Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled 161
First time accepted submitter anwe79 writes "Those of you who have been wishing for a Raspberry Pi this Christmas will sadly not get your wish granted. However, you may be happy to hear that populated beta boards have now been produced. Beta of course means the boards still have some more testing to undergo. But, if all goes well, those inclined should be able to get their hands on production boards in January!"
Vaporware until it is in my hands (Score:1, Insightful)
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I'll wait till it boots myself. I've been really let down before.
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I'll wait until it runs 3 months without the power supply melting. I've been burned before.
*cough* Globalscale sucks.
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Go away. If you've been following the website you'll see they're around 3 weeks behind schedule but have finished the whole design process and are now testing the hardware before mass production. Do you even know what vaporware is?
I cant wait to taste that pi (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I am still under the "it doesn't exist until I can blow it up my self doing something dumb" crowd but it's making good progress
Re:I cant wait to taste that pi (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course I am still under the "it doesn't exist until I can blow it up my self doing something dumb" crowd but it's making good progress
It *is* making "good progress". But where these types of projects usually hang up is when they finally get to the stage where they need to put together the infrastructure to source parts, manufacture, and market the *product*. At this point, they generally realize that they just don't have the organization and resources necessary, and the sub-$100 price point is out-the-window unrealistic for the volume they can realistically project to move...
Reality is coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Dunno, I was in the same camp, no way they would actually ship at the stated prices, expect a doubling which would make it too expensive to be interesting. Or at least less interesting than the many other similar project computers and/or microcontroller products actually shipping. But if they are expecting to begin shipping next month and still holding to the original price they are either really going to pull it off or are truly idiots with zero business sense. I'd give em even odds at this point. :)
But why is it front page news every time these guys pass gas? If they ship it, that is news. Heck, when they auction off these guys I'd guess that would be news too. But d we need a story every month even when there isn't any actual news to report?
Re:Reality is coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Mostly because they're being very open about the development process on their blog, meaning you see stories about stages which wouldn't be announced publicly in comparable projects.
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I don't think that's true. I try and follow the project as best I can, and I've not seen that claim made once. The first 100 (this batch) are going to be auctioned on ebay, but that was always the plan. They've got another 9,900 boards that are unpopulated, and if testing of the 100 goes well they'll be populated and sold for $25/$35 in Jan.
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Only ten of the first 100 will be auctioned off.
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Re:Reality is coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. The first 10k batch will be sold at the advertised price. $25 for the Model A and $35 for the Model B.
100 boards have been made for testing, 10 of those will be auctioned off if they work OK. Once all testing is done, the 10k batch will be ordered. That will be sometime in early January if all goes well.
The people behind the project have LOTS of experience in running big companies, so that's not an issue. And as for saying this is non-news. Hmm, I would have thought the first boards of what may be a game changing device coming off the production line would be news in most peoples book.
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Perhaps you missed it, but Broadcom is selling them the silicon by tacking it on to larger production runs, so they've got as much as they want at quantity pricing.
They've already bought the other parts so sourcing isn't a problem(for the first 10k anyway).
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/302 [raspberrypi.org]
And clearly they've got the marketing down, otherwise you wouldn't be discussing it:)
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Perhaps you missed it, but Broadcom is selling them the silicon by tacking it on to larger production runs, so they've got as much as they want at quantity pricing.
I had missed that. I don't know much about the semiconductor industry so perhaps someone could confirm - does that mean that while they get them at quantity prices, that pricing is subject to Broadcom receiving sufficient orders for the same part so there are larger production runs to tack it onto?
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Some of the key volunteers have an "In" with Broadcom. Broadcom is being very supportive, with inside information on which parts make the most production and cost sense.
Re:I cant wait to taste that pi (Score:4, Informative)
It *is* making "good progress". But where these types of projects usually hang up is when they finally get to the stage where they need to put together the infrastructure to source parts, manufacture, and market the *product*. At this point, they generally realize that they just don't have the organization and resources necessary, and the sub-$100 price point is out-the-window unrealistic for the volume they can realistically project to move...
I think Raspberry Pi's price goal is pretty ambitious but at the same time it's not outrageous. It's basically running the same parts you'd find in any cheap ass media player. You can pick up media players for less than $100 and if you cut out the case, packaging, power supply, application software, optional software licences (e.g. AC3, Dolby), reseller margins, and just ship the barebones product you could do it for the price they're proposing. Or if not exactly then not far off it.
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Sourcing the parts and getting it made really isn't a problem. I've done it for electronics with even more limited demand than this for a similar sized, similar part count board. There are assembly shops that can do runs of assembled boards right from just one example to hundreds of thousands, they do all the parts sourcing for you, you just give them a BOM and they organize it all. Most the parts on the Raspberry Pi will be common parts (resistors, capacitors, standard connectors, various ICs that get put
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If you did it for under $100 then you must value yourself cheaply. $100 doesn't even buy an hour of my time.
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If you did it for under $100 then you must value yourself cheaply. $100 doesn't even buy an hour of my time.
Most people aren't consultants!
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that does not sound nearly as fun as hooking mains up to a loudspeaker
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Funny, that's how they demo'd my Cerwin Vegas at the store. Had them wired to a power strip, just waiting for you to flip the switch! BWWWWWWWWW
Cheers
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you are my hero !
Someday in my 50's I will switch from prescribed amphetamine to alcohol.
When that inevitably happens, I wish to be as aggressively manly as you are.
Design flaw? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe they'll fix it on later models.(or it is already, but I'm not seeing the throughwelds from the pictures)
Re:Design flaw? (Score:5, Interesting)
The surface mount USB on my Beaglebone fell right off. The glue holding it failed with hardly any stress. There are big lands to solder it to, but they didn't use these. They only used glue. What the heck is the attraction of these stupid mini and micro USB connectors anyway? Give me a soldered-through full-A connector any day.
Re:Design flaw? (Score:5, Informative)
What the heck is the attraction of these stupid mini and micro USB connectors anyway?
The Raspberry heads stated that they wanted to be compatible with cheap phone chargers...
Re:Design flaw? (Score:4, Informative)
Mod down (Score:2)
Re:Design flaw? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the earlier post of the bare boards (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/402) the holes are there for the micro-usb, and the project has been geared towards clumsy hands plugging and unplugging the ports a lot so I'd expect a robust connection.
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Unsuitable for teaching (Score:3, Insightful)
This board is perfect if you want to learn to program ARM assembly or cross-compiling but the ARM architecture it's one of the most closed and patent-restricted technologies out there. Teaching ARM is the equivalent to teaching Visual Basic Programming, common but very closed architecture.
So it's not really open, even if the PCB design is open.
A truly open system would be OpenRISC [openrisc.net], there are dev. boards out there like this [orsoc.se] one (I'm not affiliated to OpenRISC in any way). They are more expensive because are made with are FPGAs, but that's what you should learn in school.
Wait until work to learn proprietary stuff.
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You could use these boards to teach Linux (operations, programming, etc.), cross-compiling techniques, embedded programming and lots more. Sure OpenRISC might be pure openess but it does not hurt to learn and teach practical stuff that could be put to use making a living.
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It is not about pure openess, it's about knowing what the f*** is happening inside a CPU. I bet none of you know.
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What other $25 Linux boxes are out there for teaching Unix, web programming, and other high level stuff? I don't think teaching ARM assembly was high on their list.
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What other $25 Linux boxes are out there for teaching Unix, web programming,...
Show me WHERE I can buy one of these for $25?
Remember the OLPC project? Weren't those supposed to be sub-$100? How much did they end up being?
These are *not* in production (or anywhere near production) yet.
When (if) these make it to production, expect the price to be more than $25.
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Maybe these folks [wikipedia.org] can use it in their soon-to-be-release game console.
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Stop with the $25. That is just marketing, I doubt they actually expect to move the first one of those because they are pointless. You need a keyboard and mouse and the Model A only has one USB port. Good luck finding a hub cheap enough that it doesn't make more sense to just spend the extra $10 for the Model B and get a network port as a bonus. As if network is optional these days.... unless you are going WiFi but price that out... along with a hub. Not to mention that running much of anything modern
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most closed and patent-restricted technologies out there. Teaching ARM is the equivalent to teaching Visual Basic Programming, common but very closed architecture.
So it's not really open....
Take a look at Qt on Pi...
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God forbid you might like to use the board to teach C, C++, perl, python, pascal, BASIC,..... this thing is designed for kids in a classroom and for use at home on the TV.It is designed to be dirt cheap so breaking one isn't going to be a problem.
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You can also use OpenRISC for that, and if the kid want to design his own CPU he can do that too, unlike with this board.
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Uh, what?
No; teaching people to program C on an ARM Linux machine is the equivalent of teaching people to program C on an x86 Linux machine: the CPU is proprietary, but who cares?
The cross-compiling thing is a red-herring too; you'd just run GCC on the RaspberryPi and for educational purposes it would be plenty fast enough.
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Bending USB the spec? (Score:4, Interesting)
They appear to be bending the USB spec quite seriously. A USB device is allowed to draw up to 100mA before enumeration, and up to 500mA after being enumerated and negotiating for high power. They talk about using up to 700mA with networking connected -- it's not clear to me how it could enumerate without booting first -- so they seem to be giving the middle finger to the USB specs. I predict unhappiness when people find that only some USB power sources are going to tolerate the load.
Is it so hard to put a couple of holes in the board to solder wire to?
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so they seem to be giving the middle finger to the USB specs.
Like the iPad?
Mounting holes? (Score:2)
Is it so hard to put a couple of holes in the board to solder wire to?
Is it so hard to provide screw holes holes for mounting?
Also, it's usually considered a good idea to put all the connectors on the same edge and line them up flush so you can put the thing in a box.
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Well, I would imagine that this is so that you can use any old USB power supply that you have on hand. You know, the same ones used by all decent modern phones, the Nook, some cameras, etc. If you shop around, you can score a 120V to USB power supply for well under $5, and most everybody has a micro-USB cable lying around.
Some monitors even have USB hubs built-in. Easy enough to hook a cable from the monitor to the Raspberry PI for power, and another cable from the Raspberry Pi to the monitor for USB con
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That spec is all but irrelevant these days, as many, many mini- and micro-USB chargers exist that give far more than this with no negotiation at all.
Perhaps the spec needs changing to reflect the real world usage?
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USB 3.0 allows 900 mA, the battery charging spec 1.5 A.
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As someone who's built USB devices I can tell you it's a gamble anyway. I've seen busses give 500mA without negotiation and I've seen busses that won't put out 500mA after, and I've seen busses where the manufacturer realized people wanted to charge things so they put out something like 1500mA.
As for devices that plug in to USB but require more than 500mA to run check out the BeagleBoard - it requires more than 500mA to use most peripherals (network) but if you run on anything more than 500mA the thing star
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Half my 6 USB chargers claim 1+A output, the other half 500 mA (older). Who knows what they really do?
I strongly expect Raz went for USB power to avoid all the national electrical approvals necessary for wallwarts. Remember, this is a shoe-string outfit. Just get a phone charger with someone else' approvals. They probably chose micro- over mini- because the former are more likely to make 700+ (iPod & smartphone draws).
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The charging specification does not require enumeration.
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs
Battery Charging Specification, Revision 1.2
Section 1.4.7
Try to keep up.
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Perhaps somebody more knowledgable could correct some details or link us to the spec
prediction.. (Score:2)
If this cheapo pc made for TVs gains any traction, we'll start seeing them built in to the TVs. Surest way to commoditize this stuff.
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Most modern tvs probably have more power than this already.
My Samsung plasma (a couple of years old now) already has a UPNP/DLNA network media player, youtube interface, app-installer type thing and a variety of other stuff built in. Meaning it's already got a general purpose embedded computer in there, it's just feature limited at the moment.
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That's true. I think there'll still be a place for these as separate boards though; for the educational and hobbyist markets (which I think is what they're targeting and expecting to be popular with) it's quite important to be able to easily replace broken devices and to be able to incorporate them into other designs.
the real question is (Score:5, Funny)
does it blend?
Insert Obligatory Beowulf Cluster Remark Here... (Score:3)
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I'm thinking about adding monitors to my pc with raspberry pi and symergy2.source forge.net. I hope I can do network over the USB power
Arduino, anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you've brought up a very good point: Are there *already* "mature" products that do these things? The Arduino product line comes to mind. There is MUCH to like about Raspberry Pi, but little chance we'll ever see these things marketed for a reasonable *hobby* price. Prototyping something and saying the parts cost xyz does not really address realistic cost of the infrastructure necessary to actually source, manufacture, and yes, *market* something like this, which in all reality is very niche.
And, Arduino already exists in this market. This is not a troll: What does Raspberry Pi expect to do that something in the Arduino line does not? What are Raspberry Pi's close "competitors" in terms of expected use similarity? And, is there room for more than one or two competing products in this niche?
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a full blown Linux box, unlike Arduino. I'm planning on hooking up a small USB-SP/DIF board [minidsp.com]. With a USB wifi adapter and web interface controlled by my phone, I'll have a cheap, pocket sized, remote controlled "bit bucket" for my concert recording hobby. I doubt you can do that with Arduino, or at least not without major hacking.
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Bullcrap, why don't you go and watch the video of it being demo on their website. It's running an ARM version of ubuntu.
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eh, sd card slot, hdmi out, and usb.. it appears to cover the peripherals and storage. There's also RCA video out and audio too.
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I guess you guys have different definitions of "full blown" and "only bare skeleton" with each other.
for the record I don't count my android as a full blown linux box.. even though it has onboard memory and it's sd card slot is populated and it has a display attached along with an input device.
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Well, I'm lucky enough to have a Raspberry Pi alpha board. And it basically can do the same stuff (albeit a bit slower, except the 1080p30 encode!) than my Linux desktop.
Runs LXDE, Midori via a USB wireless adapter, USB keyboard and mouse etc. Have run various X apps. Plays back 1080p30 video, runs Quake at 1080p at around 30fps.
Using Debian. Ubuntu isn't supported - they don't have Armv6 anymore.
I personally think it will be very good at its intended purpose.
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umm, I wouldn't call them "more eager", debian have supported arm since before ubuntu existed and are currently in the process of bringing up a new hardfloat arm port to complement their existing softfloat port.
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To me the key features of a "full blown linux box" are
1: enough storage to install a regular linux distro
2: a MMU so you can run proper linux kernel rather than uclinux/uclibc
3: enough ram to reasonablly run the aforementioned regular linux distro.
The pi has all of those
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Rapeberry PI does not appear to be positioned as an Arduino competitor, but rather as an accessible (monetarily) computer. Please explain how the Arduino is even remotely positioned as an accessible computing platform.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/arduino-arm-products/
96 MHz, 256KB RAM... fast, but have fun trying to run any software a typical consumer would be willing and able to use...
Now if it had 640KB RAM, well now.. that ought to be...nvm
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Isn't the raspberry pi significantly more powerful and cheaper?
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Isn't the raspberry pi significantly more powerful and cheaper?
Is it? As yet, it *is not* in production, so on both of those points, it's impossible to say. It would be nice, though. And of course AFTER you add in the cost of an io device like a keyboard and of course a storage device, what's the total price now? Without some way to interact and store code, it's no more than a chip on a board.
Seriously, tooting about a $25 *nix computer is a bit disingenuous unless one also mentions that without spending about $200 or so more, there isn't much you can do with it. And
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
$200? hardly.
$10 for a keyboard/mouse if you can't get hold of an old set.
$3 for a micr-USB charger, if you can't find a powered USB socket.
what else? a TV, an internet connection, a table, a chair, service from the power company, adequate nutrition. this stuff adds up!
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yeah, i'm confused. i just saw that arduino retails at 15USD at the local hobby shop. it has a 16MHz atmega328 and 32KB flash memory. these raspberry guys are promising a board that is the same size and has 700MHz arm11, 128MB ram, and sd card slot at 25USD??!!?1
seems bullshit to me. if it were possible to do it so cheap, somebody would have been selling these by now.
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That's because it's the Arduino that is overpriced -- they're basically selling you a board with a $1 microcontroller and surrounding peripheral circuits for $15.
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Bingo. But it's not so much that the Arduino overpriced; there's just no real pressure to make it cheaper than $15. Heck, that's close enough to free already.
GP should realize that you can always say "somebody would have done it already". The Wright Flyer, the Model T, the light bulb (heck, it's just a hot wire in a vacuum). Well, "somebody" *IS* doing it first.
Re:Arduino, anyone? NO HDMI ! (Score:3)
The Raz' closest competitor are the plugs (Sheeva, Guru, Pogo-, ...) and they are OK for ssh. Arduino is fine as a microcontroller, but is no GP computer.
What is unique and very interesting about the Raz is HDMI output. It can easily be a small xterm, or any other app you can compile for ARMv5t and stick on the SD card. Or email / web-browser on the network model. Not fast, but useable.
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The Raz' closest competitor are the plugs (Sheeva, Guru, Pogo-, ...) and they are OK for ssh
The sheevaplug I have is powerful enough to run Gnome 2 in a vnc session. It also has built in storage and an SD reader.
"What is unique and very interesting about the Raz is HDMI output"
That's not unique, the Guruplug Display has HDMI also, though I have no idea if that ever really took off and I have a feeling debian had decided not to support it. It is more poweful than the Pi, and has twice the RAM.
The unique thin
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What is unique and very interesting about the Raz is HDMI output
The beagle/panda series has a HDMI connector (though the signal on it is apparently only DVI, not sure if the same is true of the pi).
What is really unique about the Pi is the price. Afaict the sheevaplug is $99+shipping and the begleboard is arround $140 (the beagleboard is sold through distributors)
As a beagleboard owner afaict the biggest issue is storage, SD cards SUCK at handling the random access workloads that come from tasks like updating packages.
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And, is there room for more than one or two competing products in this niche?
If, by niche, you mean sub $100 ready to go project boards with USB and HDMI? I don't know of any others just lying around at the moment. Beagle / Panda are getting close, but they are a) bigger, and b) more expensive.
In the sub $100 project board space, there always seems to be room for a bunch of players, kind of like "free games."
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I'd love to see if the thing will work with some of the USB NIC devices, because it looks like it could make a great little router.
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A great little router that you hook up to a spare HDMI in on your 50" flat-screen for one helluva network status display.
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Raspberry Pi microcontrollers are already at work in the utility...
Are they really? Already? Source, please.
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Arduinos are for retards. They're for all the people who seek validation being able to get LEDs to blink without knowing any annoying facts like operating voltages. The Raspberry Pi, however, is a BASIC stamp. That means that the real money-makers, the ones who know microcode, get back to work.
OK, WTF, time out. Can someone please explain this strange new trend of trolling with the intent of making yourself look stupid? I think it started on either 4chan or Fark, but it's been showing up here a lot lately. When I learned to troll, I was taught that the idea was to make the other guy look stupid.
Kids these days. Personally, I blame the excessive use of psychoactive prescription drugs in our schools.
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It costs extra to replace the Broadcom crap with something documented. Check out the Beaglebone. It's $89, but everything is documented. The Beaglebone is intended for screwing with hardware. It includes IO pins.
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The $89 BeagleBone is for screwing with hardware. There are pins bringing out logic IO. Everything is open and documented. They don't have any video because that's not what it's for. The Raspberry Pi is for screwing with software. They don't bother bringing out logic IO pins because that's not what it's for. There are proprietary binary blobs for the cheapass Broadcom shit. To some extent the products overlap, but the targets are different.
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Except it brings out eight 3.3v unbuffered GPIOs, TX/RX and a full SPI bus(which you could use as more GPIO).
Somebody has already built an expansion board to provide buffering, plus a bunch of SPI expansion chips.
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1. My large linux box can't be put into as many places as this, makes a lot more noises and consumes a hell of a lot more power.
2. You missed the part of the board that exposes all the other GPIO pins on the processor then?
3. Cheaper than 25 bucks? And I can program them using the languages and runtimes I'm used to? With all the operating system features I have come to know and love? With HDMI output? Sign me up...
4. And as full systems such as this become cheaper, who will need to bother doing that any mor
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Re:no mounting holes (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, I'd like something with openness like the beagle (so an ARM from... TI, Atmel, NXP, etc - no NDA bullshit, single quantity readily available) and the price of this thing.
I don't really care if they cut the speed down to 3-400MHz and drop video to do it, but maybe I'm an edge case...
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I agree. Broadcom sucks donkey balls. The most tightass company in the world.
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They already have a manufacturer lined up, from what I've read.
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I doubt it was intended to teach "dealing with buggy proprietary graphics drivers that only support certain kernel versions" either...