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Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

Former Member

So, just over a year on from the initial availability of the R-Pi and the new BeagleBone Black is upon us.  They've obviously taken a leaf out of the RPF's playbook and produced a cost reduced version at a price only marginally above the Pi.

 

I find it interesting that the compromises are very different, for example there's a proper PMIC and the ethernet is not troubled by being connected to USB, however the on-board HDMI seems less capable.

 

Other differences are in the documentation, I'm currently viewing the pcb gerbers for the beaglebone..  Have yet to see any sign of those for the R-Pi a year later. There's even an up to date devicetree capable kernel too.

 

Technology has also moved on somewhat, we get a 1GHz Cortex A8 which is better than the Pi, along with various other stuff and lots more GPIO's too.

 

Ok, so it's clear that I like the look of the new beaglebone, and given the price I'm likely to put any further R-Pi plans on hold until I have a chance to play with this. It's also making things like the Olinuxino-maxi I bought recently look very slow/expensive while still being cheaper than the similarly specced Olinuxino-A13

 

Some details of the beaglebone-black here http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

 

What do the rest of you think ?   I don't expect this to displace the Pi anytime soon, but I expect it to be very attractive to those people who don't simply want to put XBMC on it and duct tape it to the back of the TV..

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  • 8080man wrote:

     

    Jim, you're very insightful about the Begeal bone black.  I also previously wrote that it was f***ing crap, and also had my post mysteriously deleted. Maybe this one will get through. Why they would even bother selling a device with such crap documentation and such a crap ethernet and such crap OSs to choose from is beyond me.  Thank you for daring to speak truth to power here.

    Thanks, but let's be fair, The pi had the same set of problems as the begeal is facing when it was first released.  The two boards seem to be neck and neck on documentation, it's enough to do what you need, but we'd like to see more.  While the pi didn't have ethernet problems, since it was on the usb bus too high an ethernet usage caused severe problems with keyboards (which got a temp fix imho early on but has only really been addressed for the majority of people relatively recently), and even the OS initially had issues.  I know that some people still use the soft float version of Debian, strangely enough, but it wasn't until Raspbian really got underway that there was a legit OS for the Pi for the standard user.

     

    So it's unfair to describe the board as being crap.  It's a new device that has issues to work out.  I think that those issues will be solved quicker than they were on the Pi because these is a TI product being released by TI with TI parts so it's going to have more "it's your full time job to work on this" and less "I'm allowed to spend some time at work looking at it" that the Pi has, I just think they're also legit issue that do need to be properly addressed.

     

    I don't think they're really in direct competition with each other though.  Much like the pi and the arduino, they can complement each other nicely.  I could fully see myself using the pi as a front end and communicating to the bone black via SPI and letting the bone black handle the heavy lifting.  I think I might come out ahead financially as opposed to using something like the gertboard... but I haven't looked at prices in a while so I might be mistaken.

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  • 8080man wrote:

     

    Jim, you're very insightful about the Begeal bone black.  I also previously wrote that it was f***ing crap, and also had my post mysteriously deleted. Maybe this one will get through. Why they would even bother selling a device with such crap documentation and such a crap ethernet and such crap OSs to choose from is beyond me.  Thank you for daring to speak truth to power here.

    Thanks, but let's be fair, The pi had the same set of problems as the begeal is facing when it was first released.  The two boards seem to be neck and neck on documentation, it's enough to do what you need, but we'd like to see more.  While the pi didn't have ethernet problems, since it was on the usb bus too high an ethernet usage caused severe problems with keyboards (which got a temp fix imho early on but has only really been addressed for the majority of people relatively recently), and even the OS initially had issues.  I know that some people still use the soft float version of Debian, strangely enough, but it wasn't until Raspbian really got underway that there was a legit OS for the Pi for the standard user.

     

    So it's unfair to describe the board as being crap.  It's a new device that has issues to work out.  I think that those issues will be solved quicker than they were on the Pi because these is a TI product being released by TI with TI parts so it's going to have more "it's your full time job to work on this" and less "I'm allowed to spend some time at work looking at it" that the Pi has, I just think they're also legit issue that do need to be properly addressed.

     

    I don't think they're really in direct competition with each other though.  Much like the pi and the arduino, they can complement each other nicely.  I could fully see myself using the pi as a front end and communicating to the bone black via SPI and letting the bone black handle the heavy lifting.  I think I might come out ahead financially as opposed to using something like the gertboard... but I haven't looked at prices in a while so I might be mistaken.

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