Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

If finding a cubieboard is a problem, you could take a look on Ebay at the Mele A1000 media player. It's pretty much a cubieboard without the gpio lines. It will cost more than a Pi, but it comes with a supply and a housing. It also has a vga output and connector fitted. It has wifi and ethernet embedded if I remember well. There even is the Mele A2000G with 1Gig of ram.

For GPIO, I prefer to use a dedicated microcontroller connected to the linux board with an usb interface. This approach might be a bit more expensive, but it makes it possible to switch from one linux board to another without much hassle. It also makes the system responsive to io changes after a fraction of a second instead of several seconds needed to boot the system. Maybe it's just me being conservative and used to embedded design on 8 bit microcontrollers. Linux adds connectivity to it and makes easy in system programming possible.

The Mele also uses the allwinner A10 soc, so booting linux is possible from the sd card. Placing it on the internal flash memory of the player should be possible as well.

Luc Cool wrote:

 

If finding a cubieboard is a problem, you could take a look on Ebay at the Mele A1000 media player. It's pretty much a cubieboard without the gpio lines.

At least for me, it's the GPIO that makes or breaks the device, without them I'm much less interested.

It will cost more than a Pi,

Approx 60 GBP, so around twice what the Pi costs. Sure it's not a straight comparison.

The A10 looks like it should be a good SoC and so far the cubieboard looks to be the closest to the sort of board I'm interested in. The danger, as always, is that something better and cheaper may come along by the time they start appearing in volume.

Either way, interesting times, and I'm really hoping we'll see more and more devices of this type.

What the raspberry pi foundation lying ?

Who would have thunk it ?

Actualy its ridiculous, they want everyone to think its an open hardware project despite the fact that you cannot buy the processsor unless you sell your soul to Broadcomm.

and wow they are going to release the gerbers, big deal, Ive got the schematic I could do my own layout if I wanted, only trouble is......its not open hardware and you cannot buy the processor.

Seriously stay away from the raspberry pi, it started life as an educational toy, got hijacked by some very strange people who think every embedded system has to run linux and several of my clients have tried to use it as the basis of their projects only to regret it.

The article in wired was pretty tyipcal of how they work, don't talk to engineers who have any experience of designing embedded systems, talk to jouralists who have not the slightest idea and they will repeat any bullshit you tell them if you take them to lunch.

Frippy Frippy wrote:

 

got hijacked by some very strange people who think every embedded system has to run linux

Lots of embedded devices do run linux (certainly not all), but what they run doesn't tend to resemble Debian, RedHat or any other 'full fat' distros.  It's my opinion that trying to force a full desktop distro onto the Pi was a mistake, it simply doesn't have the resources to handle all the crap in todays bloated distros.

Still, it had to run something. Whatever they put on it couldn't be too alien to their supposed educational audience either. Seeing them try to put VxWorks or Windows onto it might have been entertaining, but I suspect they wouldn't have sold as many as they have.  What OS would you have chosen ?

several of my clients have tried to use it as the basis of their projects only to regret it.

I've built a few things around the Pi and while I don't know that I'd go so far as to say I regret it, suffice to say that some other, incomplete, projects are being reworked to use the BBB instead.

I noticed that they were advertising for a senior hardware guy recently, not exactly the job where you are going to be overloaded with projects given their stated position that changes to the hardware are going to scare off the user base.

But yes it is difficult because your supposed education user base isnt going to be too keen on bare metal, but bare metal is what you need to teach if you are going to produce embedded engineers rather than software guys who  write C++ drivers for 8 bit processors or cannot write a driver for an RS232 port without it spilling bits all over the floor as I found recently.Embedded systems design is difficult and is quite different to normal software design, but teaching would be embedded systems engineers that its all the same isnt doing anyone any good.

I noticed that they were advertising for a senior hardware guy recently, not exactly the job where you are going to be overloaded with projects given their stated position that changes to the hardware are going to scare off the user base.

But yes it is difficult because your supposed education user base isnt going to be too keen on bare metal, but bare metal is what you need to teach if you are going to produce embedded engineers rather than software guys who  write C++ drivers for 8 bit processors or cannot write a driver for an RS232 port without it spilling bits all over the floor as I found recently.Embedded systems design is difficult and is quite different to normal software design, but teaching would be embedded systems engineers that its all the same isnt doing anyone any good.