🚀 go-pugleaf

On 07/03/2012 23:00, Don McKenzie wrote:
> OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?
>
> After talks at the recent Embedded conference in Germany (2012), Olimex
> decided to go ahead with the production of two new boards that were very
> similar to the Rasberry Pi. The first one they should have prototypes in
> the coming weeks.
>
> The second will be 3 to 6 months before production boards will be seen,
> so I won't cover it in this report, however the CPU specs on this second
> board, are almost identical to the RPi microcontroller chip, and board.
>
> Olimex describes this board as a bridge to the linux development
> community and the Duinomite/Arduino/Maple/Pinguino world of developers.
>
> This will be completely Open Hardware / Open Source Project, all CAD
> files will be available so everyone can download modify, and use them.
> Same with the software.
>
> More Info:
> http://www.duinomite.com/olinuxino-a-serious-rasberry-pi-competitor/
>
> Cheers Don...
>

The card described here sounds a lot less powerful than the Pi - slower 
processor, too little ram, poor choice of video output ("TV Video" ?), 
and weaker graphics and media acceleration.  I don't know that it could 
be a "serious competitor" to the Pi with those specs and price, unless 
there are outstanding benefits (like being easily available!).

It's a nice idea and initiative, but I don't see it going anywhere. 
These boards need community support - there are lots of groups who have 
ported different Linux distributions and software for the Pi.  Part of 
the reason is that it is non-profit - it appeals to free software 
developers.  It will take a lot more to persuade these people to do the 
same thing again, only for less exciting hardware with more limitations, 
and to benefit a commercial company that is making these boards for 
profit.  It helps that Olimex is providing all design files, and is 
clearly making these as low cost as possible - but being a charity beats 
even the nicest of companies in these rankings.


I think there is a market for devices like this, but they should start 
with the Pi's specs and fill in the gaps, not start with the Pi's price 
or size and rigidly stick to that budget.  If you took a Pi, added 4 GB 
NAND flash, WiFi, Bluetooth, several USB ports, an external power 
supply, and perhaps even a cheapo case, you would have a wonderful 
device.  It would cost twice as much - but it would be worth it.