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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?
Does RPi have PRU co-processors?
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The board SoC quality is very good. However, it can not compete with e.g. the CHIP SoC board [1], which costs just 9 USD + shipping with similar specs (I have two CHIP running 24/7 without any additional cooling, running rock solid -even in summer, at 35-40º C indoor-). The only thing that would make me consider buying the BeagleBone Black Wireless is the two built-in microcontrollers ("PRU" processors [2]), for real…
Unfortunately even though I 'bought' a CHIP some 6 months ago I have yet to actually receive it. It's very easy to source a BBB. Hopefully in the future thy become more available. Though I fear that will come with an increase in price.
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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.
First, the Bill of Materials for the BeagleBone is publicly available. I'm quite sure the BeagleBone guys would welcome your help in finding parts that are significantly cheaper than what they have now.
Second, the BeagleBone comes with a bunch of very standard connectors that are optional or hobbyist installs on a lot of the other boards. Ethernet jack, 2 usb ports (one OTG), an actual power adapter jack that isn't USB, both big headers already installed, mini-HDMI already installed, uSD card holder installed and probably a couple others that I forgot. Those connectors are not cheap AND they often have to be installed by hand.
Third, most BeagleBone's come with everything you need. You don't need to buy a USB cable. You don't need to buy a flash card. You plug it in and it powers up and you can do stuff on it. RPi's used to make you buy both a cable and a uSD card--maybe that has changed.
Finally, the BeagleBone is actually quite a bit more powerful and has more peripherals than most of these other boards. The BeagleBone always came with a processor capable of running stock Linux even from it's release in April 2013--the RPi didn't get that until the RPi2 almost 2 years later. Quite a few things on the BBB hang directly off the chip and have their own functional modules that don't conflict with other things. On the BBB, for example, Ethernet is wired to the chip--it does not suck up USB bandwidth like the RPi. While you can plug in a USB audio stick on the BBB, most capes actually access the McASP block so that they get direct DMA and again don't clog the USB bus. I can do a lot more things simultaneously on the BBB than I can on the RPi before bogging it down.
If you can use the RPi for whatever it is you are doing--great! It's a nice product. But there are a lot of us quietly using a lot of BeagleBones because it is way more powerful and had these things from the start. RPi adopted these things later and, funnily enough, needed to increase their price when they did so.
It's no coincidence that the RPi3 and the BeagleBone Green are almost identical in price.
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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.
The level of ignorance in that statement is stunning. First, the Bill of Materials for the BeagleBone is publicly available. I'm quite sure the BeagleBone guys would welcome your help in finding parts that are significantly cheaper than what they have now. Second, the BeagleBone comes with a bunch of very standard connectors that are optional or hobbyist installs on a lot of the other boards. Ethernet jack, 2 usb por…
Still true, at least when I got my RPi 3 from Adafruit a month ago.
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.
Well, the RAM on the Bone is DDR3 while the RAM on the RPi3 is DDR2. I'll generally take the extra performance over an extra 512MB.
With respect to USB3, USB Type-C connectors are WAY more expensive than micro-B. We're talking like more than a dollar vs less than 10 cents. And USB Type-C cables are way more expensive, too. And you'd still only be doing USB 2.0 speeds anyhow.
I doubt Type-C USB is going to be making it into this space anytime soon.
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> 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.)
Um, sure, but if that's your benchmark, you'd want an ODROID-C2 instead, no?
The problem I have with the RPi3 is that it's rare that I am CPU bound (and there are better choices if I am), while I am far more often I/O bound. And the RPi I/O system (Still hanging Ethernet off the USB? Only one PWM pin? Really?) is sub-par.
However, to each their own. The level of choice is wonderful from the perspective of someone who had to fight making a board at $200 4 years ago that didn't even reach near the level of the initial RPi.
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Honestly, with it supporting only 2.4 ghz, its uses are limited.
What's wrong with 2.4Ghz?
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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I have a few chips too. Running one as a jukebox. Not sure what to do with the others yet. What do you use yours for?
Funny story (I think): I happened to have brought a C.H.I.P. when I went back to europe for vacation. My father proudly showed me his new solar array and the log he had collected manually. After a bit of googling, sourcing a USB-serial adapter locally, and a few long nights I had the CHIP collecting this from the Growatt 3000's serial port and uploading it to pvoutput.org. It's still running 24/7. EDIT: I have too ma…