I hate these comparisons

Story: Raspberry Pi-like boardset boasts quad-core i.MX6Total Replies: 4
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Jeff91

Apr 23, 2014
10:48 PM EDT
Ever since the RPI went viral EVERY caseless ARM product is touted as "Raspberry Pi-Like". There were caseless, low-power computers before the RPI and I'm sure we will still be seeing them long after.

~Jeff
gary_newell

Apr 24, 2014
3:26 AM EDT
Price is very important in a lot of these cases.

There are a number of single board computers that have come along and compared themselves to the Raspberry PI but with more processing power or better graphics and then stated the price point at 3 times the price.

The Raspberry PI was initially designed for educational purposes and has a deliberately low price point. They could easily add more power to it but then the price would increase.
CFWhitman

Apr 24, 2014
9:40 AM EDT
To be fair, this board has the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi so that it will fit in the same cases that the Raspberry Pi uses, so it is more "Raspberry Pi-like" than most of the others (except for the Banana Pi of course, which also fits in Raspberry Pi cases, and even imitates the name).

Of course this board is much more expensive than a Raspberry Pi, so that is an argument against it being "Raspberry Pi-like."
Jeff91

Apr 26, 2014
2:14 AM EDT
Talking about power and price point, I'm just going to leave this here as a reminder that the RPI is cr@ppy hardware that isn't even that cheap. The main difference between the RPI and the A10 board? The RPI has people marketing it as "open" when really it isn't much more open than most ARM devices.

Even as I write this comment another story has popped up onto the newswire about another RPI like device.
gus3

Apr 26, 2014
12:13 PM EDT
Sigh. Here we go again.

The #1 selling point of the Raspberry Pi is its low replacement cost, after someone misplaces a decimal point and fries it. The other #1 selling point of the RPi is its myriad connectors. GPIO, I2C, SPI, USB. That is what's "open." The MK802 in Jeff's link would be wholly unsuitable for home-built robotics.

(As for the parts that Jeff asserts aren't "open," Broadcom is working, under pressure, to change that. The VideoCore IV programming guide is no longer internal-only, and reverse-engineering the binary boot blobs is continuing apace.)

The hardware openness is a valid comparison point for the Banana Pi. In fact, according to the article, the expansion connectors are "Raspberry Pi-compatible," which may refer to pin layout, or only to voltage/signal levels.

This Banana Pi appears to me to be the first real "competition" for the RPi. And, so what if it took two years to get this far? Without the Raspberry Pi, we'd still be shelling out hundreds of dollars to replace fried units, and big bucks also for HDMI-to-VGA converters. Yes, more than one marketplace has been disrupted.

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