[kscz]

But the CHIP uses an Allwinner CPU, and for those of us who like to support manufacturers that actually play nice with the open source community: the CHIP is a no-go.

The specific CPU in the CHIP appears to have mainline support, so it's less terrible than things like the "Banana Pi M2+" ( http://linux-sunxi.org/Sinovoip_Banana_Pi_M2%2B ), but I like to support CPU manufacturers who aren't Allwinner.

[hak8or]

While the motives are nice, there is no way I am willing to reward a company like the one who makes the beaglebone black that effectively scams its customers by charging such a huge amount relative to other products.

[bsder]

The level of ignorance in that statement is stunning.

First, the Bill of Materials for the BeagleBone is publicly available. I'm quite sure the BeagleBone guys would welcome your help in finding parts that are significantly cheaper than what they have now.

Second, the BeagleBone comes with a bunch of very standard connectors that are optional or hobbyist installs on a lot of the other boards. Ethernet jack, 2 usb ports (one OTG), an actual power adapter jack that isn't USB, both big headers already installed, mini-HDMI already installed, uSD card holder installed and probably a couple others that I forgot. Those connectors are not cheap AND they often have to be installed by hand.

Third, most BeagleBone's come with everything you need. You don't need to buy a USB cable. You don't need to buy a flash card. You plug it in and it powers up and you can do stuff on it. RPi's used to make you buy both a cable and a uSD card--maybe that has changed.

Finally, the BeagleBone is actually quite a bit more powerful and has more peripherals than most of these other boards. The BeagleBone always came with a processor capable of running stock Linux even from it's release in April 2013--the RPi didn't get that until the RPi2 almost 2 years later. Quite a few things on the BBB hang directly off the chip and have their own functional modules that don't conflict with other things. On the BBB, for example, Ethernet is wired to the chip--it does not suck up USB bandwidth like the RPi. While you can plug in a USB audio stick on the BBB, most capes actually access the McASP block so that they get direct DMA and again don't clog the USB bus. I can do a lot more things simultaneously on the BBB than I can on the RPi before bogging it down.

If you can use the RPi for whatever it is you are doing--great! It's a nice product. But there are a lot of us quietly using a lot of BeagleBones because it is way more powerful and had these things from the start. RPi adopted these things later and, funnily enough, needed to increase their price when they did so.

It's no coincidence that the RPi3 and the BeagleBone Green are almost identical in price.

[morganvachon]

> RPi adopted these things later and, funnily enough, needed to increase their price when they did so.

This is my only nitpick with your post. While the Pi was in development, yes it was advertised as a "$25 computer", and once they finalized the design of the B version it ended up at $35. However, its price has not increased one penny since release, despite several revisions and huge leaps in performance and capability. Today we have the RPi 3, a quad core 64 bit computer that sells for the same price as the original single core, outdated-on-release board from 2012. If anything, that means the price has technically gone down, since you're getting so much more for the same amount.

[karlshea]

> RPi's used to make you buy both a cable and a uSD card

Still true, at least when I got my RPi 3 from Adafruit a month ago.

[kscz]

Well, I'm not really qualified to talk about the BoM costs relative to the sale price because I don't do manufacturing, but the Beaglebone Black team claims they charge at margin based on the BoM: "Currently there is $0 margin on these boards [...]" [0]. I normally compare the BeagleBone Black to the Raspberry Pi in terms of cost: the initial Raspberry Pi cost $35, but came with no internal flash. So with 4GB of internal flash the BBB seemed like a reasonable deal at $50. If you're willing to go without HDMI, the Beaglebone Green is $39 [1]

The Allwinner CPUs are always extremely cheap, but I don't support the company because of what jerks they are to the open source community [2]

[0] http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Revision_C_.28...

[1] http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/seeed-technology-co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allwinner#Linux_controversies

[stephen_g]

How is that a scam? They don't have a monopoly and it's not an essential item - so they should be able to charge whatever they want, and if people feel that the BeagleBone's features are worth the price then they will buy it. What's the problem?

[wolfgke]

Why do you consider charging a higher price as "scamming"? For example a SABRE Lite board is much more expensive and has a weaker processor than, say, a Raspberry Pi 3. Nevertheless it has advantages, for example it is much more open than an RPi3 and thus it is much easier to do bare-metal development on it, which is a reason why for example the seL4 developers use it as (one of the) build target(s) (cf. https://wiki.sel4.systems/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#On_what_h...)?