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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..

  • coder27 wrote:

     

     

    But it's not just jamesh saying it, it's everyone associated with the Raspberry Pi Foundation

     

     

    True, but only one person in each forum likes to bring up the anecdote about how his Ubuntu machine has USB problems with his USB slide scanner.  There is a tag team at rpi.org that deals with complaints of USB problems, documentation inadequacies, and open source issues.  There is a tag team here that seems to be doing their best to impersonate that other tag team, even going so far as to suggest to users here that they really would be better served at the other forum where the help is insanely great.

     

    I suggest that ignoring all of them is the way to go.  Personally I'm waiting for something better to replace my Pi.  I had been hoping it would be the Ouya.  The Pi's USB issues will never be totally solved.

  • Stuart Richards wrote:

     

    But denial and minimisation is an improvement over the total silence which was the RPFs initial non-response to the USB problems

     

    I think there may be two kind of people involved:  engineers, and hype merchants.

     

    Engineers not only welcome problem reports but totally relish them (wheee, something to fix and improve!), whereas hype merchants seek to create a manufactured illusion and react violently to anything that conflicts with their very deliberate (or in some cases, perhaps unrecognized) deception --- the first target of their ire is of course reality itself.

     

    RPF seems to contain both.  The engineers seem to be very reasonable people, like all engineers everywhere.

  • The Pi's USB issues will never be totally solved.

     

    That's pretty much what JamesH wrote on Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:45 am:

    Hmm. I really think you should give up on the Pi and get something else. You seem to be expecting the earth, and that ain't gonna happen. In my book taking audio from one USB device and outputting on another is an unusual use case - I've never done it, on any machine I've ever used, in the last 25 years. Don't know any who has. For most (like 99.999%, given there have been >1.2 sold) people the Raspi works fine, for you it doesn't. I'm sorry that is the case, but what I wrote above is what's going on. There are no timescales, schedule etc for a fix for your specific case. Just a note, my 30 years of experience in this field had lead me to the conclusion that debugging HW/SW issues is about an unpredictable as you can get.

  • Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    Stuart Richards wrote:

     

    But denial and minimisation is an improvement over the total silence which was the RPFs initial non-response to the USB problems

     

    I think there may be two kind of people involved:  engineers, and hype merchants.

     

    Engineers not only welcome problem reports but totally relish them (wheee, something to fix and improve!), whereas hype merchants seek to create a manufactured illusion and react violently to anything that conflicts with their very deliberate (or in some cases, perhaps unrecognized) deception --- the first target of their ire is of course reality itself.

     

    RPF seems to contain both.  The engineers seem to be very reasonable people, like all engineers everywhere.

    Both Dom and Gordon have been nothing but completely reasonable in my experience.  Wish I could say the same about Clive, James, Liz and Eben.

  • coder27 wrote:

     

     

    The Pi's USB issues will never be totally solved.

     

     

    That's pretty much what JamesH wrote

    He certainly didn't give this impression initially!  There's a quote from him I might see if I can find...

  • Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    mynameisJim wrote:

     

    Actually that's very much my point, non-compliant devices are routinely given the stamp of approval.  And non-compliant devices are really advertised as such.  The end result is that people plug a USB device into the pi expecting it to work like it should having no knowledge that it's not following the standard and then discussions about them arrise.

     

    But that uncompromising position on non-compliant devices (may they burn in ignomy) is matched with an equally uncompromising position on hosts that don't work correctly with fully USB-compliant devices, especially class-compliant devices in the most common classes.  Engineering is an iterative and evolving process and some things take time to get right, and that's OK, I can wait, and the devs are heading in the right direction.  But it has to be fixed.

    lol, you act like I'm disagreeing with you, but right after the part of my post you quoted, I go on to state that I agree with this and that the Pi has something to be fixed (and from what I can tell from the USB threads is actively being worked on).

     

    > Stuart Wrote: Yes, pretty much.  But it's not just jamesh saying it, it's everyone associated with the Raspberry Pi Foundation who posts on their forums except for dom and gsh.  It's cognitive dissonance, they want to believe the Raspberry Pi is flawless and can't deal with it when any evidence to the contrary is presented.  This is the cause of the denial and minimisation.

     

    >But denial and minimisation is an improvement over the total silence which was the RPFs initial non-response to the USB problems when they were first pointed out and the subsequent 'it's caused by an inadequate power supply" catch-all explanation.

     

    I agree that there was a lot of knee jerk reaction referring people to the power supply.  Of course, reading over the old usb threads there was also a lot of problems caused by those early days of the limiting fuse on the USB ports and improper power supplies were quite the problem and not everyone who suggested it as a starting point of troubleshooting was trying to say that was the only possible issue, just that it was the starting point.  There were also plenty of people who attacked anyone for asking how their PSU looked just to kick things off.  Extremism works on all sides of an issue.

  • Stuart Richards wrote:

     

    except for dom and gsh.

     

    Great engineers are totally awesome.  I have nothing but admiration for those two.  I fervently hope they never get railroaded by corporate image making, and continue their dedication to recognizing problems and finding solutions.

     

    I don't want to get too gushy, but civilization advances because of people like dom and gsh.  They are the kind of people who brought primates down from the trees and out of shivering caves and into the world of today.  My respect is unbounded.

  • He certainly didn't give this impression initially!

     

    If consistency is what you're after you should read the thread

    "Many GROSS design failures on the Pi -USB failures"

     

    regarding whether it's a development board, a beta test board,

    or a production board.  Not even the mods can agree.

  • Mark Beckett wrote:

     

    It puzzles me why we have to go through this process of re-explaining the USB issue so regularly.

    You've heard the old saying about leading the horse to water but not being able to make it drink ....

    substitute leading with telling and drinking with listening.  (grammer errors excluded)

     

    Mark

     

    Exactly, times N times T threads ...

     

    -J

  • mynameisJim wrote:

     

    lol, you act like I'm disagreeing with you

     

    If I gave that impression then it's entirely due to my poor choice of words (sorry, I certainly did not intend it), as I saw us in full agreement that certain problems exist and that the world will be a better place when they are fixed.

     

    There are enough real problems around that additional misunderstandings don't help, lol. image