It's odd then that a
single alternative hasn't risen to prominence to serve their original hobbyist market. There are millions of clones out there of course but any with a trusted brand name and support behind them?
Beaglebone Blacks have existed and been in stock through the entire RPi fiasco. They are almost completely documented unlike the RPis. The boards have full schematics unlike the RPis. You can buy the main SoC unlike the RPis. The boards have lots more IO and some really nice real-time units. You can get the documentation from TI without an NDA. And the BBB even has eMMC so that it isn't dependent upon horrifically crappy uSD cards. And it runs straight up Debian instead of some weird build. I can go on and on.
RPi has kicked the end users in the teeth over and over and over and people still won't change. People at my hackerspace are willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi to do Octoprint rather than buying a full blown x86 computer for half the total cost.
What the hell do the Beaglebone people have to do to get people to pay attention?
Beaglebone Black link: https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglebone-black
One engineering problem is that the power envelope is kind of tight. While the RPi simply will not work with 5V@500mA, the BBB does. If you bump the frequency, your power supply needs shoot up and you start needing heat sinks.
It really feels like the Beaglebone Black got the engineering aspects correct. Shame that even hackers are suceptible to marketing.
At this point, being able to use the Beaglbone Black is practically a superpower for me as an engineer. I can buy it. My end customers can buy it. It's real Linux so my end customer can bang on it as required. It's documented, so I can generate the embedded drivers I need and document them.
I suspect that with the industrial etherenet built in, the BeaglePlay is about to take on some of that character.
I’d the BBB cost me ~$50 AUD I’d be much more keen on them… for all the well outlined reasons. It it just seems to always cost more than I’m prepared to pay for that hardware.
The BBB Bill of Materials is public. What parts of that BOM should they throw out to get to you that $50 AUD target?
The AM3359 is $11 in 1K units by itself.
This is about what you can get for $50 US without subsidy: https://www.toradex.com/computer-on-modules/verdin-arm-famil...
But this is not credible: "People at my hackerspace are willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi to do Octoprint rather than buying a full blown x86 computer for half the total cost."
I run Octoprint on a 4GB Pi 4. Total cost was probably $75. What kinds of setup are you talking about?
I can pick up a refurb x86 NUC with 8GB RAM and a 256GB M.2 SSD for right about $50 locally retail.
But for $50... hey.
I'm sure if you trawl Alibaba or any used computer dealer in your area you'll find something similar.
The prices are dirt-cheap though. How much stuff have you bought from them?
But, I mean, the computers are what they say they are. They don't lie as far as I can tell. So, if I go look up what I'm buying, I can see what kind of problems I'm in for.
It's a used computer store. WTF do people expect?
The problem with the clones, and with clones in general, is that they're never quite 100% compatible. There's always some sharp edge there to cut yourself on. Fix that, and I'll definitely try a non-Raspberry Pi SoC.
Otherwise at this point and prices if you're looking for a low power Linux computer I'd urge anyone over to the big three 1L families like the M7x Lenovo has or HP Elitedesk used machines since they are sub 60w and run circles around basically any single board pc