

Raspberry Pi layout - cpswan
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/382

======
flixic
Some critique towards design:

\- Too many different fonts. Three typefaces (seems like League Gothic, Arial
and some rounded one) and four fonts (multiple widths for that rounded). Use
two typefaces at most, and create strong identity with that.

\- Logo sits without a place, without alignment. Put it to the right corner,
above or even before the text, just align it somewhere.

\- Status LEDs should be light grey? This label kind of ignores otherwise
consistent colors.

~~~
paulofisch
Thanks for the critique, I always appreciate informed opinion :)

\- The rational is that the rounded (Quicksand) is for the logo and branding
only. Using it for body titles as well weakens core branding in my eye.

League Gothic is doing the heavy lifting for most of the chart.

Helvetica is for a couple of incidental labels. I should really use League
Gothic for the dimensions too, there's no good reason not to, so will bear
that in mind for future revisions.

The power supply in Helvetica is more a standard labelling convention. It
could easily be dropped from the design.

\- As for the logo placement, this is not meant as a finished layout, more an
example of elements for reuse in other contexts. Still, that was lazy of me
:-)

\- The light grey is for 'techie' bits of the design. The LED's should be
black as they're indicators for all users, not just the hardcore. So yes. Well
spotted, that's an inconsistency I'll fix it future.

Thanks again for taking the time.

------
tambourine_man
Drop a WiFi chip there and it's a hacker's dream router.

Model C? :)

~~~
paulofisch
Cheap USB Wifi dongle supported by Linux I think :-)

Surely there's one or two that are tiny and will work?

Maybe this one? [http://www.amazon.co.uk/7dayshop-
Wireless-150Mbps-802-11n-Ad...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/7dayshop-
Wireless-150Mbps-802-11n-Adapter/dp/B004ZDRBJ6/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&qid=1322234983&sr=8-35)

~~~
noonespecial
Anaything with a ralink chipset seems to work fine. That's lots of realteks
and generics available for less than $10 on amazon.

I for one am happy the raspberry pi team isn't delaying their release to
fiddle with wifi. The regulatory non-sense can literally take years per
country.

~~~
westbywest
I've had remarkably less than optimal experience using USB wifi dongles with
rt3572 and rt2870 chipsets (IIRC) with Ubuntu kernels 2.6.28 thru 2.6.38 or
so, even with the modules downloaded from Ralink directly. Inconsistent
thruput, inability to change channels, and random disassociation from the AP.
Plus, their modules vomit lots of pointless debug info to syslog, with no
options to disable it.

I'd recommend Atheros arl9170 instead.

~~~
noonespecial
I guess I should have mentioned that. Ralink is a starting point, not a
finished product. Everyone manufacturer who uses them messes with the driver
in their own way. The generics are the worst.

Simply using the built-in drivers in ubuntu or a prebuilt module from ralink
yields an almost unusable link.

You have to be on your toes and willing to compile your own drivers (and even
learn about the source and make tweaks) to really get ralinks to sing. The
good news is that ralink makes this source freely available.

Atheros's work great but they cost more (like $15 or $20 instead of $7) and
you still have to be careful to get the right "mad-wifi" drivers. There are
less of them though and most versions work out of the box at least acceptably.

Your advice is sound though if you're just looking to get your one ras-pi on
the air with minimum fuss you probably want this : [http://www.amazon.com/TP-
LINK-TL-WN821N-Wireless-Adapter-WPA...](http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-
WN821N-Wireless-Adapter-WPA2-PSK/dp/B002D5EIT4)

If you're preparing your robot army for world domination on a budget, its
probably worth putting in the time to figure out a ralink. I've had great luck
with this sub $7 beauty [http://www.amazon.com/150mbps-Wireless-Adapter-
Wifi-802-11b/...](http://www.amazon.com/150mbps-Wireless-Adapter-
Wifi-802-11b/dp/B003P0TEKY/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1322295065&sr=1-5)
but it did take considerable effort to hack the driver into shape.

------
ajtaylor
I wonder if you could run the Boxee software on it? Presumably the key factor
would be if the software would take advantage of hardware HD video playback.

------
ruslan
What is so good about it that is missing in Beagle Board or in its many clones
? Just curious.

~~~
joshu
Theoretically price. We won't know till it actually ships, though.

~~~
paulofisch
The price is still looking solid at $25 and $35 (you'll need an SD card and
power supply on top of that)

Compare with the BeagleBone which is $89 and has no video outputs on board,
but does have a better ARM Cortex chip.

Personally I want both for different reasons :)

------
nl
This is a pointless complaint on my part, and I'm going to burn karma, but....

Wouldn't it be nice if all the I/O ports were on one edge! Cases could be much
neater...

I realize the interference makes that too hard on a board that small, but I
can wish.

~~~
ricardobeat
That looks impossible unless they make it a 20cm long "stick-computer".

