# Raspberry Pi alternatives? What do you guys think?



## MannDude

Is anyone here rocking a Cubieboard or Hackberry or anything of the sort? Been looking at some RaspberryPi alternatives that offer the same costerformance ratio (I don't mind if it costs more so long as the increase in cost is reflected by the increase in performance). What do you guys think?


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## WebSearchingPro

Since I've gotten my raspberry pi, I've been what you could call obsessed with embedded computing and trying to find the best cost/performance/usability ratio.

There is a not so popular company based out in Israel called solid-run that makes a 2 inch cube with a 1ghz quad core ARM processor (without overclocking) as opposed to a 1 core 700mhz core with the raspberry pi.

http://cubox-i.com/

I'm actually looking forward to picking one up whenever Newegg starts carrying them within the next 2 weeks or so. The included wifi/bluetooth/ir adds alot of capability in that small package. I will likely have a dedicated ssh / irc system running on it using a fraction of the power my computer uses now.

Edit: After spending about $100 for a raspberry pi with all the peripherals to actually get it so its not just a bare board hanging around, its should be fairly obvious that $124 for essentially the same thing with better specs would be the way to go. The cubox includes the case, connectivity, micro sd card and power cable


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## wlanboy

The Raspberry Pi is quite in the middle between the $200 all-you-can-eat boards (like the PandaBoard) and the Arduino clones for $10.

There is one board that I would buy if I did not have a Raspberry Pi: The BeagleBone Black for about $45.



If you compare them:



BeagleBone elec. connections:


3 I2C buses
CAN bus
SPI bus
4 timers
5 serial ports
*65 GPIO *pins
8 PWM outputs
7 analog inputs
RaspberryPi elec. connections:


*8* *GPIO *pins
1 UART interface
1 SPI bus
1 I2C bus
And the BeagleBone board is open source - so you can use it for any projects you want.

Another nice looking board is the Cosmic Board:





> The Cosmic+ Board supports the VF6xx with multi-core  ARM® Cortex™-A5 and Cortex™-M4. The Cortex-M4 is supported by Freescale MQX. MQX is a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) providing real-time performance within a small, configurable footprint.



If I would have more free time I would buy the Parallella board.



This is about a ARM A9 processor which has got access to a Epiphany chip which consists of a scalable array of *16 *RISC processors programmable in C/C++ connected together using a shared memory architecture.

So this little board has a FPGA and an array of 16x700Mhz = *11.2 Ghz* processor grid.

If you are able to get your c++ code using all the cores.

But a perfect and cheap start into massive parallel computing.

Edit: Added the BeagleBoard black image.


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## rds100

I'd like to get a box of these - http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

Unfortunately when i checked they had a limit of one per customer + stupid shipping fee.


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## Taronyu

wlanboy said:


> The Raspberry Pi is quite in the middle between the $200 all-you-can-eat boards (like the PandaBoard) and the Arduino clones for $10.
> 
> There is one board that I would buy if I did not have a Raspberry Pi: The BeagleBone Black for about $45.
> 
> If you compare them:


Arduino clone for $10? Where? I'm still searching a way to setup a small clustered netwerk here for learning purposes.


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## wlanboy

Taronyu said:


> Arduino clone for $10? Where? I'm still searching a way to setup a small clustered netwerk here for learning purposes.


Ebay and cheap China resellers are your best friends.


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## drmike

My Pi is taxed.   Runs the VPN... Runs Squid... Runs some other proxy and filtering inline.

Overall, the throughput straight remote network is lacking and CPU ceiling and above gets hits quick and hard.  Definitely in the market for something with more oomph and ability to push bits faster with overhead for processing things.

The Pi isn't bad for what I am doing.  Exception is the one image resizer inline that gets ill and slogs  with these modern designer idiot layouts and 500 elements.


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## Shados

wlanboy said:


> The Raspberry Pi is quite in the middle between the $200 all-you-can-eat boards (like the PandaBoard) and the Arduino clones for $10.
> 
> There is one board that I would buy if I did not have a Raspberry Pi: The BeagleBone Black for about $45.
> 
> If you compare them:
> 
> 
> 
> BeagleBone elec. connections:
> 
> 
> 3 I2C buses
> CAN bus
> SPI bus
> 4 timers
> 5 serial ports
> *65 GPIO *pins
> 8 PWM outputs
> 7 analog inputs
> RaspberryPi elec. connections:
> 
> 
> *8* *GPIO *pins
> 1 UART interface
> 1 SPI bus
> 1 I2C bus
> And the BeagleBone board is open source - so you can use it for any projects you want.
> 
> Another nice looking board is the Cosmic Board:
> 
> 
> 
> If I would have more free time I would buy the Parallella board.
> 
> 
> 
> This is about a ARM A9 processor which has got access to a Epiphany chip which consists of a scalable array of *16 *RISC processors programmable in C/C++ connected together using a shared memory architecture.
> 
> So this little board has a FPGA and an array of 16x700Mhz = *11.2 Ghz* processor grid.
> 
> If you are able to get your c++ code using all the cores.
> 
> But a perfect and cheap start into massive parallel computing.


I'd wait a while on the Parallella - I'm an original kickstarter backer and mine has yet to arrive. They have at least started production a couple of weeks ago, but yeahhhh.

On a related note, I have an odroid-u3, and it's pretty nice. Not as cheap as it looks because power cable/case/(microsd|eMMC) aren't included, and you also really need the IO shield if you want to do electronics stuff, but still quite nice.


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## drmike

I'm surprised by the seeming lack of quad-core boards like these at this point.  Phones have been packing such.

Lack of proper disk interfaces is unappealing also.

CubieTruck is interesting but price point is rather high.


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## wlanboy

drmike said:


> I'm surprised by the seeming lack of quad-core boards like these at this point.  Phones have been packing such.
> 
> Lack of proper disk interfaces is unappealing also.


Currently there are two main hypes floating around:


minimal always on desktop machine
technical/electronics hobbyist playground from LED to quad-copter and robots
If you want to have a more powerful PC they offer you something like Zotac Zbox.

If you want to have something mobile they offer you Ultrabooks and tablets.

If you want to have something with a lot of drives they offer you NAS machines that are able to run a lot of stuff.

If you want more network connections they offer you routers that can run OpenWRT.

The niche with *FPGA*s (Field Programmable Gate Array) is filled with Parallella and other FPGAs like Alan.

The niche with a lot of GPIOs is set with the BeagleBoard and copy cats.

If you need more cores you can check Wandboard: Cortex-A9 *Quad core* with 2 GB of RAM or the OrigenBoard.

Or even an *eight core* monster with a Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and a Cortex™-A7 quad core CPU.


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## peterw

BeagleBone Black is eating the Raspberry Pi for launch. More pins more power and the operating system is on board. The SDCard can be used for data only to save its life. I like the Arduino universe and the great community. You find code and shields for everythings. I will buy the pcDuino V3.







*Items*

*Details*

CPU

AllWinner A20 SoC, 1GHz ARM Cortex A7 Dual Core

GPU

OpenGL ES2.0, OpenVG 1.1, Mali 400 Dual Core

DRAM

1GB

Onboard Storage

4GB Flash, microSD card (TF) slot for up to 32GB

Video Output

HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support

OS


Ubuntu 12.04
Android 4.2
 
Arduino extension interface

Arduino sockets, same as Arduino UNO
14xGPIO, 2xPWM, 6xADC, 1xUART, 1xSPI, 1xI2C

Network interface


USB WiFi
*Ethernet 10/100/1000Mbps*

 
Audio out


3.5mm analog audio interface
I2S stereo digital audio interface
 
LCD

LVDS

IR

IR receiver

SATA

SATA Host socket

Camera

MIPI

Battery

Li-Poly Battery Interface

USB

2xUSB host, 1xUSB OTG

Power

5V, 2000mA


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## raj

My RPi arrives tomorrow! First on the agenda is rebuilding my HTPC.  Next project is plug my pair of 3TB drives into a dual bay USB enclosure and RAID1 those fockers.


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## rds100

RAID1 over USB sounds like a bad idea. You will split the already small USB bandwidth in half.


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## peterw

raj said:


> My RPi arrives tomorrow! First on the agenda is rebuilding my HTPC.  Next project is plug my pair of 3TB drives into a dual bay USB enclosure and RAID1 those fockers.





rds100 said:


> RAID1 over USB sounds like a bad idea. You will split the already small USB bandwidth in half.


Cavalry has a great USB Raid dock: http://www.cavalrystorage.com/en-cahdd-d.aspx



Code:


With a choice of 4 modes, you can set up your hard drives in any available configuration for your needs. 
Choose RAID 1 to mirror two drives for data protection, 
RAID 0 for speed, 
JBOD for flexibility, or 
Spanning (BIG) for increased capacity.


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## gxbfxvar

I have been using Olinuxino imx233 and A10/13/20 devices from Olimex. All of the boards can run Linux and their price range is from 22 EUR to 65 EUR (+VAT) depending on the features.

For example, currently I have one Olinuxino-imx233-maxi (64MB RAM, 454MHz CPU, custom Linux distribution) running as home dns server, and one Olinuxino-A20-micro (Allwinner A20, dual core Cortex-A7, 1GB RAM, SATA interface, Debian 7.x armhf) as file server.


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## rds100

I also ordered one of the Olimex devices to test it - A10-OlinuXino-LIME and it looks very good. I will consider making some micro servers from these, in addition to the Raspberry Pi.


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## peterw

gxbfxvar said:


> I have been using Olinuxino imx233 and A10/13/20 devices from Olimex. All of the boards can run Linux and their price range is from 22 EUR to 65 EUR (+VAT) depending on the features.
> 
> For example, currently I have one Olinuxino-imx233-maxi (64MB RAM, 454MHz CPU, custom Linux distribution) running as home dns server, and one Olinuxino-A20-micro (Allwinner A20, dual core Cortex-A7, 1GB RAM, SATA interface, Debian 7.x armhf) as file server.


Olimex is a great company I will buy one of the Olinuxino boards.



> OLINUXINO is completely open source - including hardware and software, this means you have access to all CAD files and sources and you can reuse them for your own personal or commercial project.





rds100 said:


> I also ordered one of the Olimex devices to test it - A10-OlinuXino-LIME and it looks very good. I will consider making some micro servers from these, in addition to the Raspberry Pi.


This is a beast for only 35€. SATA,native ethernet, 5V compatible and 160 GPIOs on four GPIO connectors!

Power managment is great:



Code:


A10-OLinuXino-LIME can be powered from three sources:
    +5VDC voltage applied PWR jack
    +3.7V from LiPo re-chargable battery connected to LiPo board connector
    +5V applied to USB-OTG connector 

Power consumption is as follows:

    LiPo 3.7V power battery: 1.2W
    +5VDC input power: 1.3W




Code:


LiPo battery allow backup power supply when main power is interrupted. 
A10-OLinuXino-LIME have power managment IC which charge the battery when main power is present, 
when power is interrupted the LiPo battery automatically provide backup power supply. 
Step-up converter prvide 5V for the USB peripherials too.


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## rds100

@peterw the bet part - Olimex is a Bulgarian company and these boards are made here. It is always great to be able to support the local business 

Just the GPIO connectors are too tiny for my liking (1.27 mm pin to pin spacing instead of the normal 2.54mm), but i guess you just can't fit 160 pins in such small space otherwise.


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## peterw

rds100 said:


> Just the GPIO connectors are too tiny for my liking (1.27 mm pin to pin spacing instead of the normal 2.54mm), but i guess you just can't fit 160 pins in such small space otherwise.


I am surfing their website for over one hour. Great products. I found a adapter for breadboards: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A10/A10-OLinuXino-LIME-UEXT/open-source-hardware


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## gxbfxvar

Looks like A10-Olinuxino-LIME is out of stock from olimex.com. However, you can order it from resellers like exp-tech.de: http://www.exp-tech.de/Mainboards/OLinuXino/A10-OLinuXino-Lime.html (LIME is even cheaper there, thanks to smaller VAT in Germany).


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## wlanboy

rds100 said:


> I also ordered one of the Olimex devices to test it - A10-OlinuXino-LIME and it looks very good. I will consider making some micro servers from these, in addition to the Raspberry Pi.





peterw said:


> Olimex is a great company I will buy one of the Olinuxino boards.
> 
> This is a beast for only 35€. SATA,native ethernet, 5V compatible and 160 GPIOs on four GPIO connectors!
> 
> Power managment is great:
> 
> 
> A10-OLinuXino-LIME can be powered from three sources:
> +5VDC voltage applied PWR jack
> +3.7V from LiPo re-chargable battery connected to LiPo board connector
> +5V applied to USB-OTG connector
> 
> Power consumption is as follows:
> 
> LiPo 3.7V power battery: 1.2W
> +5VDC input power: 1.3W


Did not know that Olimex is building such nice peaces of hardware.

I know them for their AVR and MSP430 line.

Heck yet another plattform to play with.


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## drmike

Shados said:


> I'd wait a while on the Parallella - I'm an original kickstarter backer and mine has yet to arrive. They have at least started production a couple of weeks ago, but yeahhhh.
> 
> 
> On a related note, I have an odroid-u3, and it's pretty nice. Not as cheap as it looks because power cable/case/(microsd|eMMC) aren't included, and you also really need the IO shield if you want to do electronics stuff, but still quite nice.



Have you by now received your Parallella board?  How is it?


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## ctrlswitches

Best alternatives of Raspberry Pi are,
- BeagleBone Black
- ODROID-C1+
- UDOO Dual Basic
- Radxa Rock2 Square
- NanoPC-T1
- MinnowBoard MAX
- ODROID-XU4
- Cubieboard4


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## stephon

You can try out
Asus tinker board, Banana Pi M64, BeagleBoard X15, OrangePi Plus 2 nd more.


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