap, but is worth way more than its cost.

If you are looking for a more sane alternative to Pi, consider buying Texas
Instruments Beagle Board or Samsung ODROID-X. Both vendors have released
complete documentation for the SoC (except for the graphics processor,
described above), and are generally more friendly to open-source community
than Broadcom.

[http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-
un...](http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-
for-education/)

~~~
asb
Licenses for video codecs are sold because people want them, the chip can
decode them, and it would obviously be stupid to bake that cost in to the base
price when only a subset of users want them. The Foundation doesn't want to
see your business model - they don't distribute VideoCore documentation, that
is intellectual property of Broadcom and they decide who they share it with.

------
junto
As a Welshman, it is nice to see these being manufactured in Wales. Shows that
we don't have to outsource our manufacturing to the Far East.

~~~
theunixbeard
The key thing to note is how much of the manufacturing process is completely
automated. Due to the huge volumes of the rPi it is cost-effective to automate
almost the entire process.

On the other hand, for products expected to sell only in the thousands or tens
of thousands it turns out human labor is cheaper. In the rPi's case, notice
that it got soldered twice. Once for SMD (surface mount device) parts and once
for the larger through-hole parts. In general, if there aren't going to be
huge volumes humans will hand solder the through hole parts since a separate
wave-soldering machine is needed to do this automatically. As another example
take a look at the custom testing jig they shelled out for. That is easily
thousands of dollars if not even north of 10K. Again in small volumes it would
make more sense for humans to spend the extra effort setting up the board for
testing.

