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Raspberry Pi Gets Competitors (hackaday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Pi-fight dept.

Hackaday reports that Asus has "quietly released their Tinker board that follows the Pi form factor very closely, and packs a 1.8 GHz quad-core ARM Cortes A17 alongside an impressive spec At £55 (about $68) where this is being written it's more expensive than the Pi, but Asus go to great lengths to demonstrate that it is significantly faster."

And though the Raspberry Pi foundation upgraded their Compute Module, Pine64 has just unveiled their new SOPINE A64 64-bit computing module, a smaller version of the $15 Pine64 computer. An anonymous reader quotes ComputerWorld: At $29, the SOPINE A64 roughly matches the price of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, which ranges from $25 to $30. The new SOPINE will ship in February, according to the website. The SOPINE A64 can't operate as a standalone computer like the Pine64. It needs to be plugged in as a memory slot inside a computer. But if you want a full-blown computer, Pine64 also sells the $15 SOPINE Baseboard Model-A, which "complements the SOPINE A64 Compute Module and turns it into a full single board computer," according to the company...

The original Pine64 was crowdsourced and also became popular for its high-end components like a 64-bit chip and DDR3 memory... It has 2GB RAM, which is twice that of Raspberry Pi's compute module. SOPINE also has faster DDR3 memory, superior to DDR2 memory in Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 board.

17 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Da faq? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Raspberry Pi had competitors before it ever existed. Are people really this fucking dense around here?

    1. Re:Da faq? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Pi is two things, Pi the hardware and Pi the infrastructure. Hardware-wise, there's a bazillion devices that "compete" with the Pi, many of them much, much better. In terms of the infrastructure, there's nothing that comes close. Until something can replicate and then supplant the entire industry that's evolved around the Pi, you can't call anything "competition". The hardware is mediocre, the infrastructure is unbeatable.

      Before I get lots of flames for the hardware comment, it really is. I kinda hate saying this because it's completely changed the industry and totally fulfilled its promise as an educational toy, but dear Ghod you don't want to build a product around it. Compare it to my current go-to alternative, the Odroid C2: It has power conditioning and protection circuitry on both DC in and USB ports, it has a high-current, standard barrel jack connector for power not micro USB (so it can actually power its own USB peripherals rather than needing a hacked-up external USB powered hub or having things fail to work mysteriously), it has a massive heatsink to deal with heat issues, it has proper GigE not pretend USB ethernet (and a 64-bit CPU with 2GB RAM to drive it), it has proper eMMC storage rather than an SD card, and so on and so on, it's actually been designed by competent hardware engineers who know how to build a solid, reliable system.

      Oh, and it costs all of $5 more than a Pi.

    2. Re:Da faq? by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Pi was designed as an educational prop and hobbyist toy at a throwaway price. It fits that better than anything else out there. If you're looking for professional equipment it's lacking. The Odroid C2 is pretty awesome but it's almost double the price of a Pi3 at 60 dollars on amazon. I have a few of the Raspberry a+ computers I picked up for 25 bucks apiece and got cameras for at 25 apiece. I stuck them around the outside of my house and installed motion on them giving me a dirt cheap way to monitor the area. I'm really blown away by how well they work. I'm sure I could spend 3 times the money and have something a little better but part of the joy is that this stuff is cheap enough that I'm not concerned about it. For things that require a lot of computing power it's not the solution. The things they're doing with the 5 dollar Pi Zero is what really amazes me. It's the culture that surrounds the Pi, the community really, that makes it what it is along with the dirt cheap I don't care if my kids break it price.

    3. Re:Da faq? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sure, and it does a fine job at that. OTOH the price comparison is a bit biased, sure you can buy one for $30-35, but then you have to add an external USB powered hub hacked to not back-power the Pi, and for the 2 and earlier external WiFi, and all sorts of other stuff just to get it up to a usable/useful level. It's a classic case of pay me now or pay me later. Not to mention the fact that they need more care and feeding than a three-year-old, it's only a matter of time before they corrupt their filesystem/flash (because running ext3 on flash on a system with no power conditioning is probably about the worst way you could do it) or shit themselves in some other way, so it's an endless maintenance hassle keeping them running.

      (Also, if you're paying $60 for the Odroid you're being overcharged, they're $40 direct from the source. In any case I'm not saying they're the perfect solution, just an indication that you can do things a lot better at comparable cose).

  2. i/o ports and support by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

    The Pie has FreeBSD and other Linux distro support and lots of i/O to hook up other peripherals.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  3. Competitors don't get it by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh so I can pay 2x and get something 2x faster. Wow. And I could pay 2x of $60 and get a whole chromebook or used laptop that was 8x faster. Or a I could buy a cheap android phone and have my rockchip with a touch screen and battery for that $60.

    they just don't understand the price point logic of $35.

    Likewise going the other way you can buy a cheaper and more powerful board like a Pine or an Orange PI, save yourself $10 in parts and then pay about $300 in time and effort (assuming your time is worth $50/hour) to get a linux distro and and all the needed packages that actually works on it. the orange PI's are junk because a usabale software set only gets ported a year or more after the board has been on the market. I bought one once, and had to download several different distro's for it till I got one with drivers that would support the Key board, Blue tooth, and screen I was using. And even then it was only using just 1 of it's 4 processors and no graphics acceleration from the Mali chip. that took hours to wade through. then when I tried to install other code the libraries didn't compile. Fast forward 3 years, and it works fine now but the rasperry PI 3 eclipsed it.

    The whole point of the RPI is a bomb proof little circuit that has loads of well testd software so it's not the project, it's the thing you put into the project.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Competitors don't get it by Mystic+Pixel · · Score: 2
      As much as I like and respect the RPI for what it is, "bomb proof" is the absolute last phrase I would use to describe it.

      History lesson, please

      The price point is important, yes, but this is the kind of thing that separates hobbyist hardware from production hardware.

      Again, to be clear, I do love RPI hardware/foundation/etc but I'm just trying to keep things realistic here.

  4. Re:RaspberryPi still has no competitors... by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I won't call Arduino a competitor Raspberry pi - different animals. An Arduino is an embedded system while Raspberry is a minicomputer. For example you would not want to use a Raspberry pi in something that will have its power pulled abruptly or on and off - unless you go though a lot of hoops to create a read only file system and even then it is risky to use it for something in the field or embedded in a another system.

  5. Re:mod parent up... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

    I agree 100% with the parent that RasperberrryPi has no competitors. The pie is for the I/O ports for IOT devices and tinkering with something that well documented and supported with up to date and working kernel and opensource components and working hardware (not buggy).

    The Raspergy Orange/zero and the more expensive Beagle miss the point. A faster chip with no or I/.O or proprietary buggy i/O incompatible with the Pie defeats the purpose. The cheaper units lack these and the more expensive units are faster but miss these or run outdated stuff that no one uses when you try to get a IOT camera hooked up.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  6. Lacking in I/O by Walter+White · · Score: 4, Informative

    The extra processor horsepower and RAM is nice but it seems like it is not matched by I/O. is the gigabit Ethernet tied to the processor? One of the drawbacks of the Pi (not Pie, BTW) is that Ethernet is off the internal USB2 hub.You could put gigabit Ethernet on a USB2 hub and get no increase in bandwidth. The Tinker has one micro-USB connector for power. Does it support OTG? (According to the Hackaday article it does have multiple USB 2.0 ports.) Sata would be nice too.

    The biggest advantage of the Raspberry Pi is the community. It's going to be hard to match that. The RPi has hit critical mass when I can go to my local Microcenter and get a Pi 3 Model B for $30 US or a Pi zero for $5.

  7. What about the C.H.I.P.? by Feneric · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A big draw of the Pi is its price point. More expensive devices aren't necessarily competition. Less expensive devices like the C.H.I.P. are the ones I'd expect to take a bite out of Pi.

  8. Re:RaspberryPi still has no competitors... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    unless you go though a lot of hoops to create a read only file system and even then it is risky to use it for something in the field or embedded in a another system.

    The hoops are not that bad. Just mount /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/log, /run and one or two others as tmpfs, and set up a few symlinks, like making sure /etc/resolv.conf points to a tmpfs FS (or just lock it to 8.8.8.8). Once you have it figured, it's straightforward.

    There are guides for running debian as readonly root over NFS: most of those instructions (except the NFS bit) apply.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  9. Re:Why not an x86 board? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Intel makes one called the MinnowBoard Max. It's in the $150 price range.

  10. Re:Why not an x86 board? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    Intel has parts that would work(albeit a bit light on GPIO); I've got a dreadful little tablet here based on the Z3735G, and they packed that CPU, a gig of RAM, 16GB of flash, a 1024x600 touchscreen, some sort of BT and wifi, and a battery together for under $50.

    If they hadn't also burdened the device with some of the more agonizing firmware I've had the pleasure of dealing with(AMI's dysfunctional take on 32-bit UEFI, no compatibility support module, on a 64-bit platform? Sign me up!); it'd actually be a decent little Linux toy, since that Atom is supported by intel GPU drivers, not the freaky PowerVR stuff.

    As best I can tell, though, the Z-series Atoms didn't attract all that much interest(they are comparable to ARM devices aimed as similar price performance niches; but not particularly superior); and vendors weren't exactly clamoring to buy the chips; and Intel doesn't really like selling parts that cheap. They'd much rather try to sell you on a Core M or the like.

    There isn't a whole lot of reason to do it; or apparent interest; but it could be done.

  11. Re:USB limitations by supremebob · · Score: 2

    The Raspberry Pi 3 also doesn't have Gigabit Ethernet or a SATA port, two more reasons why it doesn't make for a very good file server.

    It does make a pretty damn good embedded web server, though. You can install the full LAMP stack on the MicroSD card of that thing right from the Raspbian repos.

  12. Re:USB TV stick was my problem by shoor · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I got a Raspberry Pi because I thought I could turn it into a cheap TV recorder with my USB TV stick. Something low power that I could easily leave on all the time so I wouldn't have to remember to leave my regular computer on just to record some program while I was out of the house or asleep.

    Didn't work out. Everything had to breath through that slow USB interface so, while I got recordings, they were all chopped up.

    --
    In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
  13. Curriculum by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 2

    The thing I see missing in most of the Raspberry Pi competitors is curriculum. It's all fine and well to pop out a cheap single board computer and then port an operating system or two that runs on it. The part of Raspberry Pi that is missing is the curriculum and the value for education, which is what the RPi is all about.

    The Raspberry Pi was developed to be a pedagogical tool for education. The Raspberry Pi Foundation works to get acceptance of the RPi devices into schools, and they help educators come up with curriculum to take advantage of the hardware. To get the hardware into the hands of kids who can then hack on it and learn. The Pi wasn't invented so that neckbeards could use it for their Media Center.