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Thank you for your valuable response Mr. Roberts! The RasperryPi developers argued that it's more powerful and extensible than an Arduino or Beagleboard. I can

by X4 15y ago

Thank you for your valuable response Mr. Roberts! The RasperryPi developers argued that it's more powerful and extensible than an Arduino or Beagleboard. I can't tell if it's the case or not, b/c I've not played with those yet. But Wikipedia also confirms that it's more powerful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard#Similar_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard#Similar_products

jcr 15y ago
It seems I may not have be as clear as I should have; the "Beagle" I mentioned is an I2C/SPI protocol analyzer (about $550 for the full kit), rather than the "BeagleBoard" you mentioned. http://www.totalphase.com/products/i2c_devkit/ http://www.totalphase.com/products/i2c_devkit/ Working with devices through I2C/SPI (and JTAG) is both fun and challenging to learn. It may or may not be "too much" for a 10 year old, but of course, that depends on the specific 10 year old. Most of the small/hobby boards come with I2C/SPI/JTAG support, so the skills you learn are very reusable. An inexpensive or used oscilloscope is another avenue you might want to look at as a gift since it makes learning and debugging electronics a whole lot easier. If you're in the SF Bay Area and would like to borrow a BeagleBoard, PandaBoard or Arduino to see if it fits your needs (or for just random fun hacking), let me know and I'll lend you one. If your ten year old brother is learning from K&R already, you need to worry about keeping him challenged or he might lose interest --this was the main concern I had behind my suggestions. You may or may not be right about the RasberryPi being a better fit since it is designed to be an educational board, but if they dumb things down to where "most kids" can work on it, I kinda doubt your brother will remain interested for very long. ;) As far as I can tell from spec sheets, the RasberryPi is running the Broadcom BCM2835 containing an ARM11 core running at 700MHz. Since a snowball in hell has better chances of survival than you or anyone has getting "design files" out of Broadcom, the main ASIC on the RasberryPi does not comply with the demands in freedomdefined.org/OSHW. Additionally, the ARM core used in it is proprietary, so even if you had the design files for the chip and 50+ Million to spend spinning your own ASIC, there's no way you could create your own version without getting sued into oblivion. --And this is from someone that met with hardware vendors to convince them to release just the required documentation needed by open source developers to write/maintain drivers. RasberryPi does look interesting, and it is very inexpensive by comparison. I'll probably get one to tinker with it after it gets stable. New designs always have a higher degree of risk, so unless you want to (and can) compensate for design flaws, it's best to stay away from the bleeding edge. For this reason, I would not suggest a PandaBoard because it has a wee bit too much personality (read "bugs") in it's design, and you need to be able to handle them. The Arduino boards from sparcfun.com are solid, and there are lots of interesting and inexpensive add-on kits available for it. There is a lot of fun Arduino hacking happening, both on the web and off (in Arduino user groups), so the "supporting resources" for Arduino are superior to RasberryPi. I agree that Arduino is more limited in hardware specs/features than RasberryPi, but that is only part of the decision, and "community support" may be a more important part. http://www.sparkfun.com/ http://www.sparkfun.com/
- X4 15y ago
  Thank you Sir. You're right I've confused Beagle with Beagleboard, that of course is a huge difference. I stay in accord with your opinion about dumbed down environments. The Arduino boards, a "Beagle" and an Oscillator surely make out a nice learning environment for hacking and learning. I'm not requiring full compliance with OSHW licensing. It's because 3D-Printing will allow cheap custom devices and because I'm not fully agreeing with point 3, 12 and 13 for specific cases. When a specific hardware centric or locked design is the only requirement, or more efficient; when the software provided cannot be disclosed without risk of patent infringements etc. Coming up with challenges is hard. But an unlocked environment to learn the principles of electrical engineering will offer interesting ones and combined with computer science it'll reveal the perspective a creator has to our world. Thanks again for helping me and others =))

by X4 15y ago

jcr 15y ago

It seems I may not have be as clear as I should have; the "Beagle" I mentioned is an I2C/SPI protocol analyzer (about $550 for the full kit), rather than the "BeagleBoard" you mentioned. http://www.totalphase.com/products/i2c_devkit/ http://www.totalphase.com/products/i2c_devkit/ Working with devices through I2C/SPI (and JTAG) is both fun and challenging to learn. It may or may not be "too much" for a 10 year old, but of course, that depends on the specific 10 year old. Most of the small/hobby boards come with I2C/SPI/JTAG support, so the skills you learn are very reusable. An inexpensive or used oscilloscope is another avenue you might want to look at as a gift since it makes learning and debugging electronics a whole lot easier. If you're in the SF Bay Area and would like to borrow a BeagleBoard, PandaBoard or Arduino to see if it fits your needs (or for just random fun hacking), let me know and I'll lend you one. If your ten year old brother is learning from K&R already, you need to worry about keeping him challenged or he might lose interest --this was the main concern I had behind my suggestions. You may or may not be right about the RasberryPi being a better fit since it is designed to be an educational board, but if they dumb things down to where "most kids" can work on it, I kinda doubt your brother will remain interested for very long. ;) As far as I can tell from spec sheets, the RasberryPi is running the Broadcom BCM2835 containing an ARM11 core running at 700MHz. Since a snowball in hell has better chances of survival than you or anyone has getting "design files" out of Broadcom, the main ASIC on the RasberryPi does not comply with the demands in freedomdefined.org/OSHW. Additionally, the ARM core used in it is proprietary, so even if you had the design files for the chip and 50+ Million to spend spinning your own ASIC, there's no way you could create your own version without getting sued into oblivion. --And this is from someone that met with hardware vendors to convince them to release just the required documentation needed by open source developers to write/maintain drivers. RasberryPi does look interesting, and it is very inexpensive by comparison. I'll probably get one to tinker with it after it gets stable. New designs always have a higher degree of risk, so unless you want to (and can) compensate for design flaws, it's best to stay away from the bleeding edge. For this reason, I would not suggest a PandaBoard because it has a wee bit too much personality (read "bugs") in it's design, and you need to be able to handle them. The Arduino boards from sparcfun.com are solid, and there are lots of interesting and inexpensive add-on kits available for it. There is a lot of fun Arduino hacking happening, both on the web and off (in Arduino user groups), so the "supporting resources" for Arduino are superior to RasberryPi. I agree that Arduino is more limited in hardware specs/features than RasberryPi, but that is only part of the decision, and "community support" may be a more important part. http://www.sparkfun.com/ http://www.sparkfun.com/

X4 15y ago
Thank you Sir. You're right I've confused Beagle with Beagleboard, that of course is a huge difference. I stay in accord with your opinion about dumbed down environments. The Arduino boards, a "Beagle" and an Oscillator surely make out a nice learning environment for hacking and learning. I'm not requiring full compliance with OSHW licensing. It's because 3D-Printing will allow cheap custom devices and because I'm not fully agreeing with point 3, 12 and 13 for specific cases. When a specific hardware centric or locked design is the only requirement, or more efficient; when the software provided cannot be disclosed without risk of patent infringements etc. Coming up with challenges is hard. But an unlocked environment to learn the principles of electrical engineering will offer interesting ones and combined with computer science it'll reveal the perspective a creator has to our world. Thanks again for helping me and others =))