RaspPi/Keyboard Project Called Kiiboard, Still Pronounced ‘keyboard’

March 21, 2015 by Rich Bremer 24 Comments

[b10nik] wrote in to tell us about a pretty sweet project that he just finished up. It’s a mechanical keyboard with an integrated Raspberry Pi 2 Model B inside.

[b10nik] purchased a new Filco Ninja Majestouch-2 keyboard just for this project. Although it may make some people cringe, the keyboard was immediately taken apart in order to find an open cavity for the Raspberry Pi. Luckily there was space available towards the left rear of the keyboard case.

If you are familiar with the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, you know that all of the connections are not on the same side of the board. The USB, audio, HDMI and Ethernet jacks were removed from the PCB. The Ethernet port is not needed since this hack uses WiFi, but those those other ports were extended and terminated in a custom 3D printed I/O panel . The stock keyboard case had to be cut to fit the new panel which results in a very clean finished look.

There’s one more trick up this keyboard’s sleeve, it can be used with the internal Raspberry Pi or be used as a standard keyboard. This is done by way of a FSUSB30MUX USB switch IC that completely disconnects the Raspberry Pi from the keyboard’s USB output.

For another RaspPi/Keyboard solution, check out this concept from a few years ago using a Cherry G80-3000 mechanical keyboard.

An Upgrade To A Raspberry Pi Media Server

March 1, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

For the last few years, [Luke] has been running a music server with a Raspberry Pi. With the new Raspberry Pi 2 and its quad core processor, he thought it was time for an upgrade.

The build consists of a Raspi 2, a HiFiBerry Dac to address the complaints of terrible audio on the Pi, an aluminum enclosure, and some electronics for IO and a real software shutdown for the Pi. The Arduino also handles an IR remote and a rotary encoder on the front of the enclosure.

The software is the Logitech Media Server along with Squeezeslave. The front end is custom, though, with functions for shutdown and receiving IR remote codes. Everything is served up by Flask, with a 32GB microSD card stuffed into the Pi to store MP3s. All in all, a great build.

Photonic Reset Of The Raspberry Pi 2

February 8, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 102 Comments

For the past month, the Raspberry Pi 2 has only been available to the Raspi Foundation, and for about 2 weeks, select members of the media who have worn the Raspi 2 on a necklace like [Flavor Flav] wears a clock. That’s not many people with real, working hardware and when a product is released, the great unwashed masses will find some really, really weird bugs. The first one to crop up is a light-sensitive reset of the Raspberry Pi 2.

[PeterO] on the Raspberry Pi forums took a few pictures – with flash – of a running Raspberry Pi 2. It took a little bit of deduction to realize that a camera flash will either reset or turn the Raspi 2 off. Yes, this is weird, and experiments are ongoing.

A short video from [Mike Redrobe] confirms the finding and a reddit thread offers an explanation. U16, a small chip located in the power supply part of the Raspi 2, is sensitive to light. Putting enough photons will cause the Pi to shut down or restart.

There’s still some research to be done, however, I can confirm a cheap green laser pointer will reset a Raspberry Pi 2 when the beam is directed at the U16 chip. This is the chip that is responsible, and this is not an EMP issue. This is a photon/light issue with the U16 chip. The solution to this bug is to either keep it in a case, or put a tiny amount of electrical tape over the chip.

Thanks [Arko] for staying up until an ungodly hour and sending this to me.

Benchmarking The Raspberry Pi 2

February 5, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 136 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has only been available for a few days, but already those boards are heading through the post office and onto workbenches around the world. From the initial impressions, we already know this quad-core ARMv7 system boots in about half the time, but other than that, there aren’t many real benchmarks that compare the new Raspberry Pi 2 to the older Raspi 1 or other similar tiny Linux dev boards. This is the post that fixes that.

A word of warning, though: these are benchmarks, and benchmarks aren’t real-world use cases. However, we can glean a little bit of information about the true performance of the Raspberry Pi 2 with a few simple tools.

For these tests, I’ve used Roy Longbottom’s Raspberry Pi benchmarking tools, nbench, and a few custom tools to determine how fast both hardware versions of the Raspberry are in real-world use cases.

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Introducing The Raspberry Pi 2

February 2, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 184 Comments

TL;DR It’s called the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Quad core ARM Cortex A7 with one Gig of RAM. It’s the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi Model B+. Available now at Newark, Element 14, Allied, and RS Components. It’s the same price as the old one. You’re not a child and you should learn to read.

The original Raspberry Pi released, three years ago, was looking a bit long in the tooth when it was first launched. That’s to be expected for a computer that sells for $35 USD. Three years is a long time in the world of electronics, and the Pi is due for an update. It’s here, now, and the biggest change is a faster quad-core chip, a better processor architecture, and 1GB of RAM.

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B features a quad-core ARM Cortex A7 running at 1GHz with 1GB of RAM. This chip uses the ARMv7 architecture instead of the ARMv6 of the original Raspi. When playing around with it, it was noticeably zippier than my months-old Raspi Model B in web browsing tasks. Very, very cool, and something that opens up a few doors for CPU-intensive applications.

Although the CPU has been updated, there isn’t much else on the Pi that has changed. USB and Ethernet is still handled by the LAN9514 USB/Ethernet controller. If you’re looking for Gigabit Ethernet, sorry that’s not going to happen. We’re not going to get eMMC Flash, SATA ports, or anything groundbreaking other than the CPU with this hardware update. It’s pretty much just a CPU and RAM upgrade.

All the original ports found on the Raspberry Pi Model B+ are found on the Raspi 2; HDMI, audio, analog video, Ethernet, USB, CSI, the as-for-now unused DSI, and GPIO ports haven’t changed. Again, we’re looking at a CPU and RAM upgrade with this hardware release.

Instead of the odd Package On Package CPU and RAM stack featured in previous Raspberry Pis, the RAM has now moved to the back on the Raspi 2:

The RAM chip is an Elpida EDB8132B4PB-8D-F, an eight gigabit DDR2 RAM that has the same clock rate as the RAM in the original Raspi. Don’t look for an increase in memory performance or speed. Instead, just be glad there’s now a full gigabyte of RAM on the Raspi.

A few of you may remember the ‘upgrade’ all those Raspberry Pi early adopters missed out on. After the first few hundred thousand Raspberry Pi Model Bs shipped, someone realized they could upgrade the RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB. It is not yet known whether the Raspberry Pi 2 will be upgraded as easily. Sixteen gigabit RAMs do exist, but now that the CPU and RAM aren’t on the same package, there’s more to consider than just plopping down a new RAM chip.

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