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

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

#201

Post by sdenton4 » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

Nanite wrote: post #167

dchest wrote: 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 have both Raspberry Pi's and a few of the cheap "clones". So some takeaways: The good: they're definitely cheaper, I paid about a third of the raspberry Pi 2 price for a comparable Orange Pi. Other models seem to have similar aggressive pricing. The bad: Armbian distros are a mixed bag, I had the impression some of them were put together by developers who didn't even have the particular board on hand. I spent a goo…

It would be cool if one of the big distros head a test suite for SBCs. The knowledge that the pi is well rested and supported is probably the biggest thing holding me with them. Well, and I think they're a really great organization which has driven a lot of innovation. But knowing that I might spend three hours screwing around with WiFi definitely keeps me from even trying out competitors.

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

#202

Post by noobiemcfoob » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

dchest wrote: 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've been working with the Onion Omega 2+ recently and enjoying it.

https://onion.io/omega2/

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

#203

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #114

jsilence wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the first question of your post: two things. one: no gpio pins on the phone. two: short model production cycles. Sure, there is a certain fluctuation on the SBC landscape, but the models lifetime and availability is usually much longer than with phones.

Why would model production cycles impact you in the Android world. My current app runs seamlessly on nearly 200 hundred different models (in India). The application dev ecosystem and abstractions are very different in the Android world. Accessing the GPS is completely independent of underlying hardware and is already something we run happily on a daily basis. On gpio - curious. What applications would you use it for…

No more than a phone solves the 99 percentile use case better than a small PC does.

I have a custom-built fluid handler built from a Rpi and a $20 3.5" touchscreen, a $6 Arduino relay board and some additional hardware. I need the GPIO to run pumps and valves and additional I/O. Could it be done on a phone? Yes, with additional hardware and more effort. The lower cost of the phone would be eaten up in the first hour it took me longer than on the Pi.

I've recommended to many people contemplating complex Arduino projects that they move to the Pi instead. Often, by the time you purchase multiple Arduino "shields" to do a task, you're well past the price of a Raspberry Pi that has all the needed I/O: networking, audio output, storage and more built in.

Hell, I'm involved in a high-speed signal processing project where I use an Arduino M0 for the speed but I still needed to do some of the behavior in analog circuits because the Cortex M0 still wasn't fast enough to process everything digitally. I would have preferred to use a Pi but I don't trust the reliability (industrial application), and I need guaranteed real-time behavior.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that many hobbyist RPi projects could be done just as well on a phone: I noticed that quite some time ago. But hardware is less and less the limiting factor these days. Learning curves can be expensive. I tend to build things in small volumes, so any price savings from using a cheap phone or tablet is often meaningless in comparison to how long it will take me to get up to speed on a new platform.

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

#204

Post by squarefoot » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #66

robhu wrote: post #4

Also of note: Tinkerboard has b/g/n 2.4Ghz wifi. Pi 3B+ also has 802.11ac 5Ghz wifi. Tinkerboard has a superior sound chip, supporting 24-bit, 192kHz audio. Pi 3B+ has a totally garbage mono only analog sound (and presumably fine HDMI digital sound).

RPi is garbage hardware propped up by overcompensated OS support. Sooner or later you regret putting the effort in because it's just mediocre at everything.

You should have rephrased that differently; there are many drawbacks in the RPi, but putting them behind a "garbage hardware" definition just takes out credibility from your post giving one more reason to RPi fanboys to vote you down.

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

#205

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #171

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As open as they are, they still aren't fully open. For me, that means there really isn't any point to them. I'd take a 486 DX4 SoC with no better than VGA output if it was entirely open.

It depends on what you mean by "fully open" (i.e. you want the mask set and design files too...?), but if you're just looking for a PC-on-a-chip, there's this: http://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/vortex86dx/ The site looks old but according to this, it's still in production: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/are-designers-still-us...

Actually that's pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks.

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

#206

Post by cjcampbell » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

Grimm665 wrote: post #190

Already__Taken wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an exceptionally good looking board at that price.

It's quite nice. Doesn't run pfSense yet, but apparently that's being worked on. There's a version of Arch that runs wonderfully on it though. I bought it a few days ago after reading this[1] guide to try to replace my pfSense router (stupid AES-NI...). [1] https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/

I was just investigating which distro would provide a smooth experience with espressobin. Looks like I need to give Arch a try.

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

#207

Post by squarefoot » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #166

I'm surprised nobody mentioned CHIP from https://getchip.com/ - when they where available I paid 10 euros for each including shipping. It came with WiFi, bluetooth, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of flash, plenty of GPIO

Nobody mentions them anymore because that platform sadly is gone. https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/chip-pro-officially-dead/20285

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

#208

Post by blacksmith_tb » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

jiggunjer wrote: post #103

dchest wrote: 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"?

I haven't used one, but some of the low-end Liva machines[1] seem viable. Or Compute Sticks of various flavors (depending on what you wanted to do with them - no GPIO on either)

1: http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_LIVA_SPEC.a...

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

#209

Post by lunchables » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

throw2016 wrote: post #46

I looked at the Tinkerboard when it was released but it is limited to USB 2.0. The Rock64 is a better option with the same SOC as the Tinkerboard but USB 3.0 ports and decent Linux support. Even more interesting Odroid is releasing a new board the N1 based on the Rockchip 3399 SOC that has 2 A72 + 4 A53 processors. It also has 2 SATA ports, USB 3.0 and 2 Gigabit lan ports. And Odroid software support is significantly…

> The Rock64 is a better option with the same SOC as the Tinkerboard but USB 3.0 ports and decent Linux support.

I've had a rough time with the Rock64, personally. Also I like to mention that you cannot power the Rock64 over MicroUSB like you can an RPi, which is really annoying to me.

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

#210

Post by lunchables » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #35

bsder wrote: 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

Well, they are more expensive, though by just a little. The low price really seems to be the deciding factor for most people. I’m likewise baffled by the lack of popularity of some of these other boards. Thr RPi is honestly getting quite long in the tooth and just $10-15 more can get you a way better board.

> Thr RPi is honestly getting quite long in the tooth and just $10-15 more can get you a way better board.

Are you talking about the original RPi? Most people are buying the latest version, which right now is the 3B+ which were released about a month ago.