Cubieboard1 versus Raspberry Pi.
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
Well I am finally getting my Cubieboard Musicbox working due to Propeller here with determinine what my new IR remote does.
I came across this in looking for some documents. =====> http://blog.bulte.net/01-09-2013/cubie-board-quick-look-raspberry-pi-comparison.html
Heater... where are you?
I came across this in looking for some documents. =====> http://blog.bulte.net/01-09-2013/cubie-board-quick-look-raspberry-pi-comparison.html
Heater... where are you?
Comments
I'm here!
I must say those Cubies look very interesting. I'm going to order myself a CubieTruck or some such.
Problem is I have a pile of boards here: Raspi, ISEE IGEP, Parallella, STM32F4 discovery, DE0-nano....
Not enough time to play:(
Let's look forward to getting the Propeller tools running on the Cubies.
It is somewhat like trying to read every book in the library as a way to getting smarter. Selection comes into play... maybe natural selection.
Of course, you can program them all in GCC or Python, right?
My Cubie1 is likely to just play music from the website MediaU and that's all. It has the advantages of being very low power (so it can be left on all the time), has an IR remote sensor (so it can be a headless computer), and has the LAN interface. I don't think I will use the SATA interface unless I want to play CDs as well.
While I think the CubieTruck is excellent, I have 2 notebooks and 2 desktops already running Linux. Two are enough (one for jumping on the web to find out how to fit the other).
It is not like I want clutter.
Try MediaU at www.mediayou.net
I have Two complete compact portable development platforms for the Propeller in the forms of an Asus EeePC and a Toshiba NB250. They include screen, keyboard, wifi, LAN, USB ports, SDcard slot, Bluetooth, and rechargeable batteries.
So I don't see any need to recreate these devices via a CubieBoard or a Raspberry Pi where I end up with something that has exposed board and a nest of wires that can come loose. I am NOT a developer exploring the potential of all and every new chip or platform that comes my way.
I also have an Asus Wifi router with custom Linux firmware, two USB ports and an RS232 port that can pull added duty as a server.
The problem I have with Linux is that the more systems I deploy, the more file clutter I create in different locations. So I am trying to minimize by role as a Network Administrator rather than expand it.
Nothing wrong with the Raspberry Pi or the Cubieboard as a learning platform for all of Linux. I certainly feel that having a spare computer to learn Linux is far more pleasant than learning on the one you depend on for mundane everyday computing. I just already have more spares than I need, so having a tiny exposed circuit board with adapters and clutter really doesn't appeal to me. Even the Cubieboard requires that I use a HDMI to VGA adapter as I don't have a HDMI monitor that will work with it.
My personal vision of hobby computing is divided between two worlds --- personal computers and micro-controllers. The personal computer tends to appeal to me as an office machine/communications mindset; while the micro-controller tends to appeal to me as a dedicated deterministic device with some basic communications and display.
There may be a third division, hacking wifi routers with Linux to gain an enhanced knowledge of networks. OpenWRT offers a heck of a lot of fun in that area.
Maybe I am lazy, maybe a bit narrow-minded in my approach. But trying to cover too much ground with one system overwhelms me. I certainly have no need for a super-computer or a big network. It's a hobby and I want it to be fun.
When one considers the fact that wifi router boxes are available complete for less than $100 USD with USB ports, wifi, power supply, and a nice enclosure == they actually compete with the Cubieboard and the Raspberry Pi for headless network services.
What is a "Cobbie" board.? What is "another"? Why is "Cobbie" better than "another"? In what way? For what purposes? Does one have more speed than another? More memory? More interfaces? Smaller size? Lower power consumption? Lower price? Easier availability? Better graphics? Better software support? More vibrant community?
We are curious to know.
That's only hardware. On the software side it's equally crazy. Even when you settle on a language to concentrate on you find there are a billion libraries and frameworks to explore and more keep coming all the time. Trying to decide on the way you want to build a simple web page with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, for example, is mind blowing when you start to explore all the options available.
Things have been moving so fast recently. That's mostly why I have been "off air" here for some weeks. Call it "burn out" or overload. The realization that whilst trying to explore so many directions I'm making progress in none of them. Time for my few remaining brain cells to regroup and come up with some reasonable goals to attack.
In over a month I have not touched any of these systems or written a single line of code. Na, out here in the peace and quite of the forest I have gone back to my roots and been welding together individual transistors. So far I have managed to blow up a handful of 600 volt MOSFETs! I never realized how easy it was to generate 700 volts from a 12 volt battery! Lot's of fun.
What I want now is a good old fashioned oscilloscope and get down to some real hardware hacking:) Oh yeah, and tubes!
This may get posted here as a Propeller project for the brave at some point... Well, yeah. Thing is these worlds are not black and white anymore. That STM32 board, the size of my thumb, running JavaScript or Python has more horse power, memory and storage than the first personal computers. I can imagine doing pretty much anything I like to do on a PC on a tiny ARM system. The Cubie with it's SATA interfaces is another step in that direction. That is something I have always been curious about. I resisted the temptation because whilst it's a nice hack I was not convinced of it's sustainability. Who knows when those routers become unavailable or their boot loaders get locked down? Of course if some other guys have ironed out all the hassles and I happened to have such a router then why not? This of course is not a problem with Linux. You would be in the same mess if those systems were running any other OS probably worse. The problem is you are not organized.
Given that all these systems are capable of networking none of them need be responsible for their own files. Source code and configurations I develop live on github. Raspis, IGEPS and others can just fetch clones of that and build it when required. As they all run Debian the OS and application updates are just an "apt-get" away. For other things a network share does the trick or just scp files from somewhere. That only leaves the initial SD card OS images to manage somewhere, not such a big deal.
I just believe that having storage on 5 or 6 Linux platforms tends towards duplication and clutter, so I set limits and have preferences on how I use them all. 3 are not really used at all. Everything gets dd image backups and rsynch backups to a 2Tbyte hard disk on the main desktop... when I get in the mood to have tedious long runs tie up the computers.
So you have been off in the woods for a Scandinavian holiday. To bad you haven't been chasing a forest nymph.... burning up MOSfets instead.
Regarding Linux routers and OpenWRT... Try one, you won't regret it.
I had similar concerns initially that the industry would shut out the Linux firmware for their devices, but it seems that will never happen. I have had mine for years now. In many cases, the manufacturers are running a thinly veiled version of LInux underneath their html screens that create a branded image. ASUS makes an excellent wifi router and that is obivously what they do. They really don't know how to make a router without using Linux for the backbone.
It seems it is intimidating enough for most people to burn a new firmware into their branded product that they have plenty of customers that will loyally just buy and use. It is quite remarkable how most people don't have a clue as to how their router actually works... and fear learning.
I loaded "Oleg-the-Russian"'s firmware (http://wlhdd.co.uk/wiki/Oleg's) into my ASUS wl500premium and while it was scary at first, I have enjoyed in thoroughly. I even later went back a loaded the best optimized version. But these days, the real action is at OpenWRT.
https://dev.openwrt.org/
They have a very large database of routers to hack into and all sorts of special customized uses. Oleg has pretty much retired and ASUS is making different router models.
Any router that OpenWRT will support loading with Linux and hacking is just about as good as Raspberry Pi or Cubieboard. The ones that include wifi routing, extra USB ports, and hard disk storage are even better.... a very good value for a headless Linux server with low power for 24/7 availability.
In sum, you MUST hack a wifi router in order to have any objectivity about the Raspberry Pi.
Put this on your top priority to do list. There are huge advantages.. such as SRAM memory, interesting alternatives to the standard Linux configuration, and all sorts of special software to monitor and control traffic.
A very black pot speaking here.
Getting organized and avoiding a shambles is hard. For me anyway. That is why I have been forcing myself to use tools like github. It keeps a record of every stupid move I make:)
Keeping a central 2TB disk does not work for me. That 2TB soon becomes an unfathomable swamp of files as well. In fact recently I pruned my main work PC down to a single 128GB SSD especially to avoid that. The rule is now that after any hacking, or work, session I ask myself a question like "What happens if this machine burns down overnight? How do I get back to where I am?" Not until the answer to that question is "Who cares?" and I have everything stowed away and tracked elsewhere is the session over.
With that in place it matters not if you are doing all your work on a single box or spreading it out over a hundred boxes.
Nice idea. I think I'm a bit to old for that nymph chasing thing. Besides it's gotten damn cold out there for chasing anything. It's the mid-summer break and everyone has rushed out to the forest to celebrate in a temperature of less than 10 degrees, howling wind and rain. Nah, I already spent three years working on Linux, ARM based, router hardware, a box with four DSL links, ethernet, WIFI and serial ports. It was a custom hardware design by the company I worked for previously.
Does an ASUS router have GPIO? Can I plug a camera module into it? Will it render accelerated opengl?
I guess you are justifying all that HDMI and graphics resources on the SOC in the Raspberry Pi. My guess is the routers won't have it for obvious reasons .. they are headless devices.
But the truth is I am not a big fan of computer graphics. In fact, I am very happen without a GUI and plain old ASCII. I guess you have to jump over to the CubieBoard for that stuff.
I am just a hobbyist, not a career person.
Cloud computing... you have gone over to the dark side.
Good night, it is 3:56am, June 21st ... I guess that is Mid-summer's Night.
No I don't expect to have GPIO and accelerated graphics on a router. But that just means I have no particular need to be hacking the firmware on a router. What would I do with it? I guess I would be happier about it's security but that is about it.
Most of my ARM boards run headless most of the time. No way would I justify a monitor for each one. Beside the monitor would not fit or be usable where many of these boards go.
I love a plain old terminal interface. But, hey, messing with graphics has been a big motivator of computer use and learning since the days of C64s, Sinclairs, Amigas and so on. It's even a big pull for Propeller users.
My idea of "cloud computing" is perhaps a bit different than most. I prefer "distributed". For example all my source code lives in github. But then again identical replicas of the repositories in github also exist in many other places. At home, in my office, etc. It does not matter at all if github ceases to exist over night.
Similarly all the junk thrown into dropbox also exists elsewhere.
If you have a dependency on a single supplier for your services then that is no "cloud" in my mind.
Goodnight and hyv