Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

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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?

Beaglebone Black link: https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglebone-black

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.

What part of "subsidized by Broadcom to create suckers and exploit them" is not clear?

The BBB Bill of Materials is public. What parts of that BOM should they throw out to get to you that $50 AUD target?

The AM3359 is $11 in 1K units by itself.

This is about what you can get for $50 US without subsidy: https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/verdin-arm-famil...

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?

Power supply, plastic case, heat sink, powered hub for webcams, etc., put everything north of $100.

I can pick up a refurb x86 NUC with 8GB RAM and a 256GB M.2 SSD for right about $50 locally retail.

Got a link for that? I looked at NUCs for a long time, but the reviews sucked... replete with stories about drivers that didn't work.

But for $50... hey.

https://discountelectronics.com/computers?sort=NEWEST

I'm sure if you trawl Alibaba or any used computer dealer in your area you'll find something similar.

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.

It's a used computer store. WTF do people expect?

NUCs also have weird radio noise issues sometimes blocking wireless mice and keyboards in some ports.

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