How Geppetto saved thousands of dollars and months of time on a custom Raspberry Pi® Compute Module 3 device?
Bruce R. Koball is an independent engineer consultant and has agreed to share his insights and user experience with Geppetto for this project. Recently, he worked on a cryptographic signing appliance project utilizing Geppetto to customize a CM3. Below is an excerpt from our chat with Bruce about his Geppetto experience:
- Bruce R. Koball,
Independent Embedded Engineer Consultant
The key factor for choosing Geppetto was the bottom line.
The non-recurring engineering investment (NRE) and unit price for an assembled, tested board with a working Linux build was so low that it was worth a try, just as a proof-of-concept prototype. Fortunately for us it yielded a finished working product for a fraction of our initial budget.
The project timeline changed from months to weeks and the budget from an estimate of $20,000 to roughly $4,000 (NRE plus 10 working boards). It saved us time and money.
| Before Geppetto | After Geppetto | |
|---|---|---|
| Estimate Cost | $20,000 | $4,000 |
| Project Timeline | 6-12 months | 3 weeks |
| Number of PCB spin | 2 | 1 |
Bruce describes his experience with using Geppetto:
Using Geppetto was remarkably easy. It’s a building-blocks approach using modular functions that the designer selects from a library. Unlike using a traditional PCB CAD tool where one usually has to define every part of the circuit from scratch, Geppetto’s modules are complete functional circuits that are well characterized and ready to be inserted into a design; I am sure the Gumstix engineers spent many hours building this library.
All the designer has to do is define the functions required for the design, select them from the library, drag them onto the board, and satisfy the modules’ dependencies with a connect-the-dots interface.
Build and buy 2 Geppetto designs for the price of 1 manufacturing fee! Yes, that's right, get two different designs just for $1,999.00.
After delivery, how was the performance of the board bring up of the device?
It worked the first time I powered it up. I plugged in a keyboard, mouse, HDMI monitor, and microSD card with the system image, and it booted Raspbian Linux right up. I was writing and running code on it immediately. I connected the ethernet to my network and it worked. I tested the peripherals (I2C GPIO expander, RTC, RS232 port, codec) and they all worked. I was so impressed I almost fell over!
How Bruce explains Geppetto to others?
It’s a board design and manufacturing service using a browser-based CAD interface that allows customers to create a PCB using a “building-block” approach. The designer selects a set of predefined functional modules from an extensive library, satisfies each module’s dependencies by “connecting the dots,” then, after a minimal lead-time, receives assembled and tested units (with software!). It could not be simpler.
