Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 58 replies
  • Subscribers 59 subscribers
  • Views 5005 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Another manufacturer for BBB

bwelsby

Just seen Embest (a Farnell company ) is producing their own clone of the  BeagleBone Black

Parents

  • Looks like a price increase is happening:

     

    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user/64166

     

    Since it seems to be aimed at getting more manufacturers involved in order to increase supply, I'm surprised that e14 isn't using the embest one for this.

     

    Still, a price increase is dubious at best. The BBB is already more expensive than the more capable OLinuXino-LIME and it won't take much to push it into head to head competition with e14's RIoT board.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Looks like we might be getting the Embest one outside China after all, noticed this the other day

     

    image

     

    Mfg is e14, country of origin China and unfortunately includes the previously mentioned price increase image

     

    The RIoT board is £46.55 here in the UK, it has twice the RAM, twice the eMMC, gigabit network, four usb, audio connectors, better CPU, better GPU... the list goes on of ways it offers more than the BBB.  So while I'm sure there will be a certain amount of RPi effect where people will choose the BBB simply because it's a BBB, personally I don't think it'll be quite so simple a choice. 

    The BBB is really good at the original price, but it's competing against a different set of boards at this price.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Good to know - I'm glad that i.MX6 is doing well with support in general as I backed the Novena (iMX6 laptop).

     

    Marvell, hmmm, that was used in a lot of the tiny ARM file servers like pogoplug, right?  Are there any OSHW SBCs you know that use it?

  • in reply to fustini

    Yes, sheevaplug is the one I know the marvell stuff from. I think their chips are also used in various NAS type systems as well judging by the names.  Can't say I've seen any SBCs using them.

     

    Looking at the dts files in arch/arm/boot/dts/ in the 3.13 kernel, out of 286 the top 3 are

    SoC manufacturer
    		Boards
    Freescale49
    Marvell42
    TI30

    followed by Samsung, Allwinner, Atmel, Nvidia all in the 10-20 range.  The Freescale number is interesting as there are lots of older imx2* boards while we're much more likely to be interested in imx53 or imx6 today.

    The overall impression is that while there's lots of Arm devices, comparitively few are SBCs and even fewer OSHW.

  • in reply to fustini

    image

    image

     

    Help... can't read this image

    image

    Interesting that a BBB is now 'Exclusively from element14'

    image

    image

    image

    Yes,its really an AM3358..

    Fullscreen 6378.contentimage_176609.html Download 
    <html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

     

    Spot the differences...

    Fullscreen 3225.contentimage_176610.html Download 
    <html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

    Fullscreen 1172.contentimage_176611.html Download 
    <html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

     

    One interesting thing to note, and that's already been noticed in the beagleboard google group is that the e14 boards don't have the A5B, A5C, A6 etc marking, so we don't really know what version they are and what fixes are incorporated.

    Fullscreen 8037.contentimage_176612.html Download 
    <html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

  • in reply to Former Member

    After some digging, it appears that my e14 board is a RevB, it has the R8/R9 fix from A6A and a AM3358 which appears to make it a RevB.

  • in reply to Former Member

    And TP9 seems to go to a previously unused pin on the AM335x. You've got an additional I/O pin, not that there was a shortage : )

     

    image

  • in reply to shabaz

    never even noticed that!  pity it's not uart3_rx though...

  • in reply to Former Member

    Great comparison!  I just got mine too.  I agree it would be nice if the sticker said that revision though my box did have Rev B printed on it.

  • in reply to fustini

    lol.. actually so does mine..  I wonder why they print that in just one place and on the edge that you're least likely to look at.

     

    Hope they have the RevC stickers ready image

     

    Looks like the 1K or thereabouts they had in the UK has sold out in about 1-2days and they're eating into the 5th May delivery already. Hope the e14 factory is ready for what's to come image

Reply Children