Raspberry Pi or Beagle Board!!??

What is your application ?

Michael Kellett

I am starting. Apart from Price, what are the characteristic differences? use for robotics and real-time embedded application.

I don't think I would use either for what I would call a real-time embedded application but the defintion of real-time is very vague.

from Wiki: systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response

But on that basis almost everything is  a real time system.

So the Beagle and RPi are OK for deadlines in the order of 10s of mS, less with some hard work, but they don't (normally) use a real time OS.

But you should do your own research - download the data for both boards - compare them with each other and your specification.

No one can help you unless you describe your project in a lot more detail.

Michael Kellett

As an Engineer I would choose the Beagle Board...especially with the fiasco surrounding Raspberry Pi at the moment.

For price/performance, you should take a look at the TI MSP430 line.

The Launchpad only costs 4.30 USD and gives you a sixteen bit device.

If you go read my Blogs on the MSP430F5438IPZRMSP430F5438IPZR, you will see that the MSP430 has a very robust suite of real time options that would be ideal for robotics or any other real time processes.

Just a thought,

DAB

I agree with the posts above in that we would need to know your intended application a little more.   But if you are set in using one of the 2 then I would go with the beagle board.  I'm a fan of the raspberry pi but think beagle board is a better solution all around.  Like DAB said for the price and robustness the msp430 is the best solution.  Just me thought though.

Here is some more information on the BeagleBoneBeagleBone to help with your decision...

Also a good discussion here on the Pi vs. BeagleBone...  http://www.element14.com/community/message/52904#52904/l/re-combining-beaglebone-and-raspberry-pi

What is the BeagleBoneBeagleBone capable of doing?

Watch the vidoes, find design files, view the addon boards and simply learn more here...

Michael Kellett wrote:

 

I don't think I would use either for what I would call a real-time embedded application but the defintion of real-time is very vague.

 

from Wiki: systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response

 

But on that basis almost everything is  a real time system.

That's absolutely not the case.

Almost nothing is a real time system.

real-time is about meeting the deadline or missing the deadline as in event occurs at time X. Deadline is at X + 30ms.

In case of hard real-time if the deadline is missed somebody might get hurt or die (airplane, car, robots etc.).

In case of soft real-time if the deadline is missed it's inconvenient (video streaming, voice over ip etc.).

Given this the Open Source Hardware group, it's worth noting that the BeagleBone is Open Source Hardware.  The design files are available here: http://beagleboard.org/hardware/design/

Unfortunately, at this time, the Raspberry Pi can not be considered Open Source Hardware.  The schematic has been released, but the board layout has not yet been released.  The Raspberry Pi Foundation has commented that they would like to release it at some point in the future.

If you're interested in real-time embedded & robotics applications - what about a TI EvalbotTI Evalbot? Might be a good place to start because you can download the Micrium pdf book for free which takes you through using an RTOS from the beginning.

Has anyone used one of these (or any other stellaris dev kits) - any opinions?