Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#2Excellent. The more competitors to the Pi the better. I've been nothing but disappointed by mine - it's slow, convoluted and totally unreliable. I do expect the opposite for the money when you can get a generic android tablet for not much more.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#3I'm quite surprised the RPi team hasn't created a new model in two years. Sure they just released a new "compute module", but that's not destined to the same crowd. I'd like to see an RPi revision C.
Other than that, do any of you know of a chip I could buy to program from scratch? I'd be interested to learn a very simple processor but I have no idea where to start. I heard M68Ks are nice.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#4Neat board, but I think it's going to be more useful for the media center/home server crowd than makers/hardware crowd. Some of the gripes I have:
- Male header pins are kind of a pain to connect to a breadboard, at least compared to female pins on a Beaglebone Black or Arduino.
- I'm assuming there's no analog to digital converter, like the Raspberry Pi, so that's annoying if you're reading analog sensors or other things.
- Realtime support. Does the Allwinner A20 have any kind of realtime support microncontroller, kind of like PRU's on the Beaglebone Black? If not that's a bummer since interfacing with anything that has tight timing control (like lighting WS2811 LEDs) will be impossible or require more supporting circuitry.
Don't get me wrong though, an open/hackable stick computer that's not expensive is still very interesting and useful to some folks.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#5I'm quite surprised the RPi team hasn't created a new model in two years. Sure they just released a new "compute module", but that's not destined to the same crowd. I'd like to see an RPi revision C. Other than that, do any of you know of a chip I could buy to program from scratch? I'd be interested to learn a very simple processor but I have no idea where to start. I heard M68Ks are nice.
What about one of the MSP430s?
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#6$74 after shipping? Newegg will sell you a motherboard with a dual-core x86 CPU for $50 ($32 after rebate). With a new AMD AM1 platform, you can get a four-core x86 and a motherboard for $69.
Raspberry Pi is a nice thing for $35. For $75, much nicer alternatives exist.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#7I'm quite surprised the RPi team hasn't created a new model in two years. Sure they just released a new "compute module", but that's not destined to the same crowd. I'd like to see an RPi revision C. Other than that, do any of you know of a chip I could buy to program from scratch? I'd be interested to learn a very simple processor but I have no idea where to start. I heard M68Ks are nice.
You can't go wrong with an Arduino. You can use the Arduino IDE to get up to speed very quickly, and then later program it with avr-gcc and get rid of the Arduino bootloader/libraries if you desire.
The next logical progression IMHO after Arduino/AVR chips is bare metal ARM development. Check out chips like the NXP LPC series which can be programmed with a free GCC toolchain, and more importably support on chip debugging with OpenOCD. Good getting started guide here: https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-the-lpc810/i...
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#8Neat board, but I think it's going to be more useful for the media center/home server crowd than makers/hardware crowd. Some of the gripes I have: - Male header pins are kind of a pain to connect to a breadboard, at least compared to female pins on a Beaglebone Black or Arduino. - I'm assuming there's no analog to digital converter, like the Raspberry Pi, so that's annoying if you're reading analog sensors or other t…
If the new part would be clearly useful for home servers, I would find that refreshing. "Makers" is not an actual use case. I always struggled to see exactly what Raspberry Pi was good for, that something else isn't better for.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#9I'm quite surprised the RPi team hasn't created a new model in two years. Sure they just released a new "compute module", but that's not destined to the same crowd. I'd like to see an RPi revision C. Other than that, do any of you know of a chip I could buy to program from scratch? I'd be interested to learn a very simple processor but I have no idea where to start. I heard M68Ks are nice.
M68K is dated. It's still used in some applications, but it's basically a dead end. ARM is where it's at these days.
There's tons of ARM development hardware out there, but two cheap, awesome development boards I'd recommend might include:
* The TI Tiva LaunchPad - http://www.ti.com/tool/ek-tm4c123gxl
* The STM32F4 Discovery - http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/PF252...
Or, if you want to get adventurous, there's tons of ultra-cheap ARM development boards on eBay. You'll usually need to get your own JTAG adapter to work with them, and figuring out how to drive some of the peripherals may be a bit of an adventure, but the prices are unbeatable. (I paid about $40 for a "HY-STM32" board with a 3.2" touchscreen, for instance.)
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#10Neat board, but I think it's going to be more useful for the media center/home server crowd than makers/hardware crowd. Some of the gripes I have: - Male header pins are kind of a pain to connect to a breadboard, at least compared to female pins on a Beaglebone Black or Arduino. - I'm assuming there's no analog to digital converter, like the Raspberry Pi, so that's annoying if you're reading analog sensors or other t…
If the new part would be clearly useful for home servers, I would find that refreshing. "Makers" is not an actual use case. I always struggled to see exactly what Raspberry Pi was good for, that something else isn't better for.
"Makers" is not an actual use case.
I don't agree with that--it might not be a use case to you, but is certainly a valid use case for these small development boards. Look at the success of Arduino, Maker Faire, 3D printing, DIY drones, etc. to see evidence of a large and vibrant DIY and maker community.