Hardkernel Launches $35 Development Board That Can Smash The RPi

[schmidtbag]

I'm thinking of something priced more along the lines of the Pi ? the Pi is OK because I can combine it with an ATmega328 (basically Arduino), but that does make things more complicated.

Yeah, the Due is good, however where I am it costs way more than the Pi + 328 setup I'm doing right now (unless I get a cheap clone from China).

Of course, I'm also interested in just knowing what's out there without going hunting for them, and without being limited to seeing only what the relatively local places supply.

It largely comes down to how much processing power you need. I've tried the Chinese clones of Dues and they perform fine (though they're not as tolerant of higher voltages than the Italian ones). There are dozens of other microcontrollers out there, even ones compatible with Arduino. But it depends on your project. There's also stuff like FPGA systems, which are pretty advanced but can accomplish great things if you know how to utilize them, though I've never attempted to work with those.

[PreferLinux]

Just want more GPIO? The Odroid-X2 and Beaglebone Black have a lot. There's also the UDOO, which isn't quite the same since that's actually an arduino Due merged on the same PCB with an i.MX6. These are all considerably more expensive than a Pi but far more capable devices (particularly the X2 and UDOO). I think Cubieboard also has many GPIO pins and is relatively cheap; much better value than the Pi anyway.

Depending on what exactly it is you want, an arduino Due by itself could be good enough. That board is very under-appreciated.

I'm thinking of something priced more along the lines of the Pi ? the Pi is OK because I can combine it with an ATmega328 (basically Arduino), but that does make things more complicated.

Yeah, the Due is good, however where I am it costs way more than the Pi + 328 setup I'm doing right now (unless I get a cheap clone from China).

Of course, I'm also interested in just knowing what's out there without going hunting for them, and without being limited to seeing only what the relatively local places supply.

[schmidtbag]

I'd be interested if you could name a few of them, please. I've got a Pi, but I'd like something with more GPIO.

Just want more GPIO? The Odroid-X2 and Beaglebone Black have a lot. There's also the UDOO, which isn't quite the same since that's actually an arduino Due merged on the same PCB with an i.MX6. These are all considerably more expensive than a Pi but far more capable devices (particularly the X2 and UDOO). I think Cubieboard also has many GPIO pins and is relatively cheap; much better value than the Pi anyway.

Depending on what exactly it is you want, an arduino Due by itself could be good enough. That board is very under-appreciated.

[PreferLinux]

I don't see why not. Neither board takes much power to operate and you could potentially run them off of 3 AA batteries if you don't plug any USB devices in.


@TAXI:
People give the Pi WAAAY too much credit, so yes, those numbers probably are accurate. The Pi is a crap computer (even for the price) and has been since its release date - the only reason people like it is because it's small, cheap, and power efficient. But there have been other platforms that can outperform it, are physically much smaller, have many more GPIO pins, and are roughly the same price (including shipping). To me, the greatest selling point of the Pi is it's amount of support it has, but, it only has that support due to its unwarranted (in my opinion) popularity. If platforms like the C1 got the same popularity, it would have as good of (maybe better) support.

It's not that I dislike the Pi, but people use it as a "control" group to compare against, and I find that pretty stupid considering there are really great products out there that deserve more recognition and would result in happier users. On top of that, people bought the Pi expecting it to act as a full-blown PC or media center. It's purpose was non-profit education for places that can't afford a computer lab, and people were whining that it doesn't let them write their thesis or play their 1080p 60FPS movies.

Nothing against you - I'm just ranting.

I'd be interested if you could name a few of them, please. I've got a Pi, but I'd like something with more GPIO.

[caligula]

One thing to watch out for though is odroids don't have hardware audio passthough. They only have PCM out. I'm not sure about CEC though.

Any idea why? Wouldn't the HDMI port support passthrough like on RPi? Rpi supports 7.1 nicely.

[caligula]

ARM architectures have a nomenclature that may be a bit confusing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Cores

Raspberry Pi (bcm2835 soc) is an ARM11 architecture with an ARMv6 instruction set
This ODROID-C1 (amlogic s805 soc) is an ARM Cortex A5 architecture with an ARMv7 instruction set

Both the SoCs above have their nice FPU

Ok good to know. I should have checked this.

[kevinf28]

If form factor is important, and you want Sata + Usb3, with hardware video decode... go AMD G-Series.

industrial:
http://www.seco.com/prods/usa/secopitx-gx.html

consumer/hacker:
http://www.gizmosphere.org/products/gizmo-2/

[Apokalypz]

For the price it's pretty solid. Wikipedia says 1.5 dmips per MHz per core which is about half of the a15. Not sure about flops though.

For something cheap and with such a low power draw, I don't think those numbers really matter all that much if it is a RPi replacement. The specs are better but we won't know real world until someone tests it or puts up a detailed article of it on some well known and loved Linux news site.

I however did notice on the amlogic site that it supports H.265 hardware decode. Since arm released their newest Mali drivers, other chips with this GPU don't have stutter problems. So more than likely it is definitely a good choice for a media box (assuming the VPU has hardware support in Linux and XBMC/KODI).

One thing to watch out for though is odroids don't have hardware audio passthough. They only have PCM out. I'm not sure about CEC though.

Given the price, I'm probably gonna put this on my Christmas list anyway.

[blackshard]

Also the arm5 instruction set here is even exotic than rpi's arm6. Successful inheritor of rpi legacy should be either arm6 or arm7

ARM architectures have a nomenclature that may be a bit confusing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Cores

Raspberry Pi (bcm2835 soc) is an ARM11 architecture with an ARMv6 instruction set
This ODROID-C1 (amlogic s805 soc) is an ARM Cortex A5 architecture with an ARMv7 instruction set

Both the SoCs above have their nice FPU

[CrystalGamma]

Also the arm5 instruction set here is even exotic than rpi's arm6. Successful inheritor of rpi legacy should be either arm6 or arm7

But the Cortex-A5 is an ARMv7 core ...