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I've been unable to use Beagle boards in the past as they ship with an old kernel and uboot without the sources to update or config them (this was specifically

I've been unable to use Beagle boards in the past as they ship with an old kernel and uboot without the sources to update or config them (this was specifically with the black variant). It probably had something to do with vendor NDAs with chipsets or something but it made them entirely unusable to me and more expensive than competitors by almost 2x to boot. I would love a RISC-V board to play with that is a bit more stable and about the size of a Raspberry Pi within a reasonable price range. The SiFive development boards are pretty pricey, definitely showcase hardware (look at all these peripherals or this is basically a desktop computer!). I'm hoping with the explicit call out of open hardware and open software that this board won't have the same issues as the Beaglebone Black...

bradfa 6y ago
I've never had this problem with Beagle Boards and sources. Sure the kernel or u-boot that ship with them might be slightly older but sources have always been available. And TI are quite decent at contributing to the upstream kernel and u-boot trees. Generally only a few months after a new TI SoC is announced there's enough support in the upstream u-boot and kernel to boot the board and do some useful things. Generally by the time silicon is buyable by mere mortals mainline is in pretty decent shape.
Teknoman117 6y ago
The ubuntu on bbb team keeps up to date with the latest LTS kernels. There is 5.4 support and 5.10 support is in progress. The price wasn't so bad if you're in for the feature set (mainly the IO features). Using the embedded PRU controllers can replace the arduinos ones typically connects to their RPi. However, BBB is very old now. A single core cortex-A8 is abysmally slow. Getting the GPU working was always a pain. But I always used them headless so it wasn't an issue for me.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  The rk3328 board I have has been great. Quad Cortex A53, up to 4 GB of RAM, Mali GPU.
lsllc 6y ago
Robert C. Nelson has been doing a stellar job of maintaining the omap-image-builder repo: https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder (and https://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu https://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu) It's pretty easy to use to build an image for Debian Buster/Stretch or Ubuntu Bionic Beaver, he has various configurations that cover IoT, console only/headless, GUI and a few other combos. It's pretty easy to create your own config with the Kernel and packages that you want. The images can be used for flashing to the eMMC via an SD card (or via USB). I've found images built this way to up very up to date and absolutely rock solid thanks to Robert's curation.
- drmpeg 6y ago
  Robert is the best. Looks like he'll be involved with this project too. https://github.com/RobertCNelson/riscv64-multiplatform https://github.com/RobertCNelson/riscv64-multiplatform
bradstewart 6y ago
The biggest reason I used them in production devices (and still use them at home) was the eMMC. Which made it well worth the price, even with the slow processor. We had to work with the Balena.io (formerly resin.io) team to get full hardware support on the BealgeBone Green Wireless (wifi drivers were the biggest hangup, iirc) a few years, but they were incredibly responsive and have done a fantastic job maintaining a stable distro for these boards. If you want a straightforward out-of-the-box experience, I highly recommend Balena.io.
jandrese 6y ago
The board I have has only 4GB of MMC on board which wasn't big enough for the later versions of the OS, but you could boot off of the SD instead if you held down a button on the board while powering it up. There was a way to tweak it so you didn't have to hold the button down, but it was kinda involved IIRC so I never got around to it.

bradfa 6y ago

I've never had this problem with Beagle Boards and sources. Sure the kernel or u-boot that ship with them might be slightly older but sources have always been available. And TI are quite decent at contributing to the upstream kernel and u-boot trees. Generally only a few months after a new TI SoC is announced there's enough support in the upstream u-boot and kernel to boot the board and do some useful things. Generally by the time silicon is buyable by mere mortals mainline is in pretty decent shape.

Teknoman117 6y ago

The ubuntu on bbb team keeps up to date with the latest LTS kernels. There is 5.4 support and 5.10 support is in progress. The price wasn't so bad if you're in for the feature set (mainly the IO features). Using the embedded PRU controllers can replace the arduinos ones typically connects to their RPi. However, BBB is very old now. A single core cortex-A8 is abysmally slow. Getting the GPU working was always a pain. But I always used them headless so it wasn't an issue for me.

CameronNemo 6y ago
The rk3328 board I have has been great. Quad Cortex A53, up to 4 GB of RAM, Mali GPU.

lsllc 6y ago

Robert C. Nelson has been doing a stellar job of maintaining the omap-image-builder repo: https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder (and https://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu https://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu) It's pretty easy to use to build an image for Debian Buster/Stretch or Ubuntu Bionic Beaver, he has various configurations that cover IoT, console only/headless, GUI and a few other combos. It's pretty easy to create your own config with the Kernel and packages that you want. The images can be used for flashing to the eMMC via an SD card (or via USB). I've found images built this way to up very up to date and absolutely rock solid thanks to Robert's curation.

drmpeg 6y ago
Robert is the best. Looks like he'll be involved with this project too. https://github.com/RobertCNelson/riscv64-multiplatform https://github.com/RobertCNelson/riscv64-multiplatform

bradstewart 6y ago

The biggest reason I used them in production devices (and still use them at home) was the eMMC. Which made it well worth the price, even with the slow processor. We had to work with the Balena.io (formerly resin.io) team to get full hardware support on the BealgeBone Green Wireless (wifi drivers were the biggest hangup, iirc) a few years, but they were incredibly responsive and have done a fantastic job maintaining a stable distro for these boards. If you want a straightforward out-of-the-box experience, I highly recommend Balena.io.

jandrese 6y ago

The board I have has only 4GB of MMC on board which wasn't big enough for the later versions of the OS, but you could boot off of the SD instead if you held down a button on the board while powering it up. There was a way to tweak it so you didn't have to hold the button down, but it was kinda involved IIRC so I never got around to it.