Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

wallarug — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 01:34:51 GMT

Nice picture. Thanks for sharing.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 20:34:04 GMT

Yes more than capable we do the case for them and have a few in stock which will end up on `bay.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

rattustrattus — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:03:20 GMT

Its basically a cubieboard2 (A20 SATA real Ethernet) .... dumbed down to a PI ... bet the price isn't PI level though

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

johnbeetem — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 18:18:07 GMT

John Alexander wrote:

Depends on what you want to do the Banana is essentially an A20 based tablet electronics put in to a RPI format.

Need more puff than the RPi but not quite an Odroid you'll find it quite useful.

Very impressive specs [http://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html] -- I like having real Ethernet, SATA, and 1GB DRAM.

John, does it have enough CPU power for web surfing?

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:51:00 GMT

Depends on what you want to do the Banana is essentially an A20 based tablet electronics put in to a RPI format.

Need more puff than the RPi but not quite an Odroid you'll find t quite useful.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

cstanton — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:41:39 GMT

Huh, okay, I retract my previous thoughts! Thanks for posting the photographs. I'm not convinced I'd get much more use out of it than the other hardware I have kicking about though.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:29:15 GMT

Some impromptu pictures of Vapourware

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:20:52 GMT

Yeah that was some con site ....nothing to do with the real manufacturer

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

cstanton — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:55:01 GMT

I thought the banana pi was vaporware; because on its site(s) it had a 'buy' button that never worked.. o_O

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:45:09 GMT

no but I do have a Banana Pi and it simply destroys the Pi not as good as my ODROID though but still very Good indeed!

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

wallarug — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:08:30 GMT

has anyone bought the hummingbird rpi copy yet??

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Robert Peter Oakes — Thu, 22 May 2014 02:21:39 GMT

Add 3D printer to the Wish list

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Problemchild — Thu, 22 May 2014 02:05:37 GMT

Stuck some photos of my Parallella release board on my blog BTW

http://www.element14.com/community/people/Problemchild/blog/2014/05/21/parallella-from-adapteva-arrives-at-last

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

wallarug — Thu, 22 May 2014 01:50:25 GMT

Anyone any thoughts on recently released boards similar to RPi?

- Banana Pi

- HummingBird

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

techman1298 — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 16:17:57 GMT

If I had $99 I'd definitely get that 16 core supercomputer, might even print out a case.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

wallarug — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 06:39:20 GMT

nice!

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

jamodio — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:55:58 GMT

They released a sexy picture of the gen1 board naked ...

Contrary to RPF obfuscation and top secret mentality here are the Parallela design files

https://github.com/parallella/parallella-hw

Cheers

Jorge

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

wallarug — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:31:09 GMT

The Parrella Board is now available for sale I believe. They sent me an email saying that they are taking pre-orders. Here is the link: http://shop.adapteva.com/

And you can follow the project here: http://www.parallella.org/

I think this could a very interesting project to follow over the next 6 - 12 months.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Former Member — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 08:11:01 GMT

Personally im wondering what others would use for power. 64 cores should increase that quite a lot.

the pi uses what 2,5watts? ok haveing a mini supercomputer could be usefull of course but imho. For most of the uses maybe 1or 2x 1-1,2 ghz and 1gb of ram is the max i would need. i mean most of the learning aspects and retro stuff don't even ask that much. it already runs 1080 video. basicly to browse a little smoother that little more power would be usefull.

i'd kinda was thinking of getting smaller and even less power consumeing. use microsd instead of sd. maybe microhd and micro usb ? but wondering if that would be more practical. but how about an onboard bluetooth. (usb bluetooth is already very tiny) and maybe a tiny wifi card?

but im stil quite new in this. but this is what i was thinking.

but that my opinion.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

jamodio — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 03:21:28 GMT

John Beetem wrote:

For JTAG, I think the Tag-Connect system is so cool. I'd really like to try it some day.

I use TAG-Connect on several products we designed with Renesas and Microchip MCUs. It is good for quick programming/testing, not good for development and extensive debugging.

From a product stand point good option with zero cost on the BOM.

-J

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

morgaine — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:01:11 GMT

Yes thanks Greg, the Dual-Quad RM was at the link provided by John, and the Solo-Dual-Lite RM was similarly located. Linking them both here for easy reference:

Morgaine.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

GregC — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:02:19 GMT

Hello Morgaine

i.MX6 and Sabre-Lite have been officially launched during Electronica previous week ... Thank you for your notifications concerning the Freescale web-page updates.

So could you finally download the Reference Manual and the Datasheet of the i.MX6 version, you are interested in ?

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

johnbeetem — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:20:13 GMT

George Ioakimedes wrote:

I don't particularly have any gripe with the concept of a usb charger, but the Pi has proven that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Mainly down to crap cables and really cheap&nasty psu design, but you really do have to take that crapness into consideration and ideally come up with a better way to supply power..
I recently finished a module where I was forced to use the micro USB connector because the module was so small and that was the onlu USB connector which would fit. If cost permits, one thing that is high on my personal priority, is for the power to be a high current buck/boost switcher. If you're going to design a board for the masses why not let them be free and grab any old power supply and plug 'er in! The last module I used a nice little switcher that had 2.5V-12V input with up to 2.5A capability, I used that on the main power input. One I also really like about this switcher was that you needed at least 2.5V to get the switcher started but once rolling it would operate down to ~1.9V which made perfect for battery usage.

Yeah, it adds a little to the cost but the benefit in this case seems to far outweigh the cost.

Yes, I very much like the idea of a wide-range voltage input and a switching regulator. So many RasPi issues are due to its needing a precision external power supply. All you really need is a barrel connector and a protection diode (if it's not already built into the switcher).

Regarding RTC, I like the idea of having a non-populated SOIC so customers or VARs can add them later. My favorite is the Maxim/Dallas DS1338. The DS1375 you listed is cheaper, but it needs to get a clock from somewhere and doesn't have battery back-up, kind of defeating the purpose of an RTC chip. The SoC's RTC may be usable, but they usually draw a lot more battery current than a specialized part like the DS1338.

Regarding GPIO headers, I suggest following Cubie's lead and using 2mm connectors. They're almost as convenient as 0.1" pins but only use 60% of the area. IMO 0.1" connectors are so 20th Century. JMO/YMMV

For JTAG, I think the Tag-Connect system is so cool. I'd really like to try it some day.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

GeorgeIoak — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 22:20:12 GMT

I don't particularly have any gripe with the concept of a usb charger, but the Pi has proven that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Mainly down to crap cables and really cheap&nasty psu design, but you really do have to take that crapness into consideration and ideally come up with a better way to supply power..

I recently finished a module where I was forced to use the micro USB connector because the module was so small and that was the onlu USB connector which would fit. If cost permits, one thing that is high on my personal priority, is for the power to be a high current buck/boost switcher. If you're going to design a board for the masses why not let them be free and grab any old power supply and plug 'er in! The last module I used a nice little switcher that had 2.5V-12V input with up to 2.5A capability, I used that on the main power input. One I also really like about this switcher was that you needed at least 2.5V to get the switcher started but once rolling it would operate down to ~1.9V which made perfect for battery usage.

Yeah, it adds a little to the cost but the benefit in this case seems to far outweigh the cost.

RE: Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

Former Member — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:18:39 GMT

George Ioakimedes wrote:

That's probably going to be the hardest to do in the initial design phase, especially if I'm able to get the Solo part at an attractive enough price to use on the initial board. If the pricing on the Solo works then trying to make a generic enough board to handle the full line which still keeping the entry price low is going to take some brain power!

Nonody said it was going to be easy Haven't checked, but I was under the impression that all the different parts were at least pin compatible, so hopefully you don't need a redesign when going from solo->dual->quad...

Do take care of the basics - battery backed RTC for example
For the entry level board this will be tough. I haven't researched low cost option but the cheapest Dallas RTC (Maxim) is the DS1375 ( http://www.maximintegrated.com/datasheet/index.mvp/id/3815) and that alone adds ~$0.50.

According to the ref manual there's something called an SRTC or Secure Real Time Clock in the SoC, but I'm currently drawing a blank on any more documentation.. regardless, not having an RTC is a fairly big problem for just about anything - witness the inability to login to the early fedora builds for the Pi unless networked and the clock set by NTP.. So, even if populating an external one proves too expensive, at least having the footprint for a common RTC + battery would allow people to solder one on themselves.

Try not to force strange configuration options - like having 1GB ram means you MUST have an on-board camera..
This one is going to be a little tricky only because they offer a 64-bit bus which opens up all sorts of options. I haven't gone through the spec sheets in detail but my first thought is putting down a 64Mbit x 16 (or 128Mbit x 16) givng the board 1GB (or 2GB) of DDR3. Then I could have the option of adding a SO-DIMM connector and using standard DDR-3 SO-DIMM memory modules.

Sounds good... In case you didn't realise, I was having a mild dig at the wand(a)board where to get 1GB ram you have to take a dual core + wifi + bluetooth...

A couple of off the top of my head options on this one is to provide a limited amount of GPIO's on a 100mil header and then have a small Hirose type header and immediately offer a breakout board that plugs into this header. Producing 1k of these small "simple" break out boards will keep the cost down and immediately give people the option of getting to anything they want as well as allowing people to design their own adapter boards for specific use cases.

that sort of thing is fine, if the board is available immediately. One of the other dev boards I have doesn't have a breakout board available leaving you to build one yourself and significantly reducing the ability to easily tinker..

Oh, and try to keep obviously external connectors (usb/lan/audio/hdmi/vga etc) on just one side of the board.
I'm not sure if this is a good idea but again my intial thought is just to provide the mimimum; USB, LAN, HDMI; all together. Then have something like on a computer motherboard where you can plug into a header for "front panel" connectors.

That sort of thing would be perfect. Makes it significantly easier to put in a random case. Lots of the current boards have connectors on too many sides and no thought for the screw post that's in the corner of a lot of common cases or for people who want a one box device with internal power supply.

No micro usb charger connectors tho
This is a tough one. I personally hate the micro USB connector but it has become the defacto standard and there's no escaping it. I haven't thought through this or the power connections but for power there will be a connector as well as a header.

I don't particularly have any gripe with the concept of a usb charger, but the Pi has proven that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Mainly down to crap cables and really cheap&nasty psu design, but you really do have to take that crapness into consideration and ideally come up with a better way to supply power..