5 ms·

I don't know anything about the Beagle. How is it different than say a Raspberry pi 5? It says open source hardware but what does that actually mean. I'm curiou

I don't know anything about the Beagle. How is it different than say a Raspberry pi 5? It says open source hardware but what does that actually mean. I'm curious about buying one but I want to understand them better first

Retr0id 3y ago
https://openbeagle.org/beagley-ai/beagley-ai https://openbeagle.org/beagley-ai/beagley-ai - at a glance, it looks like there's everything you need to be able to fab your own boards, if you really wanted to.
a2800276 3y ago
Well it's certainly a good idea to get a better understanding of potential purchases. Unmotivated impulse purchases just clutter up your mind, your house and are bad for the environment. "If you have to ask" you're almost certainly better off with a rasp5 or probably 4 if you are looking for a mini PC to get some use out of that monitor you have flying around. Raspberry has a larger community and is therefore more accessible when starting out. If you're looking to get a better understanding of the "low-level" workings of computers, consider an Arduino.
Gibbon1 3y ago
Similar but Beaglebones have flash drive controller which they boot off so they do better at not corrupting themselves on power cycling. I don't know about the BeagleY-AI but the Beaglebone black's power sequencer has won't fix issues that cause the board to fail to start if the power comes on too slow. Open source hardware means they give you schematics and the board layout as an Altium project. You can take that and customize it to fit your needs. When it comes to processors that can run embedded linux that's actually common. Advantage if you don't modify the layout of the high speed buses your prototype will likely just work.
moffkalast 3y ago
> Quad-core 64-bit Arm®Cortex®-A53 CPU subsystem at 1.4GHz It's slower. > Memory 4GB LPDDR4 Has less and slower memory. > Arm Cortex-R5 subsystem for low-latency I/O and control Might use less power at idle, the Pi 5 is extremely power hungry when doing nothing (~5W). > Dual general-purpose C7x DSP with Matrix Multiply Accelerator (MMA) capable of 4 TOPs An AI chip with questionable software support. The rest seems about the same, it's loosely based on the same PCB layout.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  > An AI chip with questionable software support. As many can attest with the random "ARM SBC of the day" the Raspberry Pi continues to reign supreme because the software and ecosystem is second to none in the ARM SBC space. You can Google "[insert project/task here] raspberry pi" and unless it's completely ridiculous you will have your pick of implementations, how-to guides, and things that are often packaged up really nicely for even the novice Raspberry Pi user. NPUs on ARM boards are nothing new. Like many people I have a graveyard of SBCs including things like the Khadas VIM3 (2019). If you Google "khadas npu" you will find that it basically only supports OpenCV and that took three years[0]. That's not nothing but compared to GPU it almost is. The BeagleBone ecosystem is likely the clear very distant second to Raspberry Pi. I'm hoping they do better. As we can see from the near-absolute dominance of CUDA (> 90% market share) software support and ecosystem matters much, much more than "X TOPS". [0] - https://opencv.org/blog/working-with-neural-processing-units-npus-using-opencv/ https://opencv.org/blog/working-with-neural-processing-units...
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Speaking of CUDA, Nvidia's probably somewhere close to Beaglebone in support for their Jetsons. Though the Jetpack builds are all there is, so everyone's just resigned to dockerize anything they want to actually work on them lol. Getting the cheapest Orin Nano with 20 TOPS for ~2.5x the price of this is still probably the better choice for any proper inference.
    - synergy20 3y ago
      cheapest Orin nano board is $499,a 7x difference?
      - moffkalast 3y ago
        I think you can get the 4GB Orin Nano for $200 from some sellers, but yeah they used to be cheaper.
dade_ 3y ago
Over 10 years later, I can say that the original BeagleBone was far more reliable than the original Raspberry Pi. The Texa Instruments specifications & documents for the processor were far better as well. I've had several Raspberry Pis just randomly die, but every one of the Beagle Bones are still going. I've heard similar feedback from people with IOT startups. RPis work great until some just randomly die. Today I find the quality of the Raspberry Pi is dramatically improved, the tooling to help a beginner get started is amazing, and of course there's just simply a much larger user base that have likely resolved the problems you'll encounter. However the real magic of a Beagle bone is listed in this features: Arm Cortex-R5 subsystem for low-latency I/O and control There are many use cases such as robotics, where there is a need real time control and Beagle bones have this capability built in, whereas with Raspberry Pi you'll see people connecting an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi together to meet this requirement. Its kludgy, burns tons of time, and it also adds up cost wise. In any case if you're just starting out, and you ever get interested in these things, know that you'll likely end up with many of them over the years. RPi is great for beginners, but if I was deploying something into the field as an IOT startup etc, I still prefer a Beagle. My 2c
- synergy20 3y ago
  beaglebone pru is not r5 MCU?
  - mastax 3y ago
    But BeagleY-AI does have an R5 MCU.
smarx007 3y ago
The main difference is the Cortex-R5 subsystem. Beaglebone, the famed predecessor, had PRUs. These features paired with a powerful Cortex-A processor are really useful if you have a complex program that needs to do something (IO/control, for example) with a very high precision time-wise. If you have high punctuality demands but a rather simple algorithm, you can simply use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040). If you just have heavy load, you can use Raspberry Pi. One common use for Beaglebone was (is?) 3D printer control. As far as I am concerned, the AI acceleration in BeagleY-AI's DSP is just a fad (TI DSP itself is quite respected in the industry). I would probably say it's better to buy a Pi 4/5/Zero and one of RP2040/Arduino/micro:bit/Nucleo and master them separately, possibly with a UART/I2C/SPI link in between before moving on to a single package.

Retr0id 3y ago

https://openbeagle.org/beagley-ai/beagley-ai https://openbeagle.org/beagley-ai/beagley-ai - at a glance, it looks like there's everything you need to be able to fab your own boards, if you really wanted to.

a2800276 3y ago

Well it's certainly a good idea to get a better understanding of potential purchases. Unmotivated impulse purchases just clutter up your mind, your house and are bad for the environment. "If you have to ask" you're almost certainly better off with a rasp5 or probably 4 if you are looking for a mini PC to get some use out of that monitor you have flying around. Raspberry has a larger community and is therefore more accessible when starting out. If you're looking to get a better understanding of the "low-level" workings of computers, consider an Arduino.

Gibbon1 3y ago

Similar but Beaglebones have flash drive controller which they boot off so they do better at not corrupting themselves on power cycling. I don't know about the BeagleY-AI but the Beaglebone black's power sequencer has won't fix issues that cause the board to fail to start if the power comes on too slow. Open source hardware means they give you schematics and the board layout as an Altium project. You can take that and customize it to fit your needs. When it comes to processors that can run embedded linux that's actually common. Advantage if you don't modify the layout of the high speed buses your prototype will likely just work.

moffkalast 3y ago

> Quad-core 64-bit Arm®Cortex®-A53 CPU subsystem at 1.4GHz It's slower. > Memory 4GB LPDDR4 Has less and slower memory. > Arm Cortex-R5 subsystem for low-latency I/O and control Might use less power at idle, the Pi 5 is extremely power hungry when doing nothing (~5W). > Dual general-purpose C7x DSP with Matrix Multiply Accelerator (MMA) capable of 4 TOPs An AI chip with questionable software support. The rest seems about the same, it's loosely based on the same PCB layout.

kkielhofner 3y ago
> An AI chip with questionable software support. As many can attest with the random "ARM SBC of the day" the Raspberry Pi continues to reign supreme because the software and ecosystem is second to none in the ARM SBC space. You can Google "[insert project/task here] raspberry pi" and unless it's completely ridiculous you will have your pick of implementations, how-to guides, and things that are often packaged up really nicely for even the novice Raspberry Pi user. NPUs on ARM boards are nothing new. Like many people I have a graveyard of SBCs including things like the Khadas VIM3 (2019). If you Google "khadas npu" you will find that it basically only supports OpenCV and that took three years[0]. That's not nothing but compared to GPU it almost is. The BeagleBone ecosystem is likely the clear very distant second to Raspberry Pi. I'm hoping they do better. As we can see from the near-absolute dominance of CUDA (> 90% market share) software support and ecosystem matters much, much more than "X TOPS". [0] - https://opencv.org/blog/working-with-neural-processing-units-npus-using-opencv/ https://opencv.org/blog/working-with-neural-processing-units...
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Speaking of CUDA, Nvidia's probably somewhere close to Beaglebone in support for their Jetsons. Though the Jetpack builds are all there is, so everyone's just resigned to dockerize anything they want to actually work on them lol. Getting the cheapest Orin Nano with 20 TOPS for ~2.5x the price of this is still probably the better choice for any proper inference.
  - synergy20 3y ago
    cheapest Orin nano board is $499,a 7x difference?
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      I think you can get the 4GB Orin Nano for $200 from some sellers, but yeah they used to be cheaper.

dade_ 3y ago

Over 10 years later, I can say that the original BeagleBone was far more reliable than the original Raspberry Pi. The Texa Instruments specifications & documents for the processor were far better as well. I've had several Raspberry Pis just randomly die, but every one of the Beagle Bones are still going. I've heard similar feedback from people with IOT startups. RPis work great until some just randomly die. Today I find the quality of the Raspberry Pi is dramatically improved, the tooling to help a beginner get started is amazing, and of course there's just simply a much larger user base that have likely resolved the problems you'll encounter. However the real magic of a Beagle bone is listed in this features: Arm Cortex-R5 subsystem for low-latency I/O and control There are many use cases such as robotics, where there is a need real time control and Beagle bones have this capability built in, whereas with Raspberry Pi you'll see people connecting an Arduino and a Raspberry Pi together to meet this requirement. Its kludgy, burns tons of time, and it also adds up cost wise. In any case if you're just starting out, and you ever get interested in these things, know that you'll likely end up with many of them over the years. RPi is great for beginners, but if I was deploying something into the field as an IOT startup etc, I still prefer a Beagle. My 2c

synergy20 3y ago
beaglebone pru is not r5 MCU?
- mastax 3y ago
  But BeagleY-AI does have an R5 MCU.

smarx007 3y ago

The main difference is the Cortex-R5 subsystem. Beaglebone, the famed predecessor, had PRUs. These features paired with a powerful Cortex-A processor are really useful if you have a complex program that needs to do something (IO/control, for example) with a very high precision time-wise. If you have high punctuality demands but a rather simple algorithm, you can simply use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040). If you just have heavy load, you can use Raspberry Pi. One common use for Beaglebone was (is?) 3D printer control. As far as I am concerned, the AI acceleration in BeagleY-AI's DSP is just a fad (TI DSP itself is quite respected in the industry). I would probably say it's better to buy a Pi 4/5/Zero and one of RP2040/Arduino/micro:bit/Nucleo and master them separately, possibly with a UART/I2C/SPI link in between before moving on to a single package.