Registered, got the invite, but can't order

Yea, im getting this also. hopefully their servers ease up in a little.

This is undoubtedly a "Gee, thanks" reply, but I feel it has to be made anyway.

A month ago I got fed up with the Pi delivery situation and so I ordered a BeagleBone from Farnell to fill in the gap -- http://uk.farnell.com/circuitco/bb-bone-000/kit-dev-beaglebone-cortex-a8/dp/2063627 . The order was visible and trackable from my Farnell account like all normal Farnell purchases, and as usual, it arrived the very next day.  Standard quality Farnell service, zero hassles.

The BeagleBone proved to be much more than a stop-gap:  a high quality design, proper power management, native Ethernet interface on the SoC, both host and gadget USB interfaces, integrated 2-port hub on the gadget side, superb physical construction and far more useful dual 46-pin female headers for hardware interfacing within its Pi-size form factor.  It has a different target audience than the Pi, not featuring on-board graphics, but it's a far more capable board in all other respects.  Oh, and it lacks one other thing:  Pi hype.

Why do I mention it?  Because depending on your goals with Pi, you don't necessarily have to suffer the Pi ordering issues.  As Eben has said repeatedly, "Raspberry Pi is just a standard ARM Linux box".  Heed those words.  There are alternatives to Pi, not only BeagleBone but also the new i.MX233-OLinuXino product line from Olimex.  Although Pi has a specific niche on the media/graphics side where it is currently unmatched, for all other ARM applications you don't need to endure this suffering.

Morgaine.

Is there any alternative to the pi that is the same price? You are absoulutly right, the pi is quite over hyped.

Thanks, but I'm specifically interested in a Pi.  I know there are plenty of other dev boards out there, but this is the one I want.

Daniel, pick your favorite architecture and price point:  http://www.mouser.com/Semiconductors/Engineering-Development-Tools/Embedded-Processor-Development-Tools/_/N-8x1tw/

Daniel, it's apples and oranges, you can't really compare product lines directly.

BeagleBone is way beyond the Pi spec for anything except graphics, and if one is looking for an efficient server or hardware interface then it fits the bill perfectly and will do a far better job than Pi.  For graphics, Pi has no competition, as I said earlier, so I'm afraid that suffering the Pi ordering process is the only option.  A halfway house, cheap as Pi but like a non-graphical Model A, is Olimex's i.MX233-OLinuXino-Micro, at 24 Euros -- http://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/imx233-olinuxino-micro-doube-side-design-works-at-full-speed/ , price list https://www.olimex.com/dev/pricelist.html .

They all have sweet spots and they all have disadvantages.  There is no such thing as the perfect ARM board.  But if your application doesn't need graphics, then you have more options than just one.  Pi fanbois of course have no options.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

A month ago I got fed up with the Pi delivery situation and so I ordered a BeagleBone from Farnell to fill in the gap

Unfortunately they're out of stock today..  and now we know it's all YOUR fault Morgaine

was looking at them yesterday thinking about buying one.. thing is, at the Pi price, I'll find far more uses. The BeagleBone is better, yes, but at twice the cost it doesn't quite fit into the same 'throw-away' bucket.

Was looking at dreamplugs too, http://www.newit.co.uk/shop/products.php?cat=21 but you're into even higher cost for an even older generation arm. Then there was trimslice which looked ok, until you notice the sata is on usb.

I did pick up an iMX53-START-R board a few weeks back when farnell finally got one in, and it's nice. Apart from the expansion connector that's up towards the cost of the Pi for a bare connector, and they don't seem to do a gpio style breakout board.

I guess my point is there doesn't seem to be any one of them that's 'just right'. The Pi gets it's place at the front of the line by being cheap and mostly good enough.

selsinork wrote:

 

Unfortunately they're out of stock today..  and now we know it's all YOUR fault Morgaine

Oops, I shouldn't have pointed out how good they are.  Evidently it's becoming popular.

A black mark to Farnell's purchasing department for letting stocks run out though.  Maintaining stocks given a certain lead time isn't exactly a hard job, and although it's possible that popularity picked up suddenly and unexpectedly, it's unlikely.

Morgaine.

Oops, I shouldn't have pointed out how good they are.  Evidently it's becoming popular.

I can see a lot of people like me who are not particularly interested in the GPU aspects getting tired of waiting for Pi and getting a beaglebone instead. But add a DVI-D cape at more than the cost of a RPi will put off the media-player-for-buttons crowd. Or start them moaning that it doesn't have VGA