Re: Raspberry Pi and Lua

[Jay Carlson <nop@...>]

On Mar 8, 2012, at 7:52 AM, sergei karhof wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:40 PM, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> But I'd say that you don't need an embedded version of Lua to run
>> on this one; just the necessary libraries to access the peripherals.
> 
> Hm, you are probably right. So, who is up for the challenge? ;-)
> 

From the FAQ at http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs, an explanation as to why I'm really not that interested in this particular board even if or when they can deliver at quantity at the promised price:

====
Q: What hardware documentation will be available?

A: Broadcom don’t release a full datasheet for the BCM2835, which is the chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi. We will release a datasheet for the SoC which will cover the hardware exposed on the Raspi board e.g. the GPIOs. We will also release a board schematic later on.
====

Actually it's worse than that:

====
Q: But I want documentation for <hardware X>!

A: Other documentation may be released in future but this will be at the Foundation’s discretion.
====

I appreciate the honesty in not promising everything, but I really don't like having to wait for other people to work through their internal political processes before delivering hardware documentation. And they're jerks describing people who do want the basic tools to work with the hardware they've bought:

===
Q: But I demand the documentation for the chip. Give it to me!
===

I don't demand the documentation. I'm just *not interested* without it, especially relative to all the other half-closed platforms.

====
A: To get the full SoC documentation you would need to sign an NDA with Broadcom, who make the chip and sell it to us. But you would also need to provide a business model and estimate of how many chips you are going to sell.
====

What? Shouldn't that start 

    "We believe the hardware should be documented; Broadcom's chip requires an NDA, but in our mission to produce an educational system we will switch platforms if one with similar capabilities becomes available with less secrecy"? 

Except Raspberry Pi seems to work a bit like a Broadcom joint development/marketing venture. Which is hardly a shock when you look at stuff like http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Eben/Upton and notice the title of "Technical Director, Broadcom". Being paid by Broadcom surely does not make him evil, he's his own person, and in any case Broadcom can do good while doing well. But with a project staffed that way, I'm not sure how good an advocate for their customers they are. I'm sick to death of these half-closed little boards which plague the low end of the embedded computer/controller market. 

If I want a board I don't have good docs on I have an incredibly tiny RTL8169 router sitting right here already. Or something like a WDTV Live if I want a display. VIA ITX motherboards sell for $60; they need a (tiny) power supply and memory to be usable, but the gap between the low end of the desktop market and the high end of microcontroller eval boards is narrow--and a primary differentiator is complete documentation.

If I want a board I do have good docs on there's an Arduino next to them--an example of just how hungry the world was for top-to-bottom openness in microcontrollers. I've mentioned a couple of ARM-based Arduino/AVR-killers which all do have complete datasheets, schematics, and no binary blobs. And if I want to commercialize something I've built, I don't need to go to the chip vendor and negotiate; I can just buy quantity 1000 on the open market.

It will be interesting to see if any clones become available. If Broadcom is not selling the chip on the open market, they won't.

Jay