Late last week I received my order from Element 14. I got three Raspberry Pi boards and two Adafruit clear cases, with shipping and tax the total came 158 dollars U.S. and change. I already had my own keyboard, mouse, 5V AC adapter with a micro USB plug on it, a HDMI cable, and a 4 MB SD-HC card. These are what are needed according to their Getting Started Guide (PDF). I also had to download one of a few different operating systems, so I chose Raspbian. There are a few other choices.
The board does not come with the HDMI cable, so that cost about ten dollars. But it can get much more expensive if you buy one from a retail store. The other alternative is to use the Composite out RCA jack, but I don’t think it’s as high a resolution as the HDMI cable (I haven’t tried it yet). The HDMI cable supports audio if the monitor has speakers.
I took it to work and the guys helped me do some adds to the basic package. One thing I really wanted to do was to get Kicad running. This is a suite of schematic drawing and PC board making software, and I wanted to start using it to get away from being locked in to using the ExpressPCB service that I had been using last year (see note at end). The basic GUI comes with Midori web browser, and several other programs. I’ve been using Puppy Linux for more than a year and I’m getting familiar with this Linux environment.
Note: More about Kicad – ExpressPCB allows you to design a PC board and submit it to their service. I found that Futurlec.com will also accept PCB designs done in ExpressPCB. I have not tried their service but I’ve heard positive stuff from others about it. Most other PC board makers only accept Gerber files, and that is what Kicad creates. Thus submitting Gerber files frees you from the restrictions imposed by ExpressPCB, and allows one to shop around for a decent PC board price and enable you to choose extras and add-ons if you need them.
With ExpressPCB and ExpressSCH I found that the included library was inadequate and I had to make many of my custom components, which wasn’t difficult, but it was tedious and time consuming. My guess is that the same thing will happen with the Kicad package, since you don’t get much for free. I suppose I could pay hundreds of dollars and get a more advanced package, but then I don’t know if I’ll get much more, since I’ve never done it. I guess I’ll be updating this or a future blog when I find out more.
Update May 21 – At work we plugged the R Pi into a 5V charger using a USB to micro USB cable for a Nokia phone. The R Pi got through the boot sequence to about the first 1-1/2 screens, then rebooted, and kept doing thie over and over. Problem was that it was too fast to read. We thought that the charger adapter was at fault, so we plugged the cable into the front of a PC. The boot sequence went slower, witl an error message or two. It finally finished so we tried to type into the keyboard but the keyboard was dead. We tried a different charger but it again went back to the rebooting. We tried the PC again, with a differetn keyboard, but it was still dead. We tried another R Pi, but the same thing happened, so we were certain that the R Pi wasn’t the problem. After several more frustrating attempts, we replaced the Nokia cable and it started working okay. The problem was the Nokia micro USB cable. Something was different about this particular cable. So if you have a similar problem, suspect the cable, not the adapter or R Pi.
Update May 27 – I drew my first schematic – a Joule Thief – in Kicad. It’s ugly – the colors are weird, like green for the wires. I tried to export the schematic to a .GIF or whatever graphic file, but it can’t do it. So I printed it to a file and got a .PDF file. But when I move it to this computer to try to work with it, it gives me the Encrypted error message. I read about .PDF encryption from a Google search, and I couldn’t find any of the information in the file when I tried to search it with the text editor.
Right now, from what little I’ve done, I don’t like the Kicad package. I didn’t expect that much, since it’s free. I may try to buy the hobbyist version of Eagle, but I still have the problem of trying to get it to run under Linux – Eagle doesn’t as far as I know.
More on Kicad in my later blog.
Back to learning Kicad.