I have a few Beaglebone Blacks kicking around the house and they're great. I've always felt the Beagle boards were superior to Raspberry Pis, and that the RPi mostly succeeded because of better marketing and outreach efforts.
I'd also say it's that the RPis are generally much cheaper and also offer (subjectively) better I/O.
For example, A BeaglePlay costs about twice what a Pi 4 Model B/4GB does in my local market. The BeaglePlay has half the ram, only one USB 2 port to the Pi's two, none of the Pi's USB 3 connectors, way fewer GPIOs, only one HDMI, no audio, etc. I do like that BeagleBoards have onboard flash though.
BeaglePlay also has sub-1Ghz wireless, (along with 2.4Ghz programmable wireless), a PRU (essentially a built-in microprocessor suitable for realtime I/O work). The core processor supports CAN, and a bunch of other features, but I'm not sure if these are broken out in a way that is usable.
Beagleboards are just different than RPis. They aren't really trying to be the same thing. RPis are small computers with simple GPIO meant for turning on and off things, Beagleboards are computer/microprocessor hybrids with GPIO meant for doing realtime I/O.
> RPis are small computers with simple GPIO meant for turning on and off things,
Maybe you didn't mean this in a way to diminish how handy Raspberry Pis are, but I've used it in tons of situations that are more interesting than turning LEDs on and off. It being a usable computer is icing on the cake. I have RPis for all kinds of things: Home Assistant using the Bluetooth module (+ external Z-wave/Zigbee controller via USB), OpenJVS for running arcade I/O emulation (GPIO for serial communication), I doubt I need to explain how useful it is to have a FlashROM setup, I've gotten a Pi to drive a Commodore SID...
I can see based on the RPi Pico which seems to have similar functionality to the Beagleboard in terms of I/O that in fact there is so much more that COULD be done, and I'm glad that we have these now. That said, I don't want people to think that RPi is a toy! Having a moderately powerful small form factor computer connected to all of this I/O lets you do things that you couldn't even when GPIO is involved. Not to mention, you can bitbang the GPIO really fast on a Raspberry Pi, which can come in handy.
Yeah agreed, and I don't think I communicated that in my comment above. It's not that the Pi is universally better in all cases, but it is better suited for many common consumer applications... Which logically leads to it being the higher selling device.
The soc on the original Black had two 200MHz PRUs which ran independently of the main processor and could be used for signalling and sensing tasks that require tight timing guarantees, and can then trigger interrupts on the main CPU.
The PRUs are simple single-issue in-order CPUs designed to make cycle-counting easy. They are more than an accidentally turing complete useful combination of a down-counter and shift-register. Don't get me wrong the RP2040 PIO is a very flexible, powerful peripheral for a sub-$1 MCU. A single PRU is probably larger than the whole RP2040.
The 2040's PIO is indeed similar but the PRU has features the PIO doesn't like IOs directly wired to CPU register bits so the result of an instruction is immediately available on IO lines.
edit: also Ti's PRU has been around waaaay longer than the RP2040 so the PRU is likely an inspiration for the PIO.
I think if they had invested in a beginner-friendly toolchain for the PRU (maybe something like an Arduino core with a virtual serial port to pass data back and forth without forcing people to implement ring buffers in shared memory), they could've carved out a much larger niche for the Beaglebone.
Nowadays, there are fast hobbyist-accessible microcontrollers with USB or wifi support that can fill a lot of the same niches, so I think they sorta missed the boat.
> I'd also say it's that the RPis are generally much cheaper
IF you can actually get one. That's a REALLY big IF.
RPis have been subsidized for a long time. The fact that the subsidy is gone means that they don't seem to be willing to release them to we plebians very much anymore. They're fine releasing them to T-Mobile, though.
Anybody not a pure hobbyist left the RPi space long ago.
> Anybody not a pure hobbyist left the RPi space long ago.
Actually, the constrained supply is because during COVID and aftermath they decided to support industrial customers to the detriment of hobbyist supply.
They're currently cranking out a million units per month and supply is returning to retail. https://rpilocator.com/ was completely bare a few weeks ago, and now there's a lot of retailers with stock (though it's still not where it should be).
Restocks have shot through the roof, and buying restrictions are being lifted here and there. I found Pi 4 and Pi Zero in stock both times I visited Micro Center this month, and when I needed one a couple weeks ago I saw it was available at PiShop.us too...
I think this month it really shifted from "trickling availability" to full deluge. Right now people like me who've wanted one but have been holding off are finally making our purchases. Once that appetite is filled, I can imagine we'll just see some places with steady stock.
Still waiting on CM4 though. Those are still backordered and out of stock most places.
> Anybody not a pure hobbyist left the RPi space long ago.
I suspect a lot of hobbyists have left too, and that's why there's so many not-quite-knockoff SBCs on the market (ranging from the respectable OrangePis to weird fly-by-night stuff on AliExpress made by a company that's already out of business before your order arrives).
But I don't know how many people are using alternatives because they want to use alternatives. Raspberry Pis have been like hen's teeth for a couple of years now. If you have a NIB Pi4, until recently you could sell that sucker and probably by 3 OrangePis instead.
But if RPis were the same price? I think they'd sell like hotcakes just like they did a few years ago, and you'd see them in every random project on Youtube. I don't know of any SBC (other than very high-end industrial embedded modules) that are as well-documented as the Pis.
I'm not sure the Pico and Pico W are going to make as much of a splash as the original did (it's harder for people to get started with an overgrown microcontroller than it is a tiny PC), but I expect them to sell very well, too. Maybe they won't show up in every disposable pregnancy test and lightbulb like the ESPs and Nordics, but I suspect we'll see them in some commercial products too.
It depends on the application. BBBs come in industrial variants (the Pis don't, so good luck using them in certain contexts), and have more UARTs, i2c and SPI buses, not to mention the PRUs...
I guess... but if industrial is really their market, I think they need to up their game in terms of documentation. "Real" industrial embedded modules tend to come with reams of documentation covering almost down to the silicon. You pay for that, of course, because writing documentation costs money, but so is having your engineers spend time twiddling bits and poking at undocumented registers, trying to figure out why your sample code works and theirs doesn't.
That said, I've seen some neat shoestring-budget prototype projects done on BB hardware, so there's some market there. But it seems like their stuff is a bit expensive for low-end learners and hobbyists and missing some of the niceties you get if you convince your boss to buy a ComExpress-based industrial module, or (if you really twist their arm) something like the Arnouse BioDigital SBCs.
PRU aside, BeagleBoards/Bones mount eMMC memory which offers much higher reliability compared to microSD cards. RPis are great for tinkering and prototyping, but I wouldn't feel safe employing them where uptime is important.
Agreed there, I've seen horrible reliability on (micro)SD cards for these little project boards. For RPi, usually use SSD over USB for primary boot, there are some nice case options for this, if you don't mind the space.
Over the pandemic, started using more of the mini intel boxes in the sub-$300 space, just because of availability and price gouging.
I’ve heard Beaglebone Blacks are great (never used them), but have to say the experience with Blue was awful. I had a hardware defect that’s apparently commonplace. It gave me the feeling (maybe unjustified) that there’s a low bar for slapping the Beaglebone label on a product. In contrast, none of my several RPi’s have had any hardware issues, and I’m pretty brutal with them.
The linux image on the beagleboard site for the Black is three years old. Is it possible to just boot generic ARM linux on the Black now? Is there another site for official images?
It's nice to see the project still chugging along