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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..

Parents

  • Billy Thornton wrote:

     

    Which has nothing to do with making their product programmable, because that such a vanishingly small number of people comapred to their userbase they simply cannot be bothered. If companies were interested in that sort of stuff, every product we have woudl have something proclaiming it. We dont. Nobody gives a damn except a few geeks with a misguided sense of entitlement.

     

    The geeks to whom you refer are the target audience and userbase for uncased boards like Pi and BBB and OLinuXino and many others of this kind.  Their outlook is not even remotely representative of the "6.99B" people to whom you referred earlier, and so manufacturers cannot expect the feedback from this audience to be anything like that received from customers of cased end-user goods.

     

    What's more, the users of these products are nearly all employing an open source operating system on their devices, and along with these open systems also comes the ethos that is part and parcel of open source.  These operating systems prospered most rapidly where full documentation was available for the hardware, and prospered least well where documentation was held back by manufacturers.  It should be no surprise then that the Linux, *BSD, etc communities have all developed a strong dislike for closed hardware.

     

    There is no "sense of entitlement".  There is only user feedback to SoC and board manufacturers expressing the strong desire of the many diverse open source communities that the hardware be fully and openly documented.

     

    The companies concerned are of course totally free to ignore this feedback from their users, just as much as the users are free to express that they would prefer it otherwise, while they point out where other boards in the same price niche are more open and may be preferred for the greater flexibility that this provides.

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  • Billy Thornton wrote:

     

    Which has nothing to do with making their product programmable, because that such a vanishingly small number of people comapred to their userbase they simply cannot be bothered. If companies were interested in that sort of stuff, every product we have woudl have something proclaiming it. We dont. Nobody gives a damn except a few geeks with a misguided sense of entitlement.

     

    The geeks to whom you refer are the target audience and userbase for uncased boards like Pi and BBB and OLinuXino and many others of this kind.  Their outlook is not even remotely representative of the "6.99B" people to whom you referred earlier, and so manufacturers cannot expect the feedback from this audience to be anything like that received from customers of cased end-user goods.

     

    What's more, the users of these products are nearly all employing an open source operating system on their devices, and along with these open systems also comes the ethos that is part and parcel of open source.  These operating systems prospered most rapidly where full documentation was available for the hardware, and prospered least well where documentation was held back by manufacturers.  It should be no surprise then that the Linux, *BSD, etc communities have all developed a strong dislike for closed hardware.

     

    There is no "sense of entitlement".  There is only user feedback to SoC and board manufacturers expressing the strong desire of the many diverse open source communities that the hardware be fully and openly documented.

     

    The companies concerned are of course totally free to ignore this feedback from their users, just as much as the users are free to express that they would prefer it otherwise, while they point out where other boards in the same price niche are more open and may be preferred for the greater flexibility that this provides.

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