Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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I got three of these. I need controllers like I need a hole in my head but hey, they are really really cute. A bit of trouble with the release that was on them but downloaded and burned in the latest and they were fine. Sadly no, I have not yet put them on a meter but will when they are near such a setup.

Something that sets these apart from the Raspberry Pi are that they full of easy access I/O, and two the Cloud9 IDE.

It is insanely fun to write javascript code in a browser talking to this thing wirelessly and have it do stuff. For me who likes to do mobile robots this is the really really great. I've got one of the old Rovio telepresence [1] things (its a mobile base with a Web cam and a WiFi link) and this board is going to be its new brain. The angstrom distro on it is very similar to the distro that the Chumby came with only a bit more stuff (Python, yay!).

The HDMI output is ok (its not 1080p so don't even think you're going to do XMBC on this thing) but nothing to write home about.

One USB port so get a hub, but on the plus side you can provide you own 5V power supply and that means you don't need a powered hub (unless you're trying to run high power peripherals). The Logitech Unifying receiver works well if you want to add a keyboard and mouse in one plug. (Now if that Unifying Reciever did WiFi it would kick butt)

All in all I think its a really good board. Nice mix of features. It will put pricing pressure on the Arduino Due I suspect.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-WebCam/dp...

No. it's not fun to run any code in a browser <textarea>. especially when you have a full linux distro with ssh and modern text editors, with decent undo, column editing, auto-completion, regexp, etc.

never really understood the appeal of the arduino interface or cloud9. Well, for the arduino i can at least try to explain that, same with android, there are so many bad tutorials based on copy/past and boasting those IDE, that lots and lots of people start already thinking that is their only option.

It means you can get started right away. If you want to be more serious, sure, write stuff in C or whatever, it works fine, after all this is just a Linux machine (with a simple webserver running cloud9 on port 3000). Or just ssh into the bone and edit your .js files in vim (it probably makes you feel a little bit more hardcore but yeah, it's still js).

No need for the negativity, can't blame those guys for wanting to get a larger userbase by making things easy. In the end the larger volume/bigger community is beneficial to everyone.

Actually having both is a pretty nice. The reason is that it can be intimidating to someone in getting started. The notion of IDE via the web server is also useful for keeping the required software down on a machine you may not control. I was helping kids learn programming at a high school but the school would not give us permission to install putty[1] on the machines, using a browser based dev kit works well in this case.

Once you get someone past the basics and into the 'advanced' mode setting them up with ssh, vim, and screen is a great way to be productive on a linux machine.

[1] Putty in this case being the terminal emulator for PC's which can also talk to serial ports.

Is the Ethernet PHY connected to the main processor over USB or something faster/more efficient? One of my biggest complaints about the Raspberry Pi is that the Ethernet is capped at a few dozen mbps, presumably due to constraints associated with USB.

Ethernet is built into the SOC [1] and brought out to a phy. It can do gigabit Ethernet. With the wireless dongle in the USB plug it was doing 10.5MB/sec (megabytes per second) according to scp.

[1] http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/am3358.pdf

Note that the BeagleBone has a 100Mbps phy.

Maybe there's something wrong with your Raspberry Pi, all of mine do over 90 Mbit/s downloads over ethernet without any problems.

he probably means MBps.

Nope, mine don't seem to go higher than around 6MBps (48mbps) on a good day. Edit: That was with one of the first models. My new one seems to hit about 75mbps.

Using iperf (i.e. pretty ideal conditions) I peak at around 75Mbit/sec on a latest-generation Pi.

I just bought two on an impulse buy. There's really no better time to be a hardware tinkerer.

There are so many awesome kits coming down the pipeline:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1106670630/mojo-digital-...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...

I teach a beginning robotics class to local area kids. We were going to use RasPis this year but I could only get 2 of them (I needed about 10) so we ended up going with TP-Link WR703n's and arduinos instead. This actually ended up working better anyway with less hassle.

I'm hoping that BBB's (3B's?) are going to take their place in the fall. They seem much more suited to tinkering than raspis. A very exciting platform!

I've been wanting to do something similar with kids for a while. I've finally got a good hackers group going in my area, and most of the resources needed for hardware & space. Would you consider sharing some information about your class?

How robust are the boards? I'm moving a hydroponics setup from an arduino to something more flexible, and need them to be fairly robust. I use a thick plastic case to protect them, but they will be on 24/7/7. Also, how is setting up WIFI with these? Better than the RPi?

Standard FR-4 from the looks of it, it does fit inside an altoids tin although I've not installed one due to needing to cut out the holes for the peripherals.

> Something that sets these apart from the Raspberry Pi are that they full of easy access I/O

How so?

I thought RasPi has plenty of I/O, but I'm not familiar with BB.

Minor quibble: The lack of analog sound output. It shows that their mindset was not entirely focused on the robotics / DIY genre, but more on the miniature computer thing. You don't do sound output on a robot or controller from HDMI.

I think the HDMI is more a concession than anything, since there's no real "GPU" to speak of. This is more akin to the Arduino, but with a little more creature comfort.

Err, what the heck are you talking about? The GPU is a SGX530. http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

You're right, I was going off a review of the Beaglebone where they said you couldn't do 1080p TV like on the RasPI. Clearly incorrect. :)

Except that this Cortex is running 1ghz, while the most Arduino (or TI Launchpad) microcontrollers operate at sub-100mhz speeds.

That Rovio bot looks cool...two questions:

1. Looks like it's been out for a while. If you were getting a similar thing today, would you stick with it or go for something else [1]?

2. When you drop the beaglebone into the Rovio, would you actually be replacing its OEM controller, or just interacting with it over WiFi?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rover-App-Controlled-Tank-Night-Vision...

I used that Rovio bot in a robotics class. I'm no robotics expert (hardly a novice), but this was my experience.

The big hold-up is lack of access to (or maybe pure lack of) encoders on the wheels (we were using the wifi/web interface). It's impossible to move by dead reckoning. This was actually part of our class, to teach us how bad dead reckoning is and then we moved on to CV for tracking and control.

I only got one, but I too am working on a remote robot, modifying an old Robie Jr.

I originally was attempting to use an MK802 android stick running ubuntu and interfacing it with an Arduino Micro.

However, for $45, it saves much time and "just works".

Also, like you said, it cannot do 1080p, so if you want that for XBMC get a Pi, but for a robot, this, to me, seems ideal.

Happy to see that these powerful little things are getting more affordable. What does those expansion pins do? Can they be used for I/O like button and LED?

Just about every pin on this processor can be used for GPIO. Some pins, like the DDR interface, can only perform one function, but the vast majority can be configured to do one of seven different functions.

What is your recommendation for adding motors and sensors to it? Is there any good usb device controller to quickly start doing robotics?

There are a number of off the shelf motor controllers. I tend to build my own but the folks at Sparkfun [1] have a number of of them which other have used with great success.

[1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9107

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