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Raspberry Pi vs. Cheap Android Dongle: Embarrassment of (Cheap) Riches
New submitter Copper Nikus writes "The price of Android Mini PCs have recently dropped to the point they are starting to make the Raspberry Pi look overpriced. This article compares the Raspberry Pi model B against the similarly priced MK802 II single core Android mini PC. IMO it can be argued that the mini PC wins that fight. It's worth noting that several new quad-core Chinese ARM SoCs have been recently released to the world, and it can be expected to see Android mini PCs start using them in the very near future. This should translate into even lower prices for the now 'obsolete' generations of single and dual core Andoid mini PCs out there." The target markets and base OS vary, but there's enough overlap for this comparison to make some sense — both have ARM chips, both can (to varying degrees) run either Android or a more conventional Linux distro, and both can fit in a small pocket.
who cares... Everything that needed a computer now has one, this is just toys for toys' sake.
you are missing a critical point. break out the IO on the USB dongle. Make it turn lights on
and off. sure, you can slave it to other USB devices, but there is a nice IO header on the
PI for those who wish to play with it. it's comparing apples to oranges.
The PI was made with hardware tinkering in mind, the USB dongles - not so much.
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
RPI served a purpose one way or the other. The faster these things get while staying at a similar price point just means there will be much cooler garage made gadgets and hacks to play with. Until apple buys all the patents up and sues everyone that is.
The A10 machines runs ubuntu/linux for a while you know... The accelerated x11 drivers suck, but rpi as a desktop isn't partically a party also.
There are alpha (and maybe beta) versions of XBMC for Android as well. I'm not sure if they run on this MK802 II or not, but I'm sure that's coming.
This space for rent, inquire within.
We just deployed 3x Pi in a warehouse. I have to say, I'm really impressed with them. They are small, robust, and best of all, fanless (our last Mini-Itx died from dust-inhalation). System upgrades are easy - just swap over the SD card.
Just a couple of gotchas:
* Overclocking isn't just about heat (I added a heatsink and the CPU runs cool). The jump from 950MHz to 1Ghz is a very steep one (it suddenly bumps up all the other system clocks by a large amount) and this can make it unstable, corrupting the filesystem. 950 seems to be reliable.
* Power for USB (especially WiFi) is dodgy. Hotplugging a dongle will make the Pi reboot from brownout. It seems to be worse because the "5V" supplies aren't actually 5V. I tested several; surprisingly, the branded Nokia/HTC ones put out about 4.7V, whereas the unbranded ones are nearer 4.9. I suspect that in a USB supply that is really designed to charge a 3.7V LiPo cell, the more energy efficient ones may aim to come in slightly under 5V to reduce waste. Even with the newest model B rev 2, there is still one polyfuse on the input: I shorted this to gain another 10mV.
Anyway, I really want a Model C, perhaps with a 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 4 USB ports, embedded Wifi/bluetooth, and a better power supply.
You're right. The words "cheap" and "Chinese" are sort of red flags that maybe you won't find such nice USB headers and will have power distribution problems or noise on the audio ports or heat issues or bad liquid capacitors or any variety of cheap hardware problems.
While you're technically correct today - on the other hand, a $50 dual core computer on a stick isn't a bad value proposition. Would you really want to put a $200 usb-sized computer through the wash by accident? Or take it travelling and have it filled with sand?
Also, I'm old enough to remember when "made in japan" was synonymous with the same sorts of quality issues that "made in china" represents today. Now, half my tech items are over-priced and underpowered sony products.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
My Pi runs XBMC fine and plays my BluRay Rips without stutter with 5.1 Audio. I believe it's limited to 5.1 though...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
And this seems to be the problem with the USB sticks. When I was searching it looked like you don't get hardware assisted playback with XBMC on them.
So the article seems to say they're better for media centers, yet the primary media center software wouldn't work well? The reviewer doesn't seem to say they're actually running XBMC or similar on one of the devices. If someone is running it successfully, with workable HD playback over wifi, I'd love to hear about it.
Most the reviews I saw also mentioned the wifi support was woeful, with frequent freezes. WiFi is nice, but only if it's reliable and a reliable network connection is essential for a media player.
I was really keen to buy one of these cheap sticks, and the initial specs did look good. But as I read the reviews from folk who actually own them I saw a lot of disappointment. It looks like, for now at least, the price is too cheap to deliver a reliable product.
If you need IO breakout get a $49 Cubieboard, http://cubieboard.org/
Same ARM Cortex CPU/RAM/flash/HDMI as the Android sticks plus a 96 pin header including I2C, SPI, SATA, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP..
WHY?
these aren't compute nodes. not even close. they're not fast on i/o either.
they're embedded systems. why can't people GET that?
there are a class of problems that need ip-connectivity (ethernet) and a small footprint and low power, low/no noise. this fits that bill. for code that is larger than controller-size (arduino mega, say) you'd use one of these. for much smaller tasks, the arduino controller class of chips is the better choice.
embedded, people. not generic host. this is not some compute node. never will be and isn't meant for such things.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Connectivity.
The GPIO pins and everything else. It was never about a super low cost computing platform, its simply shown the manufacturers that such an item would sell like hotcakes, if produced for the low enough price.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
There has been some work in making XBMC work better, but that requires flashing your own ROM file, and that can be a really big pain with the extremely cheap but really unsupported systems.. (See http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/11/12/xbmc-for-linux-on-allwinner-a10-devices-it-works-sort-of/ for an example of how to make it work.)
The devices usually come with a custom video player which works really well (the MALI GPU is quite powerfull), and I believe the youtube app has also been optimized. Hopefully the producers of the cheap Android sticks and tablets can work together with the XBMC team - the market must be enormous.
No! I have to imagine it first!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
why? because we can. not because its a good idea, or because there's some potential great end to it, but simply because we can. there is a certain thrill in the accomplishment that transcends any need for a good reason why. and sometimes, just sometimes, "because we can" is the best damn reason ever. other times its utterly f*cking stupid, YMMV.
$49 Cubieboard Allwinner A10 + 512M/1GB DDR3 , 4Gb Nand Flash, 10/100M Ethernet, HDMI, 2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir, 96 GPIO pins ncluding I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP
http://cubieboard.org/
£40 Allwinner A10 + 1GB RAM, 4Gb NAND, Wifi: 802.11 b/g/n, 3.5mm Earphone Jack, 1x Mini Usb, 1x Hdmi Out, Micro Sd slot,
http://gooseberry.atspace.co.uk/
$65.00 Allwinner A10 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND, 3.5mm microphone jack, 3.3v TTL 4-pin header, 2 x USB A 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, Realtek 802.11n WiFi, HDMI up to 1080p, 3.5mm composite AV, 3.5mm component Y/Pb/Pr, SDHC card slot
https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board
$89 Freescale i.MX6 Duallite, 1 GB DDR3, Audio, Optical S/PDI, HDMI, Camera interface, SD Slot, Serial, Expanison header GPIO, USB, USB OTG, GB-LAN, WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth
http://wandboard.org/
$89 Exynos4412 1.7Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Quad Core, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, 2 x High speed USB2.0 Host,HDMI, SD Slot, Headphone jack
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
There is no evidence that the Chinese have done this... although it is likely. There is, however, concrete proof that the US government is definitely doing it. In the Windows environment and Cisco equipment at least... probably a lot of others. All Chinas government can do to you is spy... the US government can arrest you, put you in jail, send you to secret prisons in other countries to be tortured or even put you to death.
I'll take my Chinese backdoor over your US government backdoor any day.
There are a lot of reasons to pick a slower Raspberry Pi rather than one of the dozens of other cheap ARM boards and systems that have become available.
The primary one is the community that has built up around the device. This means the device is well supported.
Also the lack of case means you can access the headers - and there are headers to interface to.
And you can then add your own case, rather than put up with cheap-ass plastic.
I am sure that there will be a Mk2 RasPi within a year that will fix the CPU performance issue - it's a natural next step.
We also have to consider that the RasPi is now entirely assembled in the UK, and it's worth supporting local industry (or using it as an example to encourage local assembly of electronics in your own country).
I once got an Android phone. I didn't do my research and I expected that I would have a normal Linux with root access, some decent package manager and that I could access most everything from the command line, and of course a graphical interface that has all the things on it. I imagined, that I could dial with a script, read sensors, or do IP over USB and other neat tricks easily just like I do with a linux box. I was so freaking wrong.
Now we are comparing a USB stick that has this limited crap on it to a full blown Debian server. I go with the Debian for the servers and back to my iPhone that at least has a neat developer tool (yeah, need to pay $100 a year to develop my own utils on the phone .... big deal, Xcode saves me enough time to justify that $100)....
I by the way run a little java app for automation on the PI. They have arduinos hanging on them doing most of the actual switching/sensing/human IO. It is a perfect architecture because I am allowed to use all the Unix/Linux services that OS has to offer without programming too much micro controllers but taking advantage of both words. I figured that an Arduino with ethernet shield is $70 while the PI is $35. An arduino + pi is $65. A little more juice is used but less coding of basic stuff, more time for logic and you still have a snappy micro controller one i2c or serial pin away.
What ever are you babbling on about? Android is a general purpose OS built on a Linux foundation that can run any code you want to run on it
This is one of the few cases where RMS's rambling about GNU and how distros should be called "GNU/Linux" actually makes sense.
LINUX is only a KERNEL.
As in the stuff that directly talks to your hardware and handles low-level stuff.
Above this kernel, you need a "userland" actual regular programs which are called.
And Android DOES NOT use the same GNU userland as most distributions.
Whereas regular distribution are "GNU/Linux" (i.e.: runs the Linux kernel and a bunch of userland program, lots from the GNU project [for low-level stuff like C library, shell, etc.], but quite a lots of other stuff [KDE, Firefox, LibreOffice.org]) and are fully POSIX compatible and can run almost any general purpose UNIX software out of the box (as long it was compiled for it), Android is Linux kernel + a very special userland made by Google (among which the most well known part is the Dalvik java-like environment. Even the C library is Google's own Bionic instead of the usual glibc, ulibc and other forks).
Out-of-the box, Android doesn't run most Unix software because several parts are missing.
(This is different from other mobile OS: Maemo/Meego/whatever-the-nom-du-jour-is, OpenMoko's SHR, Palm/HP WebOS, etc. all run a normal GNU/Linux stack, although in WebOS case, it uses a non standard gui instead of X.
Even router provide a unix like environment, only using more light-wieght embed-friendly components like Busyboy and ulibc or eglibc and without a graphic interface at all)
Again, the usual user-land, the "GNU/" part of "GNU/Linux" is missing.
(I run Debian in a chroot environment on my Android phone as just one example).
That's what your compensating by running a Debian chroot. You provide the missing userland.
You share the same kernel (Linux), but run a different set of userland programs on it. You provied a C library (I think Debian moved to eglibc ?) a shell, and hundreds of other part that make the userland environment. You provide back the "GNU/" part of "GNU/Linux".
And now, thanks to all the pieces provided by your chroot, you can run any Unix code.
Now, indeed, this is possible because Android uses the Linux kernel as a foundation, and its opensource make it possible to port a Debian userland to Android and run it along the normal system. So in a way you're right.
But I insist, Android is unlike any other GNU/Linux distribution around. (And until recently, it needed some special kernel functions that weren't in stock kernels).
This is unlike other Linux based mobile device, which already are based mostly on these pieces. You don't need to provide them. You can already run most of what you want on Maemo/Meego, OpenMoko, webOS based device (except for the part of webOS lacking X out of the box).
Out of the box, an Android machine is designed to run the default apps packaged with it and to fetch special android-apps from a special app market.
Now, thank to the general openness of the platform, it is possible to repurpose it, but out of the box, this is not your regular Unix-like OS. You need to install a chroot, or at least a lot of userland components.
And that's what the parent was referring to:
- Android stick : runs android, designed to run a few android apps (but you can do more if you want).
- RPi : runs a GNU/Linux disto, designed to pretty much do anything you want out of the box.
but that in no way makes the Android device limited to only certain things.
Android makes the device limited to run only Android apps out-of-the-box, unless you go out of the way and install the missing userland bit to turn it into a full Unix-like box.
But thanks to the open nature of the Linux kernel, this is actually possible. (It's not a locked down device that needs to be hacked)
Android and the classic Unix-like userland (of debian) are completely orthogonal one to another.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The raspberry pi is now made in the UK. Only the first batch was made in China.
Well, interestingly enough, I have baked 6 pi's for myself and friends and family, mostly making them into XBMC media centers, and I saw an MK808 mini pc stick for a descent price before christmas so grabbed one to compare...
Just arrived in the mail today, I'm at my office now but intially I must say it is snappy.
I downloaded and installed XBMC in less then 2 minutes and was streaming cheesy college humor in 3.
That is to say after 2 random crashes of Jelly Bean (android 4.1) right off the bat... one blue screen that made me reminisce of how bad windows 95 was.
2 more crashes with XBMC Beta RC2 since demo'ing it for the guys here who aren't up on the latest gadgets...so lets see that's 4 crashes in less then 15 minutes, no heavy use and I can't imagine its over heated as its dangling in the air off one of our 60 inch plasmas....I guess the jury is still out though, I'm done playing with it for now as I'm working, but maybe after initial configuration (haven't set locales yet or anything) and see if an update is available, maybe it will be more stable. If not, it's going back. I can understand a crash or two on XBMCs beta, but the OS it shipped with itself!? I'm almost tempted to send back now.
For what its worth, it is very snappy and the streams I did watch were of good quality and wireless. I'll be headed to Thailand for 3 weeks and wanted to incorporate it into my travel pi setup for back-hauling photos too my home NAS (ZFS on Linux FTW, dual core green processor, 6 TB of Green Disks in a Zpools zfs raid for
Definitely was worth the money for me to see if its feasible.
Walk with Music;
This isn't true. The Raspberry Pi is currently being manufactured Sony's UK factory in Pencoed, Wales AND in China.
It appears that the number of Raspberry Pi's shipped faulty appears to have significantly increased in the last month or so with one report on the forums from someone who claims that they recently received three faulty Pi's out of ten and another from a person who claims both of theirs are faulty. These reports have been described by Raspberry Pi Foundation representative who posts on their forums as jamesh as "statistically insignificant". This is the same person who incorrectly claimed in August that the Raspberry Pi was still in beta.
There have also been recent reports of poor packaging with the damaged PCB unsecured and rattling around inside, solder bridges between header pins causing constant rebooting as well as multiple instances where PCB holes have been inconsistently filled with solder. See here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=22473 and http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=24571