Awful pcb quality and documentation

[glorusso]

I'm writing this issue because my message on pimodules forum has not been published yet. I have a UPS-PIco HV3.0A Plus and I'm not satisfied with this product at all.

First, given that this board costs almost twice as much as the raspberry PI3, I don't like to see smd resistors soldered like in the pictures below.

Also, the documentation is scattered in many different pieces... Where can I find the official product manual (with things like product features, first setup, etc?)

Pictures of the board:

[PiModules]

Hi,

Please provide me your nick name to see what you written on the pimodules forum. We are receiving so many sex oriented spam messages so may be it has been deleted by mistake. There are also rules than must be followed in the forum.

Now about your opinion.

1. The cost of these board is low, I think if you compare it with other boards doing less than this one. Regarding the compassion of this board price with the Raspberry Pi is wrong on my opinion. Especially as Raspberry Pi is manufactured in millions of units. Therefore it is not possible by nobody to manufacture such qty of any (our or other pcb for the Raspberry Pi). BTW there are many other boards with much higher price than Raspberry Pi, there are also bad ?

The quality of this PCB is on my opinion very good, it is 4 layers PCB, gold plated, with thermal pipes. Designed and simulated with very high tech CAD/CAM tools (www.pads.com)

Regarding these 2 resistors we added to the PCB, it is a functionality that has been invented after we manufactured the PCB (not planned at the beginning), however decided to add it, as we think that is very usefully for the users. These two resistors (by the way soldered very professionally under microscope to each boards separately) allows user to startup the system from EXP, even if battery is completely discharged. We called it cold wake-up, and it is very useful for industrial applications, and is requested by many industrial customers.

Regarding your "bad opinion about our product at all" you called it it would be nice to know point by point what you not like on it, so we will have opportunity to improved it.

We are receiving so many very positive comments on our product(s) so your bad opinion is very important to use, to see what we need to improve in order to make you also satisfied as all other users/customers.

Awaiting for your more detailed answer,

With my Warmest Regards

Ioannis

On 5/4/2017 8:24 μμ, glorusso wrote:

I'm writing this issue because my message on pimodules forum has not been published yet. I have a UPS-PIco HV3.0A Plus and I'm not satisfied with this product at all.

First, given that this boards cost almost twice a raspberry PI3 I don't like to see smd resistors soldered like in the pictures below:

top-annotated-01 https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/26933772/24718148/4d5e79c0-1a35-11e7-8c5c-6cf29ad57e53.JPG

side-smaller https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/26933772/24718163/5aedbcfe-1a35-11e7-8ca0-2d2801ecec05.JPG side-2-smaller https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/26933772/24718166/5f59265c-1a35-11e7-8ae1-b257a194ae43.JPG

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-- Ioannis Pi Modules

[PiModules]

Hi,

Our product is very dynamically updated and new documentation and firmware is released every 3-4 weeks. We are releasing it on our forum, and when stable pass it to the GitHub.

The latest part of documentation is here

http://www.forum.pimodules.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2898

There are thousands of various ideas, posts, questions and scripts that could be usefully for anybody.

Also it is supported on the ModMyPi on their forum

You can follow the installation guides from the GitHub

https://github.com/modmypi/PiModules/wiki/UPS-PIco-Installation

Therefore the simplest way to have support is to search the forum(s), GitHub or just ask for it My Warmest Regards

-- Ioannis

[glorusso]

In my case, this kind of board is supposed to be used in remote locations where you need to trust both hardware and software against the odds of failure. Now... seeing such resistors soldered like that, however good the rework was, doesn't help. What about documentation? Where can I find a comprehensive manual?

[PiModules]

Hi,

Exactly for customers like you, we added these resistors. The cold wake up it very important on remote locations, so we decided after we manufactured this version of PCB, as many times battery can be completely discharged, and on such cases the cold wake up is necessary. Why do you think that these 2 resistors soldered very professionally are not so good as all others soldered by SMD machine ? As you can see on your photos they are soldered much better that the "original" ones and tested many many times before we released product to customers.

Please provide what are the points you called our product "not like at all" I would be very happy to improve it on each point you will mention about.

Please follow the installations guides in the GiHub, as also below links and you will have our product installed very easy.

There is a cumulative manual, but due to rapid release of new firmware/features it has been not updated yet, so easier for you is to follow links I proposed to you

1. You can follow the installation guide from the GitHub

https://github.com/modmypi/PiModules/wiki/UPS-PIco-Installation

2. For the RTC on Jessie use the following info

http://www.forum.pimodules.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3259

3. For the simple daemons installation use the following info

http://www.forum.pimodules.com/viewforum.php?f=26

4. Also this script

http://www.forum.pimodules.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=4870

I would kindly ask you to move this discussion to one of our technical forums

Warmest Regards

-- Ioannis

[glorusso]

About documentation here's my opinion:

1. A person who gets this board for the first time would be extremely confused about your documentation. You can't tell people to go and look on the forum for simple issues. There needs to be a well documented set of use cases like:

   • UPS with automatic shutdown after 30 s
   • UPS with external power supply, shutdown after 30s
   • UPS with ..., + external relay management

2. Also you know that most people do not remember more than 3 to 5 things at the same time... so why on earth did you choose to use 9 leds with pulse rate coding?... I mean it's got to be simpler.

3. A one-file manual is mandatory for this kind of product. Take for example the LifePO4wered-PI manual