Alternatives to Rasbperry PI

[Andrew Frazer]

Instead of using this almost invisable rasberry PI.. the beagleboard bone looks very appealing.. . the hardware also is all fully documetned, its an ARM8 rather than Arm7... its more power and the ethernet is'nt hung off teh USB port.  Its also not $35, but actualy if it was goign to get made onto a custom pcb, the processors are only $6 or so.

Andrew Frazer
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[Peter Stuge]

Andrew Frazer wrote:
> Instead of using this almost invisable rasberry PI.. the
> beagleboard bone looks very appealing.. . the hardware also is all
> fully documetned, its an ARM8 rather than Arm7... its more power
> and the ethernet is'nt hung off teh USB port. Its also not $35,
> but actualy if it was goign to get made onto a custom pcb, the
> processors are only $6 or so.

The BeagleBone is a really powerful board at a decent price for what
you get. It has an Cortex-A8 CPU core, compared to ARM11 on rpi.

ARM11 is surplus by now, not newer or better than Cortex-A8. See
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/


I would suggest the carambola module as an alternative to rpi,
when the main purpose is interfacing. The module costs 22 EUR,
has built-in wifi with chip antenna, 2x ethernet, various serial
ports, and a handful GPIOs. It runs Linux from factory, on a 320MHz
MIPS-based CPU in a Ralink SoC used in countless wireless routers.

http://www.carambola.cc/definition/
http://www.8devices.com/product/3/carambola
http://shop.8devices.com/wifi4things/carambola

(Didn't I mentioned this already?)


//Peter

[Andrew Frazer]

What i like the beagle bone ( "bb" ) is it completely open, nothign hidden, and it's not going to be too hard to create a custom bit of hardware based on that dev board for specific projecgs..

However it does seem the bone is also in short supply.

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[Peter Stuge]

Andrew Frazer wrote:
> What i like the beagle bone ( "bb" ) is it completely open,
> nothign hidden, and it's not going to be too hard to create a
> custom bit of hardware based on that dev board for specific
> projecgs..

Absolutely. And I completely agree that this can (and should!) be
very important!

The carambola designers will not give out the carambola module design
files, but they do provide everything else, including schematics and
fabrication files for their general purpose carrier board, as well as
all source code including bootloader and their OpenWrt port. And the
RaLink SoC datasheet is easy to find. It's really easy to design in
the module on a custom carrier board, but yes, only some of all SoC
balls are available of course.

> However it does seem the bone is also in short supply.

Yes, although I'm not sure why. Maybe the OMAP is difficult to
produce.


//Peter

[Jason Kyle]

Ditto carambola module, I have some of these ordered for a project.
Raspberry Pi is a wonderful example of media hype but IMO has little else to
show for itself and as for the closed source bits.....
JPK

[Andrew Frazer]

I've looked at this, and i think that the beagle stuff will be a much better bet in the end, and i'll be able to lift the hardware from the beagle easily onto a specific DMX / lighting fixture without too much trouble.   Single pcb really appeals.    

I just cna't see the Raspberry PI being useufl to me long term..    Just as well, i sent mine to Simon.. he can mess with it.

[Johan Nilsson]

There's APC (Android PC System) that has been mentioned in other
threads.
Expected to be released soon.
http://apc.io/

Another option might be this one? (Or maybe it's just another toy...)
Rikomagic MK802 with Allwinner A10 / 1GHz Cortex-A8 ARM CPU.
However, it lacks a RJ-45 port but it has Wi-Fi.

Can be found on aliexpress.com or Ebay.

Would run for example Miniand Lubuntu 12.04 & Fedora 17.
http://liliputing.com/2012/07/linux-distributions-that-can-run-on-an-mk802-mini-pc.html

/Johan Nilsson