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BeagleBone Black Wireless

beagleboard.org

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Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#61

Post by ausjke »

joezydeco wrote: post #54
ausjke wrote: post #28

Used beaglebone since it's out years ago, it's a great piece of hardware and kind of kicked off the open-source-software plus open source 32-bit-CPU DIY hardware movement before everybody else. Then clone was up everywhere, from RPI to Intel to many small shops in China etc, even Arduino started to add 32-bit CPU boards, price has remained to be low so far. The only concern is that TI is not as active as before on it…

Didn't anyone else out there have a PandaBoard? And TI was probably smart to exit OMAP for phones/tablets when they did. It's too hard to beat Apple/Samsung/Qualcomm in this space now. (The Sitara/AM335x on Beagle is just an OMAP without the video DSP)

yes I have all sorts of beaglebone families, including pandaboard, there are so many SBCs to choose these days around $50-ish, and many of them have usb-based wifi onboard.

TI also was the first one to do mcu-wifi but it's so expensive it never got much market attraction, until ESP8266 came out which took the world by storm.

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#62

Post by bsder »

jwatte wrote: post #4

The BeagleBone was great when it first came out. Then the Raspberry Pi came out, and has a bigger community, higher performance, and lower price. Compared to the RPi 3, the BBBW seems like ... too little, too late?

> Then the Raspberry Pi came out, and has a bigger community, higher performance, and lower price.

Lower price. And that's what drove almost everything.

The RPI very much does NOT have higher performance.

Simple things like "How fast can I toggle that pin?" can make you think so because the RPi's are "closer to the metal".

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#63

Post by hak8or »

kscz wrote: post #60
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it be that those prices are imaginary until there's stock? It seems like a nice board (I have a old BBB, with ethernet, and it's solid), but the CHIP [1] gets you wifi and BT for $9... 1: https://getchip.com/pages/chip

But the CHIP uses an Allwinner CPU, and for those of us who like to support manufacturers that actually play nice with the open source community: the CHIP is a no-go. The specific CPU in the CHIP appears to have mainline support, so it's less terrible than things like the "Banana Pi M2+" ( http://linux-sunxi.org/Sinovoip_Banana_Pi_M2%2B ), but I like to support CPU manufacturers who aren't Allwinner.

While the motives are nice, there is no way I am willing to reward a company like the one who makes the beaglebone black that effectively scams its customers by charging such a huge amount relative to other products.

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#64

Post by mschuster91 »

CocoaGeek wrote: post #10
jwatte wrote: post #4

The BeagleBone was great when it first came out. Then the Raspberry Pi came out, and has a bigger community, higher performance, and lower price. Compared to the RPi 3, the BBBW seems like ... too little, too late?

The BeagleBone does power management which the RPI doesn't. It's unfortunate that they didn't take this revision opportunity to boost the RAM and switch to USB3. IMHO.

"mechanical compatibility" is the answer for USB3.

Simply swapping the micro-usb connector would have broken that (because it's larger).

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#65

Post by stephen_g »

hak8or wrote: post #63
kscz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the CHIP uses an Allwinner CPU, and for those of us who like to support manufacturers that actually play nice with the open source community: the CHIP is a no-go. The specific CPU in the CHIP appears to have mainline support, so it's less terrible than things like the "Banana Pi M2+" ( http://linux-sunxi.org/Sinovoip_Banana_Pi_M2%2B ), but I like to support CPU manufacturers who aren't Allwinner.

While the motives are nice, there is no way I am willing to reward a company like the one who makes the beaglebone black that effectively scams its customers by charging such a huge amount relative to other products.

How is that a scam? They don't have a monopoly and it's not an essential item - so they should be able to charge whatever they want, and if people feel that the BeagleBone's features are worth the price then they will buy it. What's the problem?

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#66

Post by kscz »

hak8or wrote: post #63
kscz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the CHIP uses an Allwinner CPU, and for those of us who like to support manufacturers that actually play nice with the open source community: the CHIP is a no-go. The specific CPU in the CHIP appears to have mainline support, so it's less terrible than things like the "Banana Pi M2+" ( http://linux-sunxi.org/Sinovoip_Banana_Pi_M2%2B ), but I like to support CPU manufacturers who aren't Allwinner.

While the motives are nice, there is no way I am willing to reward a company like the one who makes the beaglebone black that effectively scams its customers by charging such a huge amount relative to other products.

Well, I'm not really qualified to talk about the BoM costs relative to the sale price because I don't do manufacturing, but the Beaglebone Black team claims they charge at margin based on the BoM: "Currently there is $0 margin on these boards [...]" [0]. I normally compare the BeagleBone Black to the Raspberry Pi in terms of cost: the initial Raspberry Pi cost $35, but came with no internal flash. So with 4GB of internal flash the BBB seemed like a reasonable deal at $50. If you're willing to go without HDMI, the Beaglebone Green is $39 [1]

The Allwinner CPUs are always extremely cheap, but I don't support the company because of what jerks they are to the open source community [2]

[0] http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Revision_C_.28...

[1] http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/seeed-technology-co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allwinner#Linux_controversies

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#67

Post by kbaker »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #53
logicallee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=As+for+the+backdoor+in+Orang... (honestly, if it were invisible I wouldn't care. it's just sloppy. I also think all governments should collude and there should be like world peace ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - meanwhile they should fear for their people, and have to nominally follow constitutions. I guess I can keep dreaming though.)

Not sure but I assume that the Octavo Systems OSD3358 uses the same parts as the BBB core processor/memory/misc. Which means at least you can load the same firmware as a BBB. Which leaves you with the same trust issues as a regular BBB. If that's not true then all bets are off. Me I'd be more worried about the WiFi module, thought stopping to think, if the WiFi module driver isn't open source that's a worry too.

The WiFi module is also a TI chipset, so same trust issues as the AM3358.

The wifi driver is open source, however with a binary blob for WiFi and Bluetooth firmware.

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#68

Post by jwatte »

hackcasual wrote: post #47
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it be that those prices are imaginary until there's stock? It seems like a nice board (I have a old BBB, with ethernet, and it's solid), but the CHIP [1] gets you wifi and BT for $9... 1: https://getchip.com/pages/chip

Beagleboard's come with PRUs, for which, if you need a lot of very fast GPIO, there's no substitute. I've driven 9000 LEDs at 100fps with Octoscroller

Just use one of the for cores on a rpi2 locked to GPIO duty and you can run them as fast as you want...

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#69

Post by jwatte »

bsder wrote: post #62
jwatte wrote: post #4

The BeagleBone was great when it first came out. Then the Raspberry Pi came out, and has a bigger community, higher performance, and lower price. Compared to the RPi 3, the BBBW seems like ... too little, too late?

> Then the Raspberry Pi came out, and has a bigger community, higher performance, and lower price. Lower price. And that's what drove almost everything. The RPI very much does NOT have higher performance. Simple things like "How fast can I toggle that pin?" can make you think so because the RPi's are "closer to the metal".

I have measured performance for my compute heavy use case. Four cores with Neon are way higher performance.

(The Rpi1 was slower, but the BBBW is up against the Pi3, and previous ones against Pi2.)

Re: BeagleBone Black Wireless

#70

Post by fulafel »

How is the software support for BeagleBone boards? Can I expect to get automatic kernel updates with security patches?

Traditionally a problem with many boards is that you have to choose between running a distro kernel with incomplete hardware support but timely security updates, and running a board specific kernel that can't be safely exposed to internet-connected environment.

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