OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?

What's the form factor? Does it have 0.1" headers so you could add processor horsepower to a veroboard / stripboard? That would be great for quick one-off tinker stuff.

It is so new, I am still asking questions Nico. Still in the initial design stages.

I know I will be very disappointed if it doesn't have GPIO at .1"

The Olimex UEXT expansion which it will also use, is standard serial UART, SPI, and I2C, using 10 pins at .1"

See:

Cheers Don...

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Hopefully also unlike rPI have mounting holes and a decent power connector.

Word from partner who IS a teacher of ICT and computing in UK, if they want embedded in schools (which is sadly lacking in UK) they should contact and get involved with Computing At School group/seminars/conf in UK.

Plenty of open source followers there.

If need more info I can get details for you.

The company has over 20 years? experience in designing, prototyping and manufacturing printed circuit boards, sub-assemblies, and complete electronic products.

I doubt very much if you will see any of these problems Paul. :-)

I'm looking forward to seeing what the first proto boards look like in about 2 weeks.

Cheers Don...

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You never know. I've worked with designers with 20+ years of experience who totally forget about mounting holes, forget about clearance around screw heads or move holes on the next batch while there are 100's of cases in stock with holes that match the 'old' version. Did I already mention small 2mm / 78mil mounting holes? If it where one project you might call it a mistake. On almost every project its a real nuisance.

I just had a look at the RPi videos, and they seem to have mounting holes and a DC power input plug.

So I wonder what Paul was referring to.

Cheers Don...

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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.

I don't think that it has mounting holes, DC power is via a micro USB connector.

I suppose that it is the most sincere form of flattery. Looks like Olimex disagrees with all those on the other thread that reckon that the Pi is a waste of time.

Maybe. But knowing Olimex they probably come up with a product that actually appeals to people who like to build stuff. Less gadget, more real world applications. I don't think there is a manufacturer of embedded development boards with a wider variety. They must be doing something right.

The (community) support is already there. Freescale has all the software (Linux and Win CE BSPs) and documentation on their website and offers several fora to users.

Support from Freescale is something totally different from community support. It's a good start, but it is not the same. It just means that the basic BSP is in place for Android, Linux and Wince of some particular version. There is no guarantee that any of the changes, patches, drivers, etc., make their way back to the mainline. There is no guarantee that the anything will be supported in future versions. There is no guarantee that source will be available for third-party work commissioned by Freescale, or that the source that is provided is suitable for future use, or that there will be support in the future. I have seen these sorts of problems before from Freescale, where we had an iMX evaluation card. It came with a Linux build and BSP. But the chip had a graphics accelerator, and the driver for that was partially closed source, and developed by a third-party (paid for by Freescale). So we had to choose between keeping the out-of-date Linux kernel provided with the BSP, or compiling a new kernel but losing the accelerated graphics. Freescale would not pay the third-party to update the graphics drivers

- they were already promoting the next iMX chip instead. I don't know if Freescale has done it better this time, but that's a danger you face when support is by manufacturer only.

The Pi has /real/ community support - there are already half a dozen well-known Linux distributions that support it, as well as major software packages like xmbc.

I think that people are missing the point with the Pi, it isn't intended as an embedded development board, it is a small cheap and fairly capable Linux system. From the specs so far, it looks the more capable of the two, but I'll leave judgement until I've seen both.

Hopefully both will find their audience, but I'll try the Pi first.

What is the problem with an 'out of date' kernel? If it works, it works. Bug fixes can often be backported without much problems.

The same goes for any PC videocard.

I see the same problem with the RP if Broadcom doesn't provide a new graphics driver.

If you read the other thread completely, that includes Olimex. But knowing they have a competing product on the way helps explain some of their negative comments about the Pi.

-a

Still some parts of the PI are closed tight, NDA's and that stuff, which is what turned me completely off after the initial enthusiasm. So any competition in that field is welcome, especially if it brings more openness.

And when it doesn't support newer hardware, it doesn't support newer hardware. Bug fixes, and in particular newer features and drivers, can /not/ be backported without a lot of effort.

In our particular case, we wanted support for a particular wireless interface. I wasn't directly involved, so I don't know the details, but we were faced with the choice of decent graphics or wireless connection, but not both without a great deal of time and effort.

No, the same does not apply to PC video cards for two reasons. One is that the third-party work commissioned by Freescale was badly done, and very tightly tied to the kernel version (so much so that it raises immediate suspicions of gpl violations). Secondly, Freescale dropped all efforts to support and update these drivers as soon as they had started promoting the next version of the iMX device.

In the world of PC video cards, there is a better (though far from perfect) separation between the closed-source drivers and the kernel, the manufacturers make drivers to support a range of video cards and usually keep support for older cards in their newer drivers, and they try to keep reasonably up-to-date with kernel changes.

Yes indeed, this could well occur, and it is a risk with the way Broadcom is doing the drivers for the graphics unit (rather than providing documentation for an open-source effort). We can only hope that the Pi will help put pressure onto Broadcom to release its drivers as open source, or to provide the required documentation to let others write drivers. It has happened with some of Broadcom's WiFi drivers, and may happen here too.

I see no mounting holes:

It would be very nice if the Olimex board becomes something like this board:

The board by Conitec is just too expensive. I did look at it to build products around but the price was a showstopper.