About Us
Argon 40 is a group of self-proclaimed electronics geeks and
enthusiasts with a passion to make things happen and share our
creations.
Mission Argon ONE:
Bring the Raspberry Pi Closer to Home
Looking back at our years of tinkering and playing with the
Raspberry Pi we took upon ourselves to adapt the mission of bringing the
power of digital making and computing into the hands of the people,
especially for the younger generations.
And, with over 19
Millions single board computers sold, the Raspberry Pi started a mini
revolution, a movement among makers to create exciting projects in
robotics, gaming, home automation and IoT just to name a few, was set in
motion
However, we still see a gap in the penetration of this
versatile computer into the homes of most people. Our solution, to make
this mini computer more newbie friendly and less intimidating compared
to its current barebones form factor. A design appealing to us mere
mortals.
Thus, the Argon ONE mini computer was born. Its
features supplements the strengths of the most advanced Raspberry Pi
while maintaining a small footprint with its minimalist design that will
still suit the requirements of most Raspberry Pi users.
Argon ONE:
The sleek design of Argon ONE aims to complement existing
fixtures and appliances inside your home whether may it be in your
living room, bedroom, game room, or your workshop.
In the design process, our top priority was to maintain the access to the powerful programmable GPIO pins. We managed to achieve this while keeping our desired form factor by placing a magnetic removal top to cover the pins while not in use.
We ensured that all cables run at the back of Argon ONE to reduce the clutter and make day-to-day operations
manageable like any regular desktop computer. Carefully placed ports
keeps access to all existing functionalities of the Raspberry Pi.
Like any desktop computer users want to push this single board
computer to its limits. In doing so the temperature of the SOC (system
on a chip) reaches close to its fail safe temperature of 80 degrees
celsius. Our solution, incorporate in the case both an active and passive cooling.
The aluminum-alloy enclosure,
not only brings external protection and esthetics, it also acts as a
heatsink for the SOC providing overall safeguard to the Raspberry Pi.
Additionally, we have incorporated an internal fan to aid internal-external air circulation thru the vents in Argon ONE.
Current to the fan is controlled through the power PCB so it does not
draw from the Raspberry Pi and it cuts off once the shutdown is
initiated.
Lastly, to better protect your files and projects and the Raspberry Pi itself we have added a proper shutdown circuit that will cut the power in the system.
With
the script installed in Raspbian, the power button will initiate a soft
shutdown, then subsequently cut the power on the Rasberry Pi to
complete the process.