You can get an SD card with 0.5TB capacity on it for USD$30, what storage needs do you foresee? Also these tend to be used where weight is an issue, so, why do you want to lug around a huge disk?
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/...
I guess too little too late. None of the 4 dead Samsung cards I could find have the V mark (too old for that), required for validation, and they probably started adding support for regular EVO cards just a year ago or so.
Bought a cheap NUC with a disk and a BIOS and it is working like a champ - boots every time. I probably paid a little more but it's enough for my needs - a simple login and (occasional) DLNA server.
Also, when comparing costs you should take into account things like enclosure, power supply, as card(s) etc.
I'd say I probably paid around $250 or so for the NUC and a SODIMM and I had a SATA boot disk already. I had previously owned ODROID, libre computer (le potato), and Pi(s). These were probably in the ballpark of $80-$120 each, when including all the necessary equipment.
I'd far rather see a 2x PCIe port that could be used for whatever you wanted.
PCIe, 16 GB DDR4, two M.2 (one for storage, one WIFI), quad core 1.5 GHz (same cores as this board, but twice as many)
Raspberry pis are very popular as audio streamers, media centers that streams of the network, home automations etc.
But all or them greatly suffer from the fact that it can randomly die on you. Which is quite frustrating.
The only sensible solution (imho) to this currently is netbooting but it can be a hassle to setup in some cases.
An integrated 16GB emmc would do wonders for everything mentioned above.
And everybody bitches that the board is too expensive.
Beagle just doesn't offer anywhere near the same value.
The conversations always went like this:
"Cheaper? So, did you count the SD card you need for the RPi?"
"But it's cheaper."
"And the special power supply because the RPi power systems suck?"
"But it's cheaper."
"And the keyboard and monitor because it doesn't run headless over USB?"
"But it's cheaper."
"... Okay, boss, it's cheaper. Go have fun."
And that's before we even start talking about the lousy documentation of the RPi CPU chips. And the fact that the Ethernet was installed over the USB. etc.
But the RPi was cheaper. Shrug. The guys at TI learned their lesson. Throw everything off the board and make it cheap--the hackers don't give a shit about anything else.
The Pi is cheap, for a reason, but it is still more powerful than anything I use it for. But the same goes for the Beagle Board.
Choose the board you want, for the project you are doing.
Note: For every RPi project I have done, I have done two or three ESP8266/ESP32 projects along with five or six AVR/M0/M2 Arduino projects.
But if you vouch for it I'll take a closer look.
Now that's a valid argument. And I would argue it's way more than half.
If you want a one-off mumblesomething and can stay at the Linux OS level (ie. Web application, USB peripherals or maybe the most basic of GPIOs), the RPi ecosystem is going to let you get there much faster even though it will crash and burn occasionally. If that's "good enough" ... Douzou! ... Ganbatte! ... get moving and get going.
I have the same comment about Arduino. It ain't real reliable (but, to be fair, it's quite a bit more reliable than the RPis), but the ecosystem is awesome.
However, when you start asking something like "Gee, how do I send a single address byte over the I2C subsystem?" or "That signal needs a response in 50 nanoseconds, can I make that work?" you will thank the TI folks for producing that 5000 page (not joking or exaggerating) Technical Reference Manual.
One other thing that people who live in the RPi system always overlook in the Beagle ecosystem are the PRU cores. You can do HARD real-time work on those and still live in the Linux world. That's something that the RPi series just simply cannot do no matter how much you hack at them. And it often means the difference between a design which needs an FPGA and one that doesn't.
However, yes, you are going to live in that Technical Reference Manual for the Beagle series. If you're not comfortable doing that, then the Beagle stuff probably isn't for you.
There are really good reasons to use and love RPi's--ease of use is huge. But the whole "It's cheaper" thing just chaps my hide.
When you spend that much time with your device cost isn't a factor (imho). But the pi is cheap enough that I can gift one if I know the end result will work well. And it is quite nice to just have one lying around for when you get an itch.
Using netboot I have never had an issue with the pi. All reliability problems I've experienced can be tracked down bad power and SD-cards (note: I have not used any IO other than USB). Both are annoying enough to look for alternatives but both are also fixable (netbooting likely disqualifies it for many usecases though).
Minimizing reads on the sd card usually means that they work at least several years untouched (in my experience, obviously limited sample size), which is likely good enough for many (a true read-only system might work even better). But when the audio streamer in the vacation cabin dies when you aren't around to fix it is still frustrating. So I'm in the moment of figuring out how to move the last of them to be netbooted. Which has some very nice side-effects as well, such as trivial remote system backup+restores.
It also comes down to time. I know the pi and the pitfalls. Researching an alternative would take many hours and I'd still have to experience some of them. If the goal of the project isn't to learn a new sbc then that alone is a dealbreaker.
That said, PocketBeagle seems to support wifi netboot (which neither the pi and pi zero w do). Might be able to find a project for that!
I don't want to lug around anything, I want it to sit behind my monitor. Also an M.2 drive isn't that big, it could fit in many existing cases.
You want "industrial" cards from a vendor tailored to the space. I wouldn't trust even those new industrial sandisk cards.
1. Absolutely don't lie about their capacity
2. Have a reasonable MTBF
3. Are reliably fast
But instead we're all dealing with an industry that raced to the bottom years ago.
I'm concerned that the same mentality will infect the eMMC market eventually and it will become impossible to find quality parts after a couple of years.
It costs a pretty penny though. $40 for a 2GB non micro card was the last quote I got.
1. most SD card devices are battery powered
2. SD card failure is acceptable because they are replaceable
3. SD cards are not used as main storage for a computer
That leads to low quality SD cards.