It's odd then that a
single alternative hasn't risen to prominence to serve their original hobbyist market. There are millions of clones out there of course but any with a trusted brand name and support behind them?
People are both complaining about cost and then complaining that the RPi foundation subsidized the cost of the RPis in order to prevent a viable competitor from emerging.
Beaglebone Blacks have existed and been in stock through the entire RPi fiasco. They are almost completely documented unlike the RPis. The boards have full schematics unlike the RPis. You can buy the main SoC unlike the RPis. The boards have lots more IO and some really nice real-time units. You can get the documentation from TI without an NDA. And the BBB even has eMMC so that it isn't dependent upon horrifically crappy uSD cards. And it runs straight up Debian instead of some weird build. I can go on and on.
RPi has kicked the end users in the teeth over and over and over and people still won't change. People at my hackerspace are willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi to do Octoprint rather than buying a full blown x86 computer for half the total cost.
What the hell do the Beaglebone people have to do to get people to pay attention?
Some modernization would be nice. I like the am335x, and have a product that's been made with it for the past decade - but the am335x is a 32-bit single core processor (with some additions) from 2011, and that's getting a bit long in the tooth.
The Beaglebone people put out new ones, but the volumes were so dismal that they simply weren't worth it.
One engineering problem is that the power envelope is kind of tight. While the RPi simply will not work with 5V@500mA, the BBB does. If you bump the frequency, your power supply needs shoot up and you start needing heat sinks.
It really feels like the Beaglebone Black got the engineering aspects correct. Shame that even hackers are suceptible to marketing.
At this point, being able to use the Beaglbone Black is practically a superpower for me as an engineer. I can buy it. My end customers can buy it. It's real Linux so my end customer can bang on it as required. It's documented, so I can generate the embedded drivers I need and document them.
I suspect that with the industrial etherenet built in, the BeaglePlay is about to take on some of that character.
The issue I’ve had with the BBB is that they always seemed to be a premium cost item. Why am I paying more for something that gives me less compute than a most of the RPi boards. I have one and when I got it it cost me something over $150 AUD, I don’t remember the price exactly but I remember how ripped off I felt, at the time the premium RPi 3 was under $100 AUD
I’d the BBB cost me ~$50 AUD I’d be much more keen on them… for all the well outlined reasons. It it just seems to always cost more than I’m prepared to pay for that hardware.
Interesting points about the BeagleBone; I will check it out.
But this is not credible: "People at my hackerspace are willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi to do Octoprint rather than buying a full blown x86 computer for half the total cost."
I run Octoprint on a 4GB Pi 4. Total cost was probably $75. What kinds of setup are you talking about?
Thanks. Needless to say, that site doesn't exactly have glowing reviews. But to be fair, some of the reviews have absurd complaints about refurb computers, like "came with outdated USB drivers." Wow, do ya think?
The prices are dirt-cheap though. How much stuff have you bought from them?
I've bought a handful of random things, but I tend to go there in person so I don't know what their online purchasing pathways or guarantee handling look like.
But, I mean, the computers are what they say they are. They don't lie as far as I can tell. So, if I go look up what I'm buying, I can see what kind of problems I'm in for.
I don't know about you, but if one of those clone manufacturers made it as simple to install Linux on their machine and have it not be an utter pain in the ass, that would go a long way toward me wanting to trust them.
The problem with the clones, and with clones in general, is that they're never quite 100% compatible. There's always some sharp edge there to cut yourself on. Fix that, and I'll definitely try a non-Raspberry Pi SoC.
The thing you are looking for can be achieved by buying something on the DietPi hardware compatibility list. https://dietpi.com/ I personally have had good luck with NanoPi boards from that list.
The strong point about Pi in my opinion is the software being simple and solid. It just works and any general software you can imagine has been compiled and installs without a ton of effort compared to general Debian or Ubuntu Linux which a lot of the clones use.
Otherwise at this point and prices if you're looking for a low power Linux computer I'd urge anyone over to the big three 1L families like the M7x Lenovo has or HP Elitedesk used machines since they are sub 60w and run circles around basically any single board pc
The biggest problem all the Pi-like devices seem to suffer from is poor software and driver support. The only exception seems to be the ones Intel made.
