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The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

jeffgeerling.com

101–110 of 232 posts

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#102
post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

Don’t forget the Espressobin: http://espressobin.net/

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#103
post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

Any of those x86? or is that mutually exclusive with "cheap"?

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#104
post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

Any of those x86? or is that mutually exclusive with "cheap"?

UP seem to have a range of x86 boards for comparable prices: https://up-shop.org/4-up-boards

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#105
post #11

I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is reall…

The Armbian community provides a distribution that is not only optimized for almost each and every ARM based SBC board out there, but they provide a build environment that allows you to individually tweak and tinker your own image.

http://armbian.com/

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#106
post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

Firefly have a range of devices (Rockchip): http://www.t-firefly.com/

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#107
post #23

Is there a reason why everybody just HAS to stick to the RPi's when the BeagleBone Black/Green/Blue/etc. are: 1) Far more open (you can get documentation and chip supply to build your own BeagleBone) 2) No more expensive 3) Mainline Debian

Seeed studio's beaglebone green wireless is the real sweet spot for me. Right around $50. Wifi and bluetooth working OTB. I have no need for HDMI, or Ethernet, so giving these up is a win win for me.

I am with you as a fanboy of the beaglebone's ecosystem, given the fact that its now over a decade old processor, there are mountains of technical reference manuals if you really want to get low level with an RTOS, or just write your own kernel drivers. There are plenty of solid tutorials on Adafruit, as well as from Derek Molloy, and probably others I'm not even aware of. There is a nice ecosystem of shields, capes, or whatever the trademarkable noun we're supposed to use is. The hardware has gone through a boat load of permutations, to provide many things to many users, whether thats different variants of the standard credit card size board, or the pocket beagle, which is as spartan as it gets.

But as an observer of previous economic trends, as they relate to competing technologies, I have to say it makes perfect sense that Raspberry Pi is the market leader. If people wanted higher quality music, they wouldn't have adopted the cassette tape, or the CD, or the mp3. If people wanted higher quality video, they wouldn't have adopted VHS. The masses have so far always valued convenience over quality when it comes to gearlust.

But just like all entrenched players, someone out there will likely pull the rug out from raspberry pi, just when they think they've finally captured the market. My bet is on all of the Armbian boards, mostly Allwinner, but not exclusively. The BananaPi, OrangePi, NanoPi, etc are all pretty much at feature parity or better with raspberry pies they are clones of. They also have a pretty vibrant ecosystem with Armbian, which has great ncurses menus for just about everything that needs to be setup as an enduser. Besides the marketing push, I don't see a single thing Raspberry Pi does better than the Armbian/chinese clone ecosystem.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#108
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Is actually more expensive than RPi 3s; and The RPi people quote this incessantly casually leaving out the fact that the BeagleBone already includes 4GB eMMC (a uSD card is at least $5) > 3) Lower RAM; > 4) Lower perf; Less RAM but FASTER RAM. RPi3 is DDR2 vs BeagleBone Black's DDR3. So, between the eMMC being much faster than uSD and the faster RAM (and the Ethernet on the BBB is way faster), I suspect that the…

> The RPi people quote this incessantly casually leaving out the fact that the BeagleBone already includes 4GB eMMC (a uSD card is at least $5) > Less RAM but FASTER RAM. RPi3 is DDR2 vs BeagleBone Black's DDR3. Most people buying don't notice such things. Also, the BBB is at-least $10 more expensive. > In addition, people just blithely skip past the whole closed nature of the Broadcom SoC. If you are serious about c…

> In fact, I'm currently supporting a product shipping with the RPi 3B in quantities large enough to qualify as "real quantities".

How did you get pricing and volume from Broadcom? I'm genuinely interested as that stopped a project I was working on completely cold.

We simply couldn't get them to care about 1K-2K parts.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#109
post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

I might recommend https://www.board-db.org/ -- up to date parametric search for single board computers with prices and links to buy.

I am not affiliated with the site, but use it regularly. Sometimes, it allows to find really obscure boards which fit a niche application.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#110
what kind of projects does the Raspberry Pi shine in which a 35-50$ phone cant do ? let's say this one - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3000mAh-Homtom-HT16-5-0-inch...) running Android 6.0 in a 1GB RAM package. You have access to battery, GPS, wifi, USB, acclerometer and a display out of the box (which you typically pay extra for on rpi). And obviously... Android.

P.S. remember Android 6.0 has COSU mode to set your device in a single-purpose single-app mode (https://developer.android.com/work/cosu.html) just like the rpi3. Which has the pleasant side-effect that you can manage a ton of these devices using a central enterprise-grade management system.

In addition, you can build custom hardware that interfaces with Android in a standard way (the AOA protocol) - https://source.android.com/devices/accessories/custom. Which makes doing a hardware startup prototyping easier on the android platform than rpi.

Is the rpi (or the Asus Tinker Board) merely a consequence of what was possible at a particular price point some time back ?

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