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Raspberry Pi vs BeagleBone Black ?

M

merc141

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2007
Messages
194
Has anyone had any experience with either of these? Both are at the same price point, it seems the BeagleBone Black has a more powerful processor but the Pi seems better as a HTPC. I was hoping to get one, just throw linux on it and use it as a web server and for some programming projects. For those of you who have not seen the new BeagleBone Black:

http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone Black

If you guys know some of the pros/cons like linux support, the Cloud9 IDE on Node.js (I am actually working on a project with node right now) for the BeagleBone, or anything else feel free to mention it.
 
Black may be better specs wise, but how is the fanbase/backing support on it? One thing that Rasp Pi has over other similar units is that it has a huge support community.
 
After doing a bit more research I think I am leaning towards the BeagleBone Black. The deciding difference between the Pi and BB is the processor of the BB. It is a AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 at 1 GHz compared to the ARM11 700 MHz of the Pi. I read somewhere that clock for clock the newer BB Cortex architecture is 70% faster than the Pi's. It seems that future support of linux is sketchy for the Pi's ARMv6. The BB is ARMv7 and can run (I believe) standard Ubuntu, not to mention Android, the included Angstrom linux and others. I know the Pi has the specialized distro Raspbian, and apparently can run Arch Linux, Debian, and Fedora too. I was under the impression that the Pi required more work to run linux (more than simply recompiling the kernel). If anyone has experience with the Pi please inform me if I am mistaken.

Some of the major issues between the two:

Pi: max 1080p, 2 usb ports
BB: max 1280x1024 resolution, 1 usb port

Anyone know a good place to order the BeagleBone Black? I haven't purchased from most places that have it in stock. There is a better discussion over here:

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/23575?start=0&tstart=0

If anyone has anything to add comments are welcome.
 
I have multiples of both. The BBB is WAY faster, both run linux native and both are super easy.

No need to compile on either, there are fresh images you can simply copy over.

Last I looked both adafruit and jameco were out of stock, unless you need 1080 the black is the way to go.
 
Yeah, the BBB is going to be way faster when comparing CPUs, but unfortunately it's useless as an HTPC device due to the fact that you're going to be stuck with a 720p, 16bit color output over HDMI. The dedicated VideoCore chip on the Pi also makes it much better for decoding video, even the highest bitrate 1080p stuff is fine.

I had been leaning towards a BBB for some linux mucking about, but some recent developments on the RPi graphics side of things have made me pause for a bit. There's some work being done right now to greatly improve the desktop usability of the Pi, by using that VideoCore chip to handle 2D rendering. It's apparently much, much faster than using the regular GL rendering, and make the Pi quite snappy for desktop work.

I see an article just popped up on Slashdot today about this exact stuff, with some good links:
http://ppaalanen.blogspot.fi/2013/05/weston-on-raspberry-pi-accelerated.html
http://fooishbar.org/tell-me-about/wayland-on-raspberry-pi/

And a nifty video showing stock X11 vs the improvements they've added to Weston/Wayland. Massive improvement in 2D rendering:
http://www.collabora.com/videos/rpi-wayland-demo-720p.webm
 
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Yeah I saw an article about that. Apparently X wasn't taking advantage of the Pi's VideoCore chip, instead using the ARMv6 to software render the OpenGL ES stuff? Not sure on that. Nevertheless I am not using it as a HTPC so I decided to pick up the Beaglebone black. Now I am trying to find a smallish usb hub and a usb wifi dongle. I hear conflicting advice though on the dongle. I would like to have the default Angstrom linux work with it without requiring to switch to a distro with support built in like ubuntu.

Any advice on wifi dongles or hubs or any accessory for that matter would be great.
 
This is the most often recommended wifi adapter for the Pi:
http://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-Wireless-Adapter-Wizard/dp/B003MTTJOY

I think it's mainly recommended because it's super cheap, the chipset is supported in quite a few distros, and it's tiny. I can't say for sure what sort of sort it has on the BBB, but a quick google does show a few mentions of it with the older BB boards. As usual with linux, about an even mix of success and failure. :)
 
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Well my beaglebone black showed up in the mail today, but when I attach the usb to config it for the first time it doesnt show up as a mass storage device. Not really sure what is wrong, I tried my laptop and it won't work there either. It looks like it is booting up fine (the leds look to be doing what they are supposed to) but nothing is happening. I will try again tomorrow. Any ideas?
 
Are you powering it via USB, does the port have enough umph?

If so try plugging in the Ethernet and see if it picks up an address, see if you can SSH in.
 
Those links look promising. After installing usb drivers and reflashing the eMMC windows recognizes the BBB as a usb drive. I can SSH into it fine now too. One thing though, the drive is supposed to have a local copy of START.htm. I have it but it is 0KB, empty. Is this supposed to be like this after flashing with the newest img ? Anyways thanks for the help.
 
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