Pin-compatible with the Intel Edison for sensors and low-speed I/O, but also adds additional expansion possibilities for multimedia and connectivity, that can easily be expanded and implemented for IoT design
An article listing some "cheaper-than-pi" Linux SBCs:
TechRepublic wrote:
The cheapest computers available
On its release in 2012, the $35 Raspberry Pi showed just how much computer you could get for a bargain-basement price.
But the cost of single-board computers has just kept dropping, with the Raspberry Pi Foundation releasing the tiny Pi Zero for just $5.
Today the Zero is one of several computers with a single-digit price tag, and if you're looking for a cheap as chips board you're spoiled for choice.
These are the single-board computers that you can pick up for less than a price of the $35 Pi 3.
One thing to bear in mind is that the cheapest offerings lack many of the features of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and have more in common with the $5/$10 Raspberry Pi Zero.
Even the more expensive boards are at somewhat of a disadvantage compared to the Pi range, lacking their breadth of stable software, tutorials and community support.
nanoPis are ~ 10E$ cheaper than RPi; however, their connectors are not through (seems to make the price difference) , are not as easy to find and they are somewhat -ca 30% slower-
Simplify Industrial-Grade Linux Designs with SAMA5D2 MPU-Based System On Module (SOM)
Power management, non-volatile boot memory, Ethernet PHY and high-speed DDR memory are integrated on a small, single-sided PCB enabling smaller, efficient designs
Customers can solder the SOM to their board and take it to production, or it can be used as a reference design along with the free schematics, design and Gerber files and complete bill of materials which are available online.
...
The ATSAMA5D27-SOM1 is available now for $39.00 each in 100 unit quantities.
The SAMA5DS27 SOM is based on the ultra-low-power, 500-MHz SAMA5D27 that contains a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5 processor. The SOM adds 128 MB of DDR2 DRAM and 8 MB of QSPI flash memory. ...
This [PMIC] allows it to operate with a single 3.3-V power supply.
...
It [SAMA5D27] can handle on-the-fly encryption and decryption from DDR memory. The system also has either tamper detect pins or secure key storage, and ...
...
By the way, many developers will appreciate that the SOM [103 IO pins] can be soldered by hand. This is handy when building prototypes.
...
... [EVB] and an SD card slot that can handle memory or peripherals such as wireless interfaces.
...
Microchip's Linux4SAM.org site provides examples, and Yocto and Buildroot support for all Microchip SAM platforms. Security support is available through the Sequitur Labs IoT Security Suite.
I actually do not have much love for them because of the software blobs needed for the broadcom chip.
broadcom is not a hacker or Open Source friendly company.
They just happenened to have some obsolete chips left over when the first raspi came out.
I believe it was ARM5 or ARM6 and it was on the verge of bein kicked out of Debian because of it's obsolence.
That damn Raspi kept developers backporting stuff for years.
But thanks for bumping this.
Just yesterday I found a link to a
2018-02-xx Comparison of 103 small Linux boards.
All these boards seem to have been vetted for capability, availabilty, and up to date ness.
Because it is such a nice overview I wanted to post it here, but I could not find this thread and was a bit in a doubt wether I wanted to resurrect this thread for this.
I do not often post links to commercial companies. It always leaves a nagging feeling I should be payed by them for the advertizement...
But I do mention Olimex for a few reasons:
1). Olimex is a pretty hacker / Open Source friendly company.
2). Olimex has the complete designs of their boards (Schematic & PCB) on Github.
3). Olimex sells the bare Allwinner chips in low quantities for reasonable prices.
2) and 3) combined with the other documentation will give you a decent head start if you want to roll your own board.
Edit: This Fosdem talk might also be sligtly relevant.
It's about "Common windowing and Video Acceleration" to make software more easily portable between the myriad of small Linux boards.
The combination of binary blobs for video drivers and the DRM stuff which are all implemented differently for different manufacturers makes it pretty hard to write some good code with the performance needed for Video Decoding on these small boards.
So what? For the intended audience (and the multitudes of other users) it serves its purpose fine.
I know, and It's good I guess. It is just that I have sensitive feelings about the philosophy behind the open source movement. I am really convinced that this can help in making this a better world. If you look at projects like KiCad, FreeCad, GCC itself, and thousands of other linux (and other) open source projects, where people give ther work away in Freedom to give something back for the enormous amount of knowledge they get for free on the internet. Look at the enourmous amount of code shared on sites like github...
And it does matter "For the intended audience". It is good if the "intended audience" does not only get Cheap Fun Computers to play with Linux (or whatever), but they at the same time get some more insight in the philosopy behind the Open Source movement.
On the other side you have the "commercial companies". They are not only keeping their "intellectual property" a secret (I can (sort of) live with that) but they are also actively fighting and trying to destroy each other, and half the world with that. Look at the "FUD" campain of a certain unspeakable company. A long time ago I was bitten by the same Shit Factory. I was trying to graduate from school and it took a week out of the time I had for writing one of my first serious pieces of software just because I had to change a ftp server program in a bunch of strange ways to make it compatible with that same companies idea of a "malformed" ftp protocol. Yugh. How about a C compiler that generates abbysmal code if it does not find the text string "genuie intel" in some corner of the processor. Yuch! Printers and scanners that stop working after a few years because their "drivers are outdated". One of the biggest leaps in society will be that there will come a time that behaviour like that will simply not be accepted anymore. But this will probably take generations to achieve such a culture shift. But it's hard to predict in this time of exponential everything.
About the "ARM11" architecture. Yeah that was it. On the other hand. It won't surprise me if some of these old architectures will make a comeback once the patents have expired.
SparkFun Raspberry Pi Zero W Basic Kit comes with everything needed to get started with the Pi Zero W. The Raspberry Pi Zero W is smaller than previous Pis at only 65x30mm with wireless LAN and Bluetooth®. The Pi Zero W is ideal for embedded Internet of Things (IoT) projects and has been designed to be as flexible and compact as possible. The board features mini connectors and an unpopulated 40-pin GPIO. Each kit comes with a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a fully programmed NOOBS card, Mini HDMI and USB OTG cables, and a high-quality wall adapter.
Both have the same -to some extend- connector as RPo (with improvements : serial debug is on another 4 pins connector)
Arduino can work on them -a very old version_ : lioke RPis, they have a very old version of avr-gcc and avrdude...
Main issues I see :
* SD cards are not that reliable (can jump pout of their slot): it is the same issue with RPis.
* There is less support than RPi (may be there is in Mandarin/Cantonese); on the software side, it did not bother me because I do not do anything complex with them; on the long term side, I do not know whether they will be easy to find and buy.
* connectors are worse than RPi 's (often soldered on only one side of the PCB, making them easy to break)
* connectors are worse than RPi 's (often soldered on only one side of the PCB, making them easy to break)
maybe that issue was corrected for the microUSB connector on a NanoPi NEO Core2; 40mm-sq, is just a bit larger than Microchip SAMA5D27 SoM though more compute power.
Posted by SpiderKenny: Wed. Apr 25, 2018 - 08:12 AM
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The nano pi's are nice - but they are not for me.
I need something with no connectors on - it'll be embedded in a commercial product. Can't have unused USB connectors and HDMI connectors in random places inside products!
I also need guaranteed long term provision - so it won't go end of life while my product is still young.
There's definitely a market for a long term, stable, embedded linux module. The processor etc can evolve but the form factor, pin out and so on need to stay the same.
There are loads of modules based on MT7688 and MT7628 from china, and they will run OpenWRT, but you need to do your own WiFi certification which is £10K at least.
StreamUnlimited products look good, their product range is great, and they are very focused on long term supply and support, so I might give them a shot. Again costs are high, but so will be my volume of products.
I need something with no connectors on - it'll be embedded in a commercial product. Can't have unused USB connectors and HDMI connectors in random places inside products!
I also need guaranteed long term provision - so it won't go end of life while my product is still young.
SAMA5D27 SoM may meet your requirements by an eMMC IC and an SDIO socket onto the baseboard (eMMC is mass storage for a Linux distribution, SDIO for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4 SD card)
It has an obsolescence statement; most of it are Microchip parts.
As with any of Microchip’s products, the SAMA5D2 SiPs are backed by Microchip’s customer-driven obsolescence policy, which removes DDR2 supply risk by ensuring availability to customers for as long as needed.
Olimex has been selling Linux/ARM boards for some time and did a blog about obolesence of processors:
A10 Cortex-A8 chip is the heart of A10-OLinuXino-LIME EUR 30 Linux Open
Source Hardware computer. Allwinner start the production of A10 back
in 2012 and at the end of 2014 decided to stop it’s production as none
of the mass volume producers like tablet or Android IPTV dongle
manufacturers wanted to continue to manufacture with it.
For our type of business though – embedded applications it’s not good
to change your design every couple of years, so we asked Allwinner if
there is minium quantity of A10 which they will be able to run custom
production for us and they said 50 000 pcs. We placed our order in
December 2014 and they shipped to us on 30 of March as we agreed.
Now we have enough stock to keep producing A10-OLinuXino-LIME for a
while, and if the stock is over we can make new order to Allwinner,
this way we can keep the A10-OLinuXino-LIME production as long as
there is demand for it.
The VisionSOM is a family of SODIMM 200 sized industrial System on Module (SoM) devices based around the NXP i.MX6 UL/ULL application processor which features an advanced implementation of a single ARM Cortex-A7 core at speeds of up to 900MHz.
Our SoM is a low power highly integrated System on Module featuring high computation power and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v4.1 connectivity, this option of a fully integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module simplifies the carrier board design and is ideally suited for wireless applications. The VisionSOM provides a variety of memory configurations including DDR3L, NAND, eMMC and uSD Card that meets the majority of embedded systems requirements.
The VisionSOM can be integrated onto your own application motherboard or can be supplied with its own dedicated carrier board VisionCB-STD which houses connections for an RGB TFT LCD Display, plus USB, UART, Ethernet and connections for Raspberry PI and Arduino systems. The SoM and carrier board solution can either be used as a ready to use development platform cutting development times by 8~12 months or as a stand alone product.
Apparently via Amazon :
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Intel+%22Compute+Card%22
"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopArrived on 11/14/17 :
with a uClinux :
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Top"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopDigi-Key has these on a SBC with the SoM in single quantities with 8w lead.
Mouser has some of the SoM in stock.
https://www.digikey.com/products/en/embedded-computers/single-board-computers-sbcs/933?k=&pkeyword=&s=16333
https://www.mouser.com/TechNexion/Embedded-Solutions/Computing/System-On-Modules-SOM/_/N-aez5p?P=1yynr9sZ1yzs9vnZ1yf8kaf
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TopMouser ETA is 2018-Jan-09 :
https://www.mouser.com/search/include/aoo_popup.aspx?mouserpartnumber=607-BLKCD1C64GK
via
https://www.mouser.com/Intel/_/N-1yy6lwu?Keyword=%22Compute+Card%22&FS=True
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Tophttps://www.mouser.com/new/Intel/intel-compute-card/
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TopAn article listing some "cheaper-than-pi" Linux SBCs:
#LinuxSBC
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Tophttps://www.pjrc.com/teensy/index.html
https://www.invensense.com/products/motion-tracking/9-axis/mpu-9250/
https://www.u-blox.com/en/standard-precision-gnss-products
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TopnanoPis are ~ 10E$ cheaper than RPi; however, their connectors are not through (seems to make the price difference) , are not as easy to find and they are somewhat -ca 30% slower-
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TopEdit: 1st URL
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Tophttp://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/en/ATSAMA5D27-SOM1
http://www.microchip.com/developmenttools/ProductDetails.aspx?PartNO=ATSAMA5D27-SOM1-EK1
http://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/SAMA5D27-SOM1-EK1#SAMA5D27-SOM1-EK1-RootFileSystem (Debian 9.3, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)
Edit: eewiki
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TopNew Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
https://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/new-raspberry-pi-3-model-b
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TopNow wot's so special about the Raspberry Pi?
I actually do not have much love for them because of the software blobs needed for the broadcom chip.
broadcom is not a hacker or Open Source friendly company.
They just happenened to have some obsolete chips left over when the first raspi came out.
I believe it was ARM5 or ARM6 and it was on the verge of bein kicked out of Debian because of it's obsolence.
That damn Raspi kept developers backporting stuff for years.
But thanks for bumping this.
Just yesterday I found a link to a
2018-02-xx Comparison of 103 small Linux boards.
All these boards seem to have been vetted for capability, availabilty, and up to date ness.
Because it is such a nice overview I wanted to post it here, but I could not find this thread and was a bit in a doubt wether I wanted to resurrect this thread for this.
http://linuxgizmos.com/january-2018-catalog-of-hacker-friendly-sbcs/
Another link worth mentioning in this context is Olimex:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/IC/
I do not often post links to commercial companies. It always leaves a nagging feeling I should be payed by them for the advertizement...
But I do mention Olimex for a few reasons:
1). Olimex is a pretty hacker / Open Source friendly company.
2). Olimex has the complete designs of their boards (Schematic & PCB) on Github.
3). Olimex sells the bare Allwinner chips in low quantities for reasonable prices.
2) and 3) combined with the other documentation will give you a decent head start if you want to roll your own board.
Edit: This Fosdem talk might also be sligtly relevant.
It's about "Common windowing and Video Acceleration" to make software more easily portable between the myriad of small Linux boards.
The combination of binary blobs for video drivers and the DRM stuff which are all implemented differently for different manufacturers makes it pretty hard to write some good code with the performance needed for Video Decoding on these small boards.
My respect to anyone working on this.
https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/kodi/
OP's message is more than a year old now and I doubt he hasn't selected his hardware yet.
This is also a (mainly) AVR forum.
MicroMel has it's own forum for linux (capable) processors on:
http://www.at91.com/
Edit: Higlight for the 103 linux board shootout because this thread has become a repository of such things.
Doing magic with a USD 7 Logic Analyser: https://www.avrfreaks.net/comment/2421756#comment-2421756
Bunch of old projects with AVR's: http://www.hoevendesign.com
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TopCertainly not the hardware itself - but the "community" that has built up around it.
So what?
For the intended audience (and the multitudes of other users) it serves its purpose fine.
You mean ARMv6 - commonly known as "ARM11"
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TopAnd it does matter "For the intended audience". It is good if the "intended audience" does not only get Cheap Fun Computers to play with Linux (or whatever), but they at the same time get some more insight in the philosopy behind the Open Source movement.
On the other side you have the "commercial companies". They are not only keeping their "intellectual property" a secret (I can (sort of) live with that) but they are also actively fighting and trying to destroy each other, and half the world with that. Look at the "FUD" campain of a certain unspeakable company. A long time ago I was bitten by the same Shit Factory. I was trying to graduate from school and it took a week out of the time I had for writing one of my first serious pieces of software just because I had to change a ftp server program in a bunch of strange ways to make it compatible with that same companies idea of a "malformed" ftp protocol. Yugh. How about a C compiler that generates abbysmal code if it does not find the text string "genuie intel" in some corner of the processor. Yuch! Printers and scanners that stop working after a few years because their "drivers are outdated". One of the biggest leaps in society will be that there will come a time that behaviour like that will simply not be accepted anymore. But this will probably take generations to achieve such a culture shift. But it's hard to predict in this time of exponential everything.
About the "ARM11" architecture. Yeah that was it. On the other hand. It won't surprise me if some of these old architectures will make a comeback once the patents have expired.
Doing magic with a USD 7 Logic Analyser: https://www.avrfreaks.net/comment/2421756#comment-2421756
Bunch of old projects with AVR's: http://www.hoevendesign.com
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TopTo be fair, the RPi foundation never claimed that the hardware was open-source.
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Tophttps://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi Debian is not dicectly "against" rasprerry, but they certainly seem to prefer other hardware over the Raspi. Mentions of the blobs etc. turn up at several different pages of the Debian site. such as: https://wiki.debian.org/CheapServerBoxHardware
Doing magic with a USD 7 Logic Analyser: https://www.avrfreaks.net/comment/2421756#comment-2421756
Bunch of old projects with AVR's: http://www.hoevendesign.com
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TopThey initially provided a fairly reasonable schematic for the first boards - certainly enough to use the boards.
But the detail released for the later boards is pathetic - useless if you have any question of what happens behind any of the IO pins.
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TopAnother example of OSHW is BeagleBone Black :
via http://beagleboard.org/black
due to
https://github.com/OLIMEX
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TopYes - it has become a "repository" for every time someone sees another Linux module.
Which seems a useful thing.
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TopNew arrival at Mouser :
"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopThe following is similar though arm Cortex-A7 instead of Cortex-A9, smaller, at about half the price :
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TopA new arrival at Mouser :
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TopWell, I use for desktop, during week end, nanopis (somewhat cheaper than RPis, maybe linked with poorer connections):
http://www.nanopi.org/NanoPi-2-Fire_Feature.html
is as powerful -when cold... - as a 5 year old PC (with MP enabled) and 20% slower than a RPi; has no built in radio
http://nanopi.io/nanopi-m3.html
has BT and wifi built in, when cooled, is fast;
Both have the same -to some extend- connector as RPo (with improvements : serial debug is on another 4 pins connector)
Arduino can work on them -a very old version_ : lioke RPis, they have a very old version of avr-gcc and avrdude...
Main issues I see :
* SD cards are not that reliable (can jump pout of their slot): it is the same issue with RPis.
* There is less support than RPi (may be there is in Mandarin/Cantonese); on the software side, it did not bother me because I do not do anything complex with them; on the long term side, I do not know whether they will be easy to find and buy.
* connectors are worse than RPi 's (often soldered on only one side of the PCB, making them easy to break)
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TopThanks for browsed there to ...
by
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TopThe nano pi's are nice - but they are not for me.
I need something with no connectors on - it'll be embedded in a commercial product. Can't have unused USB connectors and HDMI connectors in random places inside products!
I also need guaranteed long term provision - so it won't go end of life while my product is still young.
There's definitely a market for a long term, stable, embedded linux module. The processor etc can evolve but the form factor, pin out and so on need to stay the same.
There are loads of modules based on MT7688 and MT7628 from china, and they will run OpenWRT, but you need to do your own WiFi certification which is £10K at least.
StreamUnlimited products look good, their product range is great, and they are very focused on long term supply and support, so I might give them a shot. Again costs are high, but so will be my volume of products.
SpiderKenny
@spiderelectron
www.spider-e.com
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TopIt has an obsolescence statement; most of it are Microchip parts.
via
http://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/SAMA5D27-SOM1-EK1#SAMA5D27-SOM1-EK1-RootFileSystem
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Tophttp://www.at91.com/linux4sam/bin/view/Linux4SAM/Sama5d27Som1EKMainPage#Demo_archives
"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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Top"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopOlimex has been selling Linux/ARM boards for some time and did a blog about obolesence of processors:
Source:
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/how-50-000-a10-socs-from-allwinner-looks-like/
Doing magic with a USD 7 Logic Analyser: https://www.avrfreaks.net/comment/2421756#comment-2421756
Bunch of old projects with AVR's: http://www.hoevendesign.com
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TopNew arrival at Mouser :
"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopYes - very nice!
SpiderKenny
@spiderelectron
www.spider-e.com
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TopJanuary 2018 list is up to 103: http://linuxgizmos.com/january-2018-catalog-of-hacker-friendly-sbcs/
Top Tips:
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Topedit :
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TopA new arrival at Mouser :
Debian and Ubuntu :
https://www.olimex.com/Products/SOM204/A20/
"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller
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TopIn today's email:
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TopOnion Omega in surface mount is a new arrival at Mouser :
https://www.mouser.com/new/onion/onion-omega2s-omega2sp-modules/
Bluetooth 4.1 is via a USB dongle :
https://onion.io/store/bluetooth-expansion/
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TopSimilar SoM though ARM9 instead of arm Cortex-A5.
Wi-Fi by ESP8089, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth by RTL8723.
Enough DRAM and SPI flash to run OpenWrt.
due to a new arrival
Sipeed 16M Lichee Nano Linux Development Board - Seeed Studio | Mouser
more (module with Wi-Fi card, currently 2 in-stock, 15 more ETA 5-Aug'19, lead-time is 4 weeks)
102110201 Seeed Studio | Mouser
WiFi_BT Module - WiFi · Sipeed Wiki
RTL8723BS - REALTEK (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 on SDIO)
Lichee-Pi · GitHub
edit :
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/a2d79c7174aeb43b13020dd53d85a7aefdd9f3e5/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs
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Topnew arrival at Mouser :
PICO-IMX7 System-on-Module - TechNexion | Mouser
edit : ETA 31-Dec'19
-20C variant is 16 weeks lead-time with a 100 MOQ.
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TopI have had 2 OrangePiZero 512MB modules running 100% stable for two years (armbian).
They cost $10 and even cheaper for the 256MB module (Note no hdmi)
I'm using them as DNS & Radius/tacacs+ secondary servers on my home lan(s)
I did try a few other of the cheap OrangePi's , but they weren't stable.
I do have a few Raspi's running as long , and they're as stable , but costs more (well the RpiZeroW is cheap too) , but is around $18 here
My BBB's doesn't see much usage , but the PRR's looks nice.
IMHO
Best (cheap) HW : Odroid C1/C2 (The new H1 looks cool but pricey)
Best SW : Raspberry
Best SD : Life is to short for anything but SanDisk Ultra , or Extreme if Cameras
/Bingo
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