The Raspberry Pie has made a lot of amazing things in the world, especially for young engineers who have Hug, like DIY, but many project results may not be interested.
In a recent survey, about 20% of respondents claimed to use the "manufacturer" motherboard directly in the final product. Includes some professional open source hardware boards like a Raspberry Piece, Arduino.
Although some manufacturers have some important development tools in many cases - including STEM education and product prototype production - in this article, I will focus on the general requirements of manufacturers develop board in commercial or industrial products. Disadvantages, of course, all use the Raspberry School as an example.
The goal of this article is not to prevent you from using a Raspberry Party or judge it. There is no doubt that the Raspberry Part is a great plan, a great embedded computer board for educational and some prototype design. On the contrary, the goal of this article is to inform Engineers to use the Raspberry Paving Design to affect some concepts developed by their business products, especially if they use the Raspberry Pista as the base embedded panel computer.
Why do many engineers choose Raspberry Party?
Let us first try to understand why many engineers may want to develop product development using Raspberry.
Raspberry Pie has a lot of benefits:
Low cost (about $ 35)
Compact board has powerful processing power
Many interfaces (HDMI, multiple USB, Ethernet, board Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, many GPIO, USB power supply, etc.)
Support Linux, Python (easy build app)
Community support examples available at any time
Develop such embedded circuit boards will spend a lot of money and energy
When you build a hobby or personal project, all the points mentioned above are good. However, if you are building industrial or commercial products, you must consider many other key parameters before selecting any type of embedded circuit board.
So, what different parameters should you consider before you choose to embed a developer for product development board?
1. How long do you need more time available?
The availability of hardware for design is the most critical parameters to consider when building products. On average, if you are building a commercial product, you will take about 18-24 months to start selling in the market.
After that, you may want to sell the product for a few years - For example, three to four years - before you want to start moving to another board. So if you are considering using ready-made embedded development boards in your product, I think the minimum usable time of the board is 7 years or longer.
Let us quickly browse the availability of these boards according to the Raspberry Party website (support year):
Raspberry 3 model B + availability, January 2023 (3.5 years away from July 2019)
Raspberry 3 model A + availability, January 2023 (about 3.5 years)
Raspberry Pisero availability, January 2022 (still 2.5 years)
Keep in mind that the above availability commitment does not guarantee that you can get a specific number of boards (if you want a large amount, the Raspberry Pissed is a regular thing). Then the designer's question is whether you want to choose a circuit board that can be used in the next three to four years? Most importantly, do you think about how to get the number you need when you need?
2. Can you handle the operating system (OS) on the SD card?
Raspberry party Board runs Linux on the SD card. This may mean that the reinforced application will cause problems, as this SD card can be used in contact, which may ultimately use unreliable solutions (double-sided tape, glue, etc.).
Another problem with this SD card is that if the file write operation continues, it may be damaged if the write is written or the board is not properly powered off. In order to solve this problem, you may eventually provide an external battery or a supercapacitor power supply to provide the main power power off interrupt signal so that your software can be properly closed before the board is turned off.
3. How important is the USB connection?
Although there are 4 USB HOST interfaces, the Raspberry Panel is too strong, not recommended, especially in industrial applications.
Next, the most important aspect is the availability of the desired function set. There are many features on the Raspberry Panel, which may be essential when designing commercial products.
4. Do you need a real-time clock for a backup battery?
In most cases, if you want to use a real-time tracking event, you need a real time clock. This is not the standard configuration of the PI board. If you want to add an external RTC circuit, you can do this, but this will increase cost, energy and space.
5. Do you need these features / interfaces?
The following is some of you may determine what you need, but the Raspberry Party cannot be available.
LCD interface: All display RGB signals are connected in 40 needles. If you need a TFT display, few or no GPIO is available.
Onboard ADC: If your product needs ADC (8/10/12-bit resolution), you need to add an external ADC chip by i 2 C / SPI.
EEPROM / FRAM / SPI Flash: It is important to use your board EEPROM or FRAM or FLASH for data storage applications. At present, there is no provision in this area.
Limited UART: There is only one UART on the header, and eight signals are not allowed. Usually, most requirements require two or three UARTs.
Limited number of I / O: 28 GPIOs on headers, but these are not enough for many commercial applications.
Due to the above points, a separate board may be required to fill the blank.
6. Do you need external power?
In commercial products, you need to provide additional AC-DC power (if the product is powered directly by AC) or DC-DC power (if the product is powered by external adapter (6V / 12V / 24V) or battery) is powered.
The power connector on the board also needs reliability at runtime. It is recommended not to use commercial products for power supplies based on USB micro connectors. In addition, in order to protect the barrier party from malfunction, it should have reverse voltage, surge and overload protection.
7. How will you perform thermal management?
The processor on the Raspberry Pie produces heat, must be effectively managed, otherwise it will affect the reliability of the board. Up to now, only small radiators with glue can be used. There is no mounting hole near the processor, so the heat sink is properly fixed by glue.
In the end, if you use the Raspberry Pist to reach 70-90%, you may need a suitable heat sink, you will ultimately use the board installation holes and a larger radiator, which may not be easy to get . It may be necessary to customize the design of the radiator and make it, which is additional cost and manpower.
Especially interesting examples, recently released Raspberry Pavilion 4 has encountered some overheating problems, and the firmware update should be resolved, but there will be some legacy issues.
8. Do you have a space size?
Like any equipment design, the space is a pain point. The board design based on the PI will be converted to a limit on the final design profile.
How do you design a round product? Do you need some compromise?
It is definitely impossible than the size of the berry panel, right?
On the side, there is HDMI and there are USB and Ethernet interfaces on the other side. In applications that users need HDMI ports, you need to connect it to the USB / Ethernet connector using cables and install them with custom chassis. The HDMI cable connection is unreliable for on-site operations.
Extra USB (Model B +): In the application, if only two USBs are issued to the user, you need to use a custom chassis to hide the other two USB ports.
9. How much do you need to develop support?
The Raspberry Piece is greatly supported by the online forum and community. However, due to the advantage of the Raspberry Party lies in community support, they don't focus on professional development support. Can you use community to support the product with a pressing timeline, or need special support?
Before you decide, you should create a list of all software components you want to use and check the available support levels. In most cases, it is recommended to test performance to make sure you can get your expectations for the final product.
10. What does your scalability need?
Because, so far, the Raspberry Panel does not design commercial products, which are not compatible, can be used as alternatives and / or providing different performance so that developers can choose according to the calculation requirements.
What do you do if you have completed the development and then realize that you need a different specification? Especially when trying to transition from the prototype design phase to a more scalable part of the product development process, it is important to consider designing rework.
All of the above points are subjective for commercial product requirements. In some cases, the functionality provided by the Raspberry Pist is sufficient to meet the application needs. In these cases, you may want to use it for product development. However, I hope that these points mentioned above can be considered as an engineer in deciding to use the Raspberry Pivoting in its product.
I am using a professional board for engineers looking for an easy-to-use embedded computing board. Many companies offer circuit boards that guarantee usability more than seven years. Many other circuit board manufacturers will also have industrial grade quality and scalability options.
Even if you choose to use boards that apply to commercial applications, I hope this article will provide you with some things that need to be considered when designing industrial products.
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