7 ms·

Raspberry Pi vs MK802

44 points by bconway 14y ago

dattaway 14y ago
I'm not seeing any I/O pins on the MK802, which I thought was the reason for the Raspberry Pi. Not much hardware hacking potential without these pins.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  The original "reason" for the Raspberry Pi was just to be a super cheap computer that kids could pick up and learn to code for like they did with the old BBC (or VIC20/Commodore 64/Apple II/TRS-80/Atari 8bits/etc). At least, that's what the Raspberry Pi foundation was pushing as the reason. The GPIO pins and the fairly fast gpu for video rendering were secondary things. The Raspberry Pi somehow or other really caught the zeitgeist at the right time. It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, but it is by far the most widely known and thus there are huge network effects that make it a good device to be tinkering with. This situation is quite similar to smaller microcontrollers where in the minds of many people that whole segment has become nearly synonymous with the Arduino despite the fact that there are many other options, some of them just as capable but far cheaper (eg. TI's MSP430 which you can buy for less than 5 bucks) and some about the same price but far more powerful. Of course, once all the software, tutorials and/or hardware "shields" crop up for the mind-share winner, that platform certainly becomes the most convenient to hack on and then that popularity feeds on itself. In both cases hopefully the entry device serves as a gateway for the interested hacker, but not their final destination.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    > It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, Can you point to others in the price range ($35) that come close? And from your intro above, I would guess "what it is doing" includes GPIO?
ollybee 14y ago
This is comparing against an MK802 II there is a recently released dual core version, newer models also have an extra full size USB port. http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html
mmagin 14y ago
It seems like they fit a different need -- the differing number of USB ports and wired/wireless Ethernet are what most users are going to care about. (Sure, you can use a USB hub, but then you're into another rats nest of cabling.)
hvdm 14y ago
The manufacturer of the MK802 claims a processor speed of 1.5 GHz. The CPU runs at 1.0 GHz, the GPU at 500 MHz. They add this to get 1.5 GHz. LOL
drivebyacct2 14y ago
This is a pretty poor comparison given that the RPi has full linux, hardware accel, etc. The MK802 is not nearly as open. No results about XBMC playback, etc :(
sciurus 14y ago
I think the great advantage the Raspberry Pi has over the Mk802 and other Allwinner A10 based devices right now is the community resources. Let's say I wanted to install Debian on the Raspberry Pi. I can go to http://www.raspbian.org/ http://www.raspbian.org/ and find a healthy project and well-organized documentation. What if I wanted to install it on the MK802? After a lot of googling and skimming results, I'd probably end up at http://linux-sunxi.org/Debian http://linux-sunxi.org/Debian if I wanted to build the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem myself or http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 if I trusted somebody else's work. The experience is very different. This is why I'm hoping http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod succeeds. I think what they plan to do is exactly what the A10 platform needs to succeeed with hobbyists- Maintain a community forum and wiki Provide source for everything we create and share it on Github. Provide a package repository for the PengPods. Provide prebuilt images, with updates as available. Provide tools, scripts and guides as we go.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  The Allwinner A10 is being outpaced by its competition for the same price. It's too weak and anyone watching this space knows how far to bet on Allwinner for anything.
- neverm0re 14y ago
  Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic PR disaster named Liz Upton who actively insults and derides developers and others in the RPi community. Here's a fun excerpt from http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 : Liz: ... keep trying to rustle up some outrage if it gives you a kick; I’d recommend finding something else to do soon, though. We don’t want you developing an ulcer. Developer: Am I allowed to be outraged by the fact that it’s not really open, since I see no mention of actual documentation for the hardware? Or by this: http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ ? Can I get outraged by that? Liz: Well you /could/, but you wouldn’t half look silly. Nice going, Liz. That's right, anyone who actually wants to make full utilization of the hardware they paid for is 'silly' and we're only rustling up outrage for 'kicks' when you post a press release announcing how open source you really aren't. Here, have a nine page thread of people complaining they were banned under weak, insane excuses like 'concern trolling' because they dared to mention things like 'your supplier isn't sending me anything' and 'My SD card gets corrupted when I unplug the device sometimes': https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 It's got massive hype since it's a $35 Beagleboard, but otherwise it's bringing nothing new to the table that hasn't been done by others and increasingly done better by other devices. The remainder of the situation seems to be a collection of people more interested in their awards, hype and press releases than their actual users and developers on their forums. Frankly, there's quite a few ARM SoC boards out there with GPIO pins and all the bells and whistles of the Pi, many of them have even beefier hardware. None of them have this horrible baggage and all of them will run the same software for the most part. So that's great that many people are going to target this device, but it's hardly an 'exclusive port' to the RPi. The real bet to back is Linux on ARM. Personally, this board gets me much more hot than the RPi and prices are only going to come down on similar future boards: http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
dgerges 14y ago
Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads widely ? Otherwise there are plenty of platforms that would be better for learning programming starting with a simple browser no ?
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  You can't program on bare metal or arbitrary hardware I/O with just a browser. And running the OS off a SD card makes recovering from screw-ups easier + less costly, so less barriers to tinkering vs. a "real" PC.
  - dgerges 14y ago
    You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)
- grannyg00se 14y ago
  I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers. For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you could use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.
  - dgerges 14y ago
    I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)
- beagle3 14y ago
Lerc 14y ago
Chip wise this is the BroadCom BCM2835 Vs the AllWinner A10 The AllWinner Clearly has the better CPU with a Cortex A8 compared to the ARM1176JZF-S. It's almost twice the speed clock for clock on general code and more so if using things like NEON. Video decode seems sufficient in each one since both can decode 1080p and then some. GPU is rather hazy. The BCM2835 has VideoCore IV, The A10 has a single core Mali-400 I haven't seen any real head to head comparisons on straight GPU performance. If anyone knows of a comparison I'd be interested. If anyone has both devices running similar OSs I'd be very appreciative of some benchmarking. For IO the Raspberry PI wins over the MK802, but the CubieBoard is another A10 device that is better yet again. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard . The biggest advantages of the CubieBoard are SATA and EtherNet (the R-Pi Ethernet is USB based) VGA is also available from the headers which is a big plus if you are aiming for older monitors.
zemanel 14y ago
pardon my lack of electrical engineering conaissence but would it be feasible to use a solar power supply to power these devices ?
- orthecreedence 14y ago
  If the wattage output of your solar panel is greater than the wattage input of the device, then yes.
rwg 14y ago
In early 2010, HN went bonkers over Panic's 46" LCD TV dashboard: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ It's rather nice, but they picked an expensive (>$2000) TV with an embedded x86 PC designed for digital signage applications. Since the bottom has fallen out of the consumer LCD TV market, you can now get a brand-name 46-inch LCD TV for about $600. A low profile wall mount will set you back less than $40. One of the various MK802 incarnations will set you back less than $80, and if you pick the right stick incarnation and TV, the TV can power the stick through the HDMI port, meaning that you just give the TV power, plug the stick into the TV, and you're done. One caveat with the MK802-alike Android sticks is that there are a lot of variants out there, and not all of them use a chipset that's properly (GPL'd drivers w/ source code available) supported by Linux proper. Also, the feature set varies widely. But if you do your homework before buying, I have no doubts that a giant status dashboard thing that's functionally equivalent to Panic's could be created for under $700.
zobzu 14y ago
Everyone talks about having the gpu/vpu/dsp/you-name-it that can decode hd with drivers. Except, even with drivers, some movies still lag, for example, try http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbp... Yes it's high profile 40mbps 1080p. But then again, if you want to play files from a box and all you do is play baseline blurays, then I don't see the point. I believe such a box should play "anything" HD. The page also report their own tests http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/ http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/ Bird certainly lags to death on my exynos 4210
- DannyBee 14y ago
  The hardware decode blocks in each processor/GPU/etc are rated to handle certain bitrates at certain profiles. The tech sheets usually specify. Going over those bitrates is usually death on these types of CPU's. They don't put much work into software decode, and even if they did, it wouldn't even come close. A lot of the cheaper ARM SOC's folks are talking about have decode blocks (either in CPU or GPU) that can only do H.264 high profile @20mbps or 30mbps at best. By comparison, intel hd graphics (even the oldest ones) will support decode of at least 40mbps of high profile h.264 (and newer ones often have no problem with 100mbps). Nvidia's purevideo hd and ATI's UVD can do the same, obviously. Realistically, if you want a box that plays stuff out of the mainstream (and honestly, mainstream is 20-30mbps or less right now) you have to pay more for it.
sauce71 14y ago
You can run Linux and XBMC on the MK802 add an Arduino to get hardware pins and you're where most of the Pi ppl are. I got them both, haven't booted the Mk yet, but I think it would be nice to use it for running my Reprap and hook up a webcam so I can monitor it in the basement. Could use the Pi also, but I don't think it can handle the camera simultaneous. Or I use the Pi and use the MK as Mediacenter or use the Mediacenter to run my reprap ... Or something :-)

44 points by bconway 14y ago

I'm not seeing any I/O pins on the MK802, which I thought was the reason for the Raspberry Pi. Not much hardware hacking potential without these pins.

georgemcbay 14y ago
The original "reason" for the Raspberry Pi was just to be a super cheap computer that kids could pick up and learn to code for like they did with the old BBC (or VIC20/Commodore 64/Apple II/TRS-80/Atari 8bits/etc). At least, that's what the Raspberry Pi foundation was pushing as the reason. The GPIO pins and the fairly fast gpu for video rendering were secondary things. The Raspberry Pi somehow or other really caught the zeitgeist at the right time. It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, but it is by far the most widely known and thus there are huge network effects that make it a good device to be tinkering with. This situation is quite similar to smaller microcontrollers where in the minds of many people that whole segment has become nearly synonymous with the Arduino despite the fact that there are many other options, some of them just as capable but far cheaper (eg. TI's MSP430 which you can buy for less than 5 bucks) and some about the same price but far more powerful. Of course, once all the software, tutorials and/or hardware "shields" crop up for the mind-share winner, that platform certainly becomes the most convenient to hack on and then that popularity feeds on itself. In both cases hopefully the entry device serves as a gateway for the interested hacker, but not their final destination.
- beagle3 14y ago
  > It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, Can you point to others in the price range ($35) that come close? And from your intro above, I would guess "what it is doing" includes GPIO?

ollybee 14y ago

This is comparing against an MK802 II there is a recently released dual core version, newer models also have an extra full size USB port. http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html

mmagin 14y ago

It seems like they fit a different need -- the differing number of USB ports and wired/wireless Ethernet are what most users are going to care about. (Sure, you can use a USB hub, but then you're into another rats nest of cabling.)

hvdm 14y ago

The manufacturer of the MK802 claims a processor speed of 1.5 GHz. The CPU runs at 1.0 GHz, the GPU at 500 MHz. They add this to get 1.5 GHz. LOL

drivebyacct2 14y ago

This is a pretty poor comparison given that the RPi has full linux, hardware accel, etc. The MK802 is not nearly as open. No results about XBMC playback, etc :(

sciurus 14y ago

I think the great advantage the Raspberry Pi has over the Mk802 and other Allwinner A10 based devices right now is the community resources. Let's say I wanted to install Debian on the Raspberry Pi. I can go to http://www.raspbian.org/ http://www.raspbian.org/ and find a healthy project and well-organized documentation. What if I wanted to install it on the MK802? After a lot of googling and skimming results, I'd probably end up at http://linux-sunxi.org/Debian http://linux-sunxi.org/Debian if I wanted to build the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem myself or http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 if I trusted somebody else's work. The experience is very different. This is why I'm hoping http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod succeeds. I think what they plan to do is exactly what the A10 platform needs to succeeed with hobbyists- Maintain a community forum and wiki Provide source for everything we create and share it on Github. Provide a package repository for the PengPods. Provide prebuilt images, with updates as available. Provide tools, scripts and guides as we go.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
The Allwinner A10 is being outpaced by its competition for the same price. It's too weak and anyone watching this space knows how far to bet on Allwinner for anything.
neverm0re 14y ago
Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic PR disaster named Liz Upton who actively insults and derides developers and others in the RPi community. Here's a fun excerpt from http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 : Liz: ... keep trying to rustle up some outrage if it gives you a kick; I’d recommend finding something else to do soon, though. We don’t want you developing an ulcer. Developer: Am I allowed to be outraged by the fact that it’s not really open, since I see no mention of actual documentation for the hardware? Or by this: http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ ? Can I get outraged by that? Liz: Well you /could/, but you wouldn’t half look silly. Nice going, Liz. That's right, anyone who actually wants to make full utilization of the hardware they paid for is 'silly' and we're only rustling up outrage for 'kicks' when you post a press release announcing how open source you really aren't. Here, have a nine page thread of people complaining they were banned under weak, insane excuses like 'concern trolling' because they dared to mention things like 'your supplier isn't sending me anything' and 'My SD card gets corrupted when I unplug the device sometimes': https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081 It's got massive hype since it's a $35 Beagleboard, but otherwise it's bringing nothing new to the table that hasn't been done by others and increasingly done better by other devices. The remainder of the situation seems to be a collection of people more interested in their awards, hype and press releases than their actual users and developers on their forums. Frankly, there's quite a few ARM SoC boards out there with GPIO pins and all the bells and whistles of the Pi, many of them have even beefier hardware. None of them have this horrible baggage and all of them will run the same software for the most part. So that's great that many people are going to target this device, but it's hardly an 'exclusive port' to the RPi. The real bet to back is Linux on ARM. Personally, this board gets me much more hot than the RPi and prices are only going to come down on similar future boards: http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

dgerges 14y ago

Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads widely ? Otherwise there are plenty of platforms that would be better for learning programming starting with a simple browser no ?

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
You can't program on bare metal or arbitrary hardware I/O with just a browser. And running the OS off a SD card makes recovering from screw-ups easier + less costly, so less barriers to tinkering vs. a "real" PC.
- dgerges 14y ago
  You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)
grannyg00se 14y ago
I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers. For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you could use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.
- dgerges 14y ago
  I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)
beagle3 14y ago

Lerc 14y ago

Chip wise this is the BroadCom BCM2835 Vs the AllWinner A10 The AllWinner Clearly has the better CPU with a Cortex A8 compared to the ARM1176JZF-S. It's almost twice the speed clock for clock on general code and more so if using things like NEON. Video decode seems sufficient in each one since both can decode 1080p and then some. GPU is rather hazy. The BCM2835 has VideoCore IV, The A10 has a single core Mali-400 I haven't seen any real head to head comparisons on straight GPU performance. If anyone knows of a comparison I'd be interested. If anyone has both devices running similar OSs I'd be very appreciative of some benchmarking. For IO the Raspberry PI wins over the MK802, but the CubieBoard is another A10 device that is better yet again. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard . The biggest advantages of the CubieBoard are SATA and EtherNet (the R-Pi Ethernet is USB based) VGA is also available from the headers which is a big plus if you are aiming for older monitors.

zemanel 14y ago

pardon my lack of electrical engineering conaissence but would it be feasible to use a solar power supply to power these devices ?

orthecreedence 14y ago
If the wattage output of your solar panel is greater than the wattage input of the device, then yes.

rwg 14y ago

In early 2010, HN went bonkers over Panic's 46" LCD TV dashboard: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ It's rather nice, but they picked an expensive (>$2000) TV with an embedded x86 PC designed for digital signage applications. Since the bottom has fallen out of the consumer LCD TV market, you can now get a brand-name 46-inch LCD TV for about $600. A low profile wall mount will set you back less than $40. One of the various MK802 incarnations will set you back less than $80, and if you pick the right stick incarnation and TV, the TV can power the stick through the HDMI port, meaning that you just give the TV power, plug the stick into the TV, and you're done. One caveat with the MK802-alike Android sticks is that there are a lot of variants out there, and not all of them use a chipset that's properly (GPL'd drivers w/ source code available) supported by Linux proper. Also, the feature set varies widely. But if you do your homework before buying, I have no doubts that a giant status dashboard thing that's functionally equivalent to Panic's could be created for under $700.

zobzu 14y ago

Everyone talks about having the gpu/vpu/dsp/you-name-it that can decode hd with drivers. Except, even with drivers, some movies still lag, for example, try http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbps_birds.mkv http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbp... Yes it's high profile 40mbps 1080p. But then again, if you want to play files from a box and all you do is play baseline blurays, then I don't see the point. I believe such a box should play "anything" HD. The page also report their own tests http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/ http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/ Bird certainly lags to death on my exynos 4210

DannyBee 14y ago
The hardware decode blocks in each processor/GPU/etc are rated to handle certain bitrates at certain profiles. The tech sheets usually specify. Going over those bitrates is usually death on these types of CPU's. They don't put much work into software decode, and even if they did, it wouldn't even come close. A lot of the cheaper ARM SOC's folks are talking about have decode blocks (either in CPU or GPU) that can only do H.264 high profile @20mbps or 30mbps at best. By comparison, intel hd graphics (even the oldest ones) will support decode of at least 40mbps of high profile h.264 (and newer ones often have no problem with 100mbps). Nvidia's purevideo hd and ATI's UVD can do the same, obviously. Realistically, if you want a box that plays stuff out of the mainstream (and honestly, mainstream is 20-30mbps or less right now) you have to pay more for it.

sauce71 14y ago

You can run Linux and XBMC on the MK802 add an Arduino to get hardware pins and you're where most of the Pi ppl are. I got them both, haven't booted the Mk yet, but I think it would be nice to use it for running my Reprap and hook up a webcam so I can monitor it in the basement. Could use the Pi also, but I don't think it can handle the camera simultaneous. Or I use the Pi and use the MK as Mediacenter or use the Mediacenter to run my reprap ... Or something :-)