4 ms·

I get why $RANDOM_OEM wants to start making these boards for hobbyist and profit from the market research that was done for them by the Raspberry Pi foundation.

I get why $RANDOM_OEM wants to start making these boards for hobbyist and profit from the market research that was done for them by the Raspberry Pi foundation. But the reason folks buy Raspberry Pi's and not some $RANDOM_OEM board with better spec is that they know that the Raspberry Pi foundation has a great track record of documenting the platform as much as it can and shipping software updates, unlike $RANDOM_OEM that will stop responding to calls once they roll out $Board_V1.1 and already collected the cash for $Board_V1. Trying to infringe on the branding is just the cherry on top really.

sosodev 6y ago
Yeah, I’ve bought a couple of other non-raspberry SBCs and the quality just isn’t anywhere close to the RPi stuff. I had one board that would randomly fail to boot and the devs acknowledged it as a known issue but never patched it afaik.
- mobilio 6y ago
  Same here! I have OrangePi Zero v1.4 and it have some overheating issues that didn't present in previous releases. Also it freeze on 14 days uptime. Sometime even earlier. More strange is that this is with kernel panic. Sometime it freeze and i can't SSH to it, but i can ping device! I couldn't figure yet why. Maybe i finally should get some RS232 USB connector and connect with serial. On other side - i have few RPi's that works with month without issues.
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    I had a Pi clone which froze every week or two. Turned out the USB "charging cable" had 1 Ohm resistance! Swapped it out for a proper one, and it's been rock solid for months now. Worth checking if you haven't already.
    - mobilio 6y ago
      WOW! I will test this too! So far i test underclocking, playing with different SD cards and so on.
- yuvadam 6y ago
  Try HardKernel ODROIDs, they blow RPis out of the water in terms of performance, price and support.
  - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
    Nah, Olimex rulez. Lime2 has 1Gb memory and 1Gbps networking and runs A20 using mainline kernel with a few tweaks. Odroid C2 has no mainline support for HDMI output yet.
    - ac29 6y ago
      > Odroid C2 has no mainline support for HDMI output yet. Yes, it does: http://www.linux-meson.com/doku.php http://www.linux-meson.com/doku.php
  - Koiwai 6y ago
    Odroid Go Advance is still stuck at a RK 4.4 kernel, which is very disappointing at least for me.
duskwuff 6y ago
> Trying to infringe on the branding is just the cherry on top really. Or the raspberry, as it were. It doesn't help that the capabilities of this board are significantly different from the Raspberry Pi. In particular, it lacks any form of video output, which could be a nasty surprise for someone expecting something they could use as a computer.
watermelon0 6y ago
Adding to that, another big reason is the community. Raspberry Pi has the biggest community, and majority of people interested in tech have probably at least heard of it, if not even played with it. There are numerous blogs posts and tutorials available online, and there are many modules and additional boards made specifically for various Raspberry Pi boards.
- dheera 6y ago
  Then again though, there are lots of things that RPi doesn't do, and I wish some China-based OEM would do. I'm not opposed to people coming up with variants, it's just that the current crop of variants don't fix real problems. Like fix the stupid I2C clock stretching bug. Reverse engineer the Broadcom chip, clone it, and fix the bug, because the lazy asses at Broadcom won't do it. Or make an RPi with a rich plug-and-play CSI camera ecosystem with hundreds of sensors and lens mounts to choose from, all connected via the camera connector. Seriously, screw the RPi "high quality" camera and it's teeny useless sensor -- I want 35mm full frame, 20-50 megapixels, in CSI with a python library for exposure control, and I'm willing to pay maybe half the cost of a full frame DSLR to get that. Nobody sells such a thing at the moment, and it would be an awesome thing to have.
  - altarius 6y ago
    You may underestimate how expensive imaging sensors are in low quantities, a sensor available in single quantities at mouser is the cmosis cmv1200 apsc sensor for $1600-1800 a piece, full frame cmv5000 is $5000+ afair. A whole ecosystem probably wouldn't get the quantities.
    - dheera 6y ago
      If they want to play that nasty game, maybe the suppliers could buy stock cameras for $1000, desolder them, and reassemble them into hacker-friendly boards for $1200, and then resell the rest of the stock cameras for spare parts (e.g. mechanical shutter assembly) at 1/2 the cost of OEM service. Even if they can scoop up the huge graveyard of e.g. Canon 60Ds that photographers will turn over for $200 a piece, or 6Ds for $500 a piece, reverse engineer them, and recycle them into a Raspberry Pi module, that would be amazing. Even with the CMV12000 though, someone should make a RPi module that "just works", or an alternative RPi that allows it to "just work", for those of us who want to spend our time working on the actual imaging and software ... it's kind of sad there's this huge graveyard of good sensors out there that just can't be used by imaging experts because electronics people gatekeep the industry and only release them at reasonable prices inside consumer devices, which isn't what those imaging experts want at least in terms of programmability, communication, and mounting options.
tra3 6y ago
Thanks for pointing out that it's not actually a Pi product. I thought this was a variant of Raspberry Pi Zero, and of course it isn't.
swiley 6y ago
There's also a lot of inertia behind the raspberry pi at this point. Everything supports it; when people think aarch64 (up until pretty recently with arm macs etc.) they think of the raspberry pi.
axegon_ 6y ago
This. I think the large community and ecosystem around the raspberry is what keeps at the top spot. I do however think there's a lot of room for improvements. At this point all the raspberries are pretty powerful. I mean I'm running a k3s cluster on a gen2 raspberry pi and it's handling it well. What I'm really hoping to see is bringing this power to something even smaller. I have so many ideas for something the size of a regular SD card with the specs of a raspberry pi zero.
pantalaimon 6y ago
These Allwinner boards arguably have better mainline support than the Raspberry Pi.
Koiwai 6y ago
I agree RPi has the best support in all ARM boards, but, still way worse than x86 boards (I know they're more expensive). Some example, to get decent video playback performance on RPi4(which has 4K HEVC hw dec), your only choice is LibreELEC, which is a specialized distro which I've had enough with, with x86 you just install any distro you like, and pretty much any player you'd like (mpv for me) will work out of the box.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  I'm not well versed in the whole distro-verse. What is it about LibreELEC that makes it have good playback performance while others don't?
  - Koiwai 6y ago
    I'm not sure, I guess it's some non-standardized hardware decoding API, which LibreELEC supported.

sosodev 6y ago

Yeah, I’ve bought a couple of other non-raspberry SBCs and the quality just isn’t anywhere close to the RPi stuff. I had one board that would randomly fail to boot and the devs acknowledged it as a known issue but never patched it afaik.

mobilio 6y ago
Same here! I have OrangePi Zero v1.4 and it have some overheating issues that didn't present in previous releases. Also it freeze on 14 days uptime. Sometime even earlier. More strange is that this is with kernel panic. Sometime it freeze and i can't SSH to it, but i can ping device! I couldn't figure yet why. Maybe i finally should get some RS232 USB connector and connect with serial. On other side - i have few RPi's that works with month without issues.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  I had a Pi clone which froze every week or two. Turned out the USB "charging cable" had 1 Ohm resistance! Swapped it out for a proper one, and it's been rock solid for months now. Worth checking if you haven't already.
  - mobilio 6y ago
    WOW! I will test this too! So far i test underclocking, playing with different SD cards and so on.
yuvadam 6y ago
Try HardKernel ODROIDs, they blow RPis out of the water in terms of performance, price and support.
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  Nah, Olimex rulez. Lime2 has 1Gb memory and 1Gbps networking and runs A20 using mainline kernel with a few tweaks. Odroid C2 has no mainline support for HDMI output yet.
  - ac29 6y ago
    > Odroid C2 has no mainline support for HDMI output yet. Yes, it does: http://www.linux-meson.com/doku.php http://www.linux-meson.com/doku.php
- Koiwai 6y ago
  Odroid Go Advance is still stuck at a RK 4.4 kernel, which is very disappointing at least for me.

duskwuff 6y ago

> Trying to infringe on the branding is just the cherry on top really. Or the raspberry, as it were. It doesn't help that the capabilities of this board are significantly different from the Raspberry Pi. In particular, it lacks any form of video output, which could be a nasty surprise for someone expecting something they could use as a computer.

watermelon0 6y ago

Adding to that, another big reason is the community. Raspberry Pi has the biggest community, and majority of people interested in tech have probably at least heard of it, if not even played with it. There are numerous blogs posts and tutorials available online, and there are many modules and additional boards made specifically for various Raspberry Pi boards.

dheera 6y ago
Then again though, there are lots of things that RPi doesn't do, and I wish some China-based OEM would do. I'm not opposed to people coming up with variants, it's just that the current crop of variants don't fix real problems. Like fix the stupid I2C clock stretching bug. Reverse engineer the Broadcom chip, clone it, and fix the bug, because the lazy asses at Broadcom won't do it. Or make an RPi with a rich plug-and-play CSI camera ecosystem with hundreds of sensors and lens mounts to choose from, all connected via the camera connector. Seriously, screw the RPi "high quality" camera and it's teeny useless sensor -- I want 35mm full frame, 20-50 megapixels, in CSI with a python library for exposure control, and I'm willing to pay maybe half the cost of a full frame DSLR to get that. Nobody sells such a thing at the moment, and it would be an awesome thing to have.
- altarius 6y ago
  You may underestimate how expensive imaging sensors are in low quantities, a sensor available in single quantities at mouser is the cmosis cmv1200 apsc sensor for $1600-1800 a piece, full frame cmv5000 is $5000+ afair. A whole ecosystem probably wouldn't get the quantities.
  - dheera 6y ago
    If they want to play that nasty game, maybe the suppliers could buy stock cameras for $1000, desolder them, and reassemble them into hacker-friendly boards for $1200, and then resell the rest of the stock cameras for spare parts (e.g. mechanical shutter assembly) at 1/2 the cost of OEM service. Even if they can scoop up the huge graveyard of e.g. Canon 60Ds that photographers will turn over for $200 a piece, or 6Ds for $500 a piece, reverse engineer them, and recycle them into a Raspberry Pi module, that would be amazing. Even with the CMV12000 though, someone should make a RPi module that "just works", or an alternative RPi that allows it to "just work", for those of us who want to spend our time working on the actual imaging and software ... it's kind of sad there's this huge graveyard of good sensors out there that just can't be used by imaging experts because electronics people gatekeep the industry and only release them at reasonable prices inside consumer devices, which isn't what those imaging experts want at least in terms of programmability, communication, and mounting options.

tra3 6y ago

Thanks for pointing out that it's not actually a Pi product. I thought this was a variant of Raspberry Pi Zero, and of course it isn't.

swiley 6y ago

There's also a lot of inertia behind the raspberry pi at this point. Everything supports it; when people think aarch64 (up until pretty recently with arm macs etc.) they think of the raspberry pi.

axegon_ 6y ago

This. I think the large community and ecosystem around the raspberry is what keeps at the top spot. I do however think there's a lot of room for improvements. At this point all the raspberries are pretty powerful. I mean I'm running a k3s cluster on a gen2 raspberry pi and it's handling it well. What I'm really hoping to see is bringing this power to something even smaller. I have so many ideas for something the size of a regular SD card with the specs of a raspberry pi zero.

pantalaimon 6y ago

These Allwinner boards arguably have better mainline support than the Raspberry Pi.

Koiwai 6y ago

I agree RPi has the best support in all ARM boards, but, still way worse than x86 boards (I know they're more expensive). Some example, to get decent video playback performance on RPi4(which has 4K HEVC hw dec), your only choice is LibreELEC, which is a specialized distro which I've had enough with, with x86 you just install any distro you like, and pretty much any player you'd like (mpv for me) will work out of the box.

magicalhippo 6y ago
I'm not well versed in the whole distro-verse. What is it about LibreELEC that makes it have good playback performance while others don't?
- Koiwai 6y ago
  I'm not sure, I guess it's some non-standardized hardware decoding API, which LibreELEC supported.