Featured Articles
Announcing Pi
Technical Specifications
Raspberry Pi FAQs
Win a Pi
Raspberry Pi Wishlist
Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 358 replies
  • Subscribers 675 subscribers
  • Views 39387 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

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..

  • in reply to gdstew

    Gary, evidently you didn't grasp what was being said.  My reply to coder27 was about all fanbois, not just Pi fanbois.  That includes BeagleBone fanbois and all other fanbois as well, because fanboism has no redeeming properties for technical discussion at all.

     

    The technical criticisms that you have presented are very good and useful.  Such observations need to go into the engineering comparisons which are sure to be made between the two boards, and I certainly welcome them.  Knowing and understanding the downsides of any device I use is very important to me.

     

    You seem not to have noticed that I pointed out that Pi Model B still has the lead for media playback.  I pointed this out despite the fact that I personally do not use that feature, because it is a technical feature of great importance to many people and it must be mentioned in any balanced engineering assessment.  I mentioned it because I an not a fanboi of any device nor manufacturer, and any valid engineering assessment must list both pros and cons.  Everything has both pros and cons.  The mark of a fanboi is to praise the pros and deny the cons of his or her precious, and my remarks were directed against that ridiculous lack of objectivity.  I would hope that you would agree with that view..

     

    This is an engineering forum.  Let's try to stick to engineering assessment, and leave fanboism to others.

  • in reply to gdstew

    Gary Stewart wrote:

    No, I'm not. I think the worst case scenario you just described is not realistic for several reasons. Raspian is the official RPF distribution. There are now over 500,000 Raspberry Pi's out there, most using Raspian. There

    is nothing to stop another group of people from taking over or forking Raspian if the current maintainers stopped, and I don't see the RPF not trying to find, or having a lot of trouble finding other people to maintain it if that

    happened.

     

    We'll agree to disagree then. 

     

    That said, it's interesting to look back at the RPF history. Ubuntu was originally going to be the official RPF distribution, until Ubuntu dropped support. Nobody stepped up to take on a port. Next Fedora was to be the official RPF distribution, but Fedora weren't interested, Seneca stepped in (possibly with some help from the RPF) and produced a port, problems with that port caused it to be fairly quietly dropped by the RPF. Every now and again we hear there may be another version, but again nobody seems to have stepped up to help them with it.

     

    Mike Thompson and Peter Green deserve a lot of credit for what they've done with Raspbian, long may it continue. But so far, Mike and Peter appear to be the only ones to have sucessfully taken on such a project. As far as I'm aware it's still mostly a two man show and if I believe what's out there to be read it may even be that Peter has taken on the lions share.

    So with other past failures, partial or otherwise, I don't believe the argument is as easily dismissed as you make out, if it were then surely they'd have found someone to do the same for Ubuntu or Fedora ?

     

    And Liz has said, back on the 1st of March that there's at least a million sold: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3375 so there's a potentially much bigger pool of talent available than you suggest.

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Mike Thompson and Peter Green deserve a lot of credit for what they've done with Raspbian, long may it continue. But so far, Mike and Peter appear to be the only ones to have sucessfully taken on such a project. As far as I'm aware it's still mostly a two man show and if I believe what's out there to be read it may even be that Peter has taken on the lions share.

     

    Fortunately that problem will disappear as soon as RPF brings out a next gen Raspberry Pi based on a SoC with a more modern ARM, which can then be supported by standard portable Linux distributions.  That will undoubtedly happen, if we make the very reasonable assumption that the RPF project continues and prospers.  The only question is when.

  • in reply to gdstew

    Gary Stewart wrote:

     

    The power management chip used by the BeagleBoard Black also uses low dropout voltage regulators for one of its 1.8V and one of its 3.3V supplies. Bad engineering eh Morgaine ? Built

    right into the chip from TI no less.

     

    Did you catch the table in the BBB SRM showing power consumption ?   I was very interested in the Kernel Idling Display Blank figures of 280mA @ 5v, my Pi shows ~410mA in the same condition. So something is doing a better job.

     

    Do you have any information on whether LDO3&4 outputs are configured as LDO's or Load Switches ?  I couldn't find anything and I'd like to understand where the differences are, but I think we can safely assume these LDO's are not the same as the 1117's on the Pi. Whether that's the source of the difference or something else is more difficult to ascertain. 

    I've replaced both the 3.3v & 1.8v LDO's on a couple of my Pi's with switchers based on a TPS54231 and can get down from 410mA to approx 295mA so this has me interested.

  • in reply to morgaine

    > The only question is when.

     

    We have some clues.

    The 1st gen RPi was based on the same cpu as the Roku 2,

    and both were announced mid 2011.

    The Roku 3 became available recently, using the next generation

    Broadcom cpu with dual core Cortex A9, with only a slight increase

    in price over the Roku 2.

    Sony has already mentioned the 2nd gen RPi.

    Liz has downplayed the Sony announcement.

  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    The only question is when.

    I've not been following it closely, but everytime I see some mention of some form of updated Pi the official answer seems to come back as 'not for the forseeable future'. Possibly that's understandable - they still need to make some money from the long awaited camera module, try getting them into schools, and then there's that other as yet unused connector they might want to use.

    So while you're right, would you bet on the 'when' being anytime soon ?

  • A more modern soc....

    That's the nice thing about the allwinner and the Ti arm cores as well (Not sure about the last one)

    They have pin compatible dual core versions of the same soc.

    Quad core probably already exist as well, but I wouldn't bet on that right now.

     

    Low dropout voltage regulators are not a bad design. The Pi supply is a bad design as it expects 5V with a maximum deviation of 5% and it expects every charger on the market with a micro usb plug do deliver that stable. (Which isn't the case)

    I also prefer something that accepts like 9 - 15V. The wider the range the more likely it will work and keep working, even if the supply adapter capacitors start to dry out.

     

    I am also always a bit confused when people focus on the Pi pricetag. It's a bit like going to a computer shop and buying a motherboard and cpu, saying you got a pc for 120 euro.

     

    Ok, you can use it without a housing, but you will need a supply, a keyboard, a screen, a mouse and a storage device. Assuming you have those lying around is not a fair comparison in my opinion. 

  • in reply to Former Member

    coder27 wrote:

     

    Sony has already mentioned the 2nd gen RPi.

    Pointer ?

    Liz has downplayed the Sony announcement.

    One of the places I worked had a running in-house joke that the lifetime of a particular product was only about six weeks. There'd then be a 'new' product, with different code names etc. usually the only difference was a minor tweak here and there, or no difference at all apart from some plug in part.

     

    So I can understand some downplaying as a 2nd gen RPi could mean almost anything while quite rightly being seen as a 'new' product by Sony.  We'll find out sooner or later, but neither a minor revision or a fully new design would surprise me.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Luc Cool wrote:

     

    A more modern soc....

    That's the nice thing about the allwinner and the Ti arm cores as well (Not sure about the last one)

    They have pin compatible dual core versions of the same soc.

    Quad core probably already exist as well, but I wouldn't bet on that right now.

    Freescale's iMX6 has, AFAIK, single, dual and quad versions in pin-compatible packaging along with some reduced feature versions of their core in different packaging.  It's used in the Sabre-Lite boards amongst others, better feature set and an inflated price to go with it.

     

    I am also always a bit confused when people focus on the Pi pricetag. It's a bit like going to a computer shop and buying a motherboard and cpu, saying you got a pc for 120 euro.

     

    Ok, you can use it without a housing, but you will need a supply, a keyboard, a screen, a mouse and a storage device. Assuming you have those lying around is not a fair comparison in my opinion. 

    The BBB seems to be in the same boat, it certainly appears they've cut all the same corners by not supplying a PSU etc either. The Pi and BBB are approx 2 GBP different and you'll need all the same extras for both. That makes a straight comparison of what you get for your money interesting, whether the base price is $35 or $350 isn't so important.  Much more difficult to compare the relative merits of a $35 device to a $350 device objectively, especially if you only have $100.