New kid on the block - meet OLinuXino

I wonder if the forum threading problems have spread to the main web site.. It's apparently out of stock with 20 available for delivery:

Apart from that, I'm still having problems getting my head around something that's older tech, slower, and generally less capable than the Pi costing 14 quid more. Sure the Pi has it's issues, but with the amount of attention it has they're likely to get fixed sooner or later. Not yet convinced what future the OLinuxino has..

The A13-olinuxino on the other hand.. if they can get the price below a BeagleBone and have them available here before the end of the year, that's a whole different story. Even then, the onboard, non usb, ethernet probably still ends up the better board

Horses for courses.  Each device has its own area of application, and unless two devices are identical clones differing only in price, it's not reasonable to say that the higher priced one has no market.  It's likely to have some feature that the cheaper one lacks, and someone will want that feature.

In the case of Raspberry Pi versus Olimex, I've not yet tested an OLinuXino, but I've tested a Pi and one thing is abundantly clear:  the Pi is very badly designed and some parts of it are completely broken, in particular the USB handling of RF mice on a self-powered hub.  I've never come across any kind of Linux board or computer with disastrously broken USB handling before, and it would be quite silly to expect the OLinuXino to be similarly broken or worse.

Is a few pounds more worth paying for a product that works?  In my books that's a totally stupid question, because a non-working product is largely worthless.  I won't be buying any more Pi boards until such tier #1 problems are fixed, but I am certainly in the market for small and cheap Linux boards and therefore Olimex is of interest to me.

On top of that, Olimex are responsive to problem reports and don't have a habit of banning you for insufficient praise.  That's worth a lot.  They are an engineering outfit, not a hype machine.  I like that.

Morgaine.

Very true.

You pick the processor or development board based upon your requirements.  Buying the cheapest is only valid if and only if it meets your requirements.

All new devices are risky.  Until engineers have a chance to test it in a variety of applications, you will always have questions about its ability to meet your needs.

So first define what you need, then look at the devices that meet all of your needs.  Then you can make a decision based upon capability and cost, but do not overlook the support tools that come with your choice.  You might save money on your device only to find you spend more time debugging your applications.

Just a thought,

DAB

DAB wrote:

 

... but do not overlook the support tools that come with your choice.  You might save money on your device only to find you spend more time debugging your applications.

A very good point.

That is currently one of the problems with microcontroller work, because the most effective tools are proprietary and costly in their unrestricted versions, and this represents a hidden cost and liability for your project.  In contrast, open source tools remove that cost and the liability, but development efficiency can be reduced through less effective debugging or the hidden cost of having to roll your own.

Finding the optimum solution is always a tradeoff, just like engineering a product always is, or just selecting one to buy.

Morgaine.

Hi Morgaine,

Yea that one has caused me a lot of grief in the past.

It was the main reason that I finally had to agree with the company that standardizing on one line of MCU was more cost effective then letting each project just pick whatever was the new board available.  Without the proper tools, you just cannot do effective development, especially when you are doing one of a kind demonstration boards.

It is a little better today with the open sources support, but when I started, we had little or nothing to work with.

Plus you develope a better fell for both the devices and the tools as you reuse them on many projects.  It ends up giving you some of that extra time to include some bells and whistles.

Just a thought,

DAB

John Beetem wrote:

 

I just read about ODROID-X (apparently sponsored by Samsung) in this RasPi forum thread: Alternative if you want to spend a lot more.  At US$129 plus shipping from South Korea, it's a lot more expensive than RasPi or OLinuXino, but has a Samsung Exynos4412 Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.4Ghz with 1MB L2 cache, Mali 400 Quad Core GPU, 1 GB LP-DDR2 DRAM, and HDMI.  Here's the ODROID-X web site: http://www.hardkernel.com. ODROID-X has 6 high-speed USB ports, but 10/100 Ethernet is done over USB like RasPi.  With luck, the Exynos4412 has a smarter USB controller.

Geek eye candy!

ODROID HardKernel has some nice photos of automated SMT assembly of the ODROID-X at http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/main.php.  They started shipping 30 July 2012.

Edit: Ubuntu is now running on ODROID-X: http://com.odroid.com/sigong/blog/blog_list.php?bid=131

Thanks to the RasPi Forum, I notice that the Olimex blog has new items about A13- and A10-based OLinuXinos:

Sep 05 2012: 50 PCS A13-OLinuXino-WIFI-DEV shipped today to developers

Nice board photo, with external connectors only on opposite sides and large GPIO blocks.

Sep 04 2012: A10-OLinuXino preliminary schematic uploaded on GitHub and we are open for discussions

How about that, posting the schematic and part placement before shipping boards?  What a truly bizarre idea

"jamodio" reports at the RasPi discussion group that "a Raspbian port is almost running on the APC board".  According to http://forum.apc.io/discussion/31/raspbian-port it sounds Raspbian really is running.

Pretty neat!  I wonder if there's any APC SoC documentation?

John Beetem wrote:

 

How about that, posting the schematic and part placement before shipping boards?  What a truly bizarre idea

Radical.

The A13-OLinuXino has just made it to Slashdot!

• http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/11/14/1324251/fully-open-a13-olinuxino-single-board-linux-computer

• https://www.pcworld.com/article/2013622/tiny-57-pc-is-like-the-raspberry-pi-but-faster-and-fully-open.html

• https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO