<$50 SBC with video? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 07:50:36 pm
content: ***EDIT***This thread seems to have dramatically gone off the rails. Perhaps responders didn't carefully read the Subject line.I am not trying to DIS that Raspberry Pi. I think it is a brilliant product and I am only moaning that it is in such short supply for whatever reason(s)I don't really care what processor, programming language, OS, or development platform is used.I am seeking an inexpensive ("<$50") SBC with a few GPIO and integrated video output on VGA or preferably HDMI.I have several project ideas that depend on video output (HDMI, VGA). But, as we have seen the mainstream Raspberry Pi seems to be on the long-term endangered (if not extinct?) list. I could kick myself for not stocking up on them before they went extinct.Are there any alternatives to the RasPi in the original <$50 price range that have built-in HDMI/VGA video output? The Teensy board is very attractive, but no video. I am not looking for RasPi compatibility, only a SBC with video.Or, alternatively, are there any external add-on peripheral boards (I2C?) and libraries that do video? I don't need full-speed frame-rate, only rather still images or slowly-changing text/graphics.

author: wasedadoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:04:22 pm
content: RPis are neither extinct nor anywhere near becoming so. 400,000 per month are being manufactured. Yes they are currently in short supply to hobbyists but with patience they can be obtained without paying scalpers' prices. Availability is expected to have improved greatly by the middle of 2023.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:10:20 pm
content: Thank you, @wasedadoc.Yes, perhaps "extinct" was not the description I was looking for.As you mention, the hobbyist supply of the full-size RasPi would be better described as "unobtanium".I shall wait patiently until mid-2023 to see if they enter the supply-chain again.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:12:32 pm
content: There's a lot of SBCs out there.OrangePi and RockPi are popular, so somewhere to start looking, but there are tons of others.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:21:05 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 19, 2023, 08:12:32 pm+ mango+ bananayou name the fruit, there is an SBC named after it.I share the OPs frustration however. I've been on multiple vendors rPi email notification list for 3+ months and heard nothing. The more this prioritizing business over hobbyist continues the more they risk damaging their reputation IMO.

author: eutectique
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:28:30 pm
content: UDOO neoNearly twice as expensive at $66..$85 htva, but readily available in 2-4 days.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:48:47 pm
content: I have someOdroids, and have found them useful and reliable. The "trick" is, you want to get the eMMC module also for booting (and optionally OS), avoiding all the reliability issues with SD cards.OlimexOLinuXinoseries is OSHW, but I currently don't have one myself, as I don't really like the AllWinner SoCs and the others have been sold out whenever I've been looking for a new one.For long-term support and use, I do recommend SBCs based on Rockchip, Amlogic, or Samsung Exynos SoCs (System-on-Chip). Rockchip (SoC manufacturer) helps maintain their SoCs directly in the upstream Linux kernel tree, as does Samsung for some of their SoCs (for others, they mostly support Android, which is somewhat of a fork of the Linux kernel, although code drifts between the two); BayLibre did and does a lot of similar work for Amlogic SoCs.AllWinner SoCs are common and cheap, but their support is on a volunteer basis; the company itself does not and will not help at all. Cheapest SBCs are based on AllWinner SoCs, and they tend to work okay, but don't expect 'industrial' quality, *at all*.(Then again, the Raspberry Pi Foundation also has a deep-seated dislike of anything Linux. In the rare cases where they need to push something upstream into the Linux Kernel, they use exclusively temporary hires so that their core team doesn't get 'tainted' by Linux. The foundation really is just Broadcom's PR subsidiary, with University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory being their 'beard'.)A key, really, is to look at what and which Linux distributions support your SBC (or related SBCs, if it is very new). If you only have vendor-provided images you can use, well, the vendor isn't going to support those for long because it's lost revenue when they could 'encourage' you to upgrade to newer, better-supported hardware.. Even though they're much less polished, I do prefer the volunteer-maintained Linux distributions over the vendor images myself.If you intend to create new appliances, and you have the time, I do recommend taking a look at theLinuxFromScratchproject/books, to learn how the components fit together, and what the actual parts are. Then, you can take any of the Linux distributions supported on your hardware, cut it down to the bare necessities, and build your appliances *the right way*. (This is often calledsystem integration, and when you do know the components and how they interact, it is really easy to do right. The downside is that you then see firsthand how awfully crappy the integration work done by 'reputable vendors' on their TVs, routers, NASes, etc. really is. It is demoralizing, really, so be warned.)

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 08:53:47 pm
content: One thing I "like" about the RPi's is that you can program them baremetal. It's not supported officially of course, but there's enough material out there to do it. Of course you're a lot on your own. I've done some baremetal on the Pi 4, pretty cool. While it's not officially supported, there are enough people who have done it to get enough info to get started. AFAIK, this isn't the case for most other SBCs, and if anyone can give me an example of baremetal on any other similar SBC, let me know.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 09:00:03 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 08:48:47 pmObviously Broadcom&Linux is oil&water but it's not like rPi foundation pushes an alternative os than Raspian (Debian).

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 09:04:05 pm
content: There's also latte panda,They are x86 so you can run normal windows if you want.Very fast for a SBCAnd one unique thing about them is there's a ATMega/Arduino included. So when the SBC is off the Arduino can still be on to handle other stuff.https://www.lattepanda.com/blog-308726.html

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 09:30:03 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 19, 2023, 08:53:47 pmI haven't needed or wanted to thus far, so what exactly would you need?I mean, for the Rockchip, Amlogic, and Samsung Exynos SoCs (and many more if we look at OpenWRT kernels), we can just grab the setup and driver probes off the Linux kernel; most of that stuff is BSD-licensed (so that the same code can be used in BSDs, too).Have you looked atlinux-meson.com, where you can find the Amlogic stuff?For the Allwinner SoCs, I'd say it would be quite a pain to try to do.Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 09:00:03 pmYou mean Raspberry Pi OS?

author: Perkele
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:02:47 pm
content: Performance?RAM?Storage?Price?

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:09:56 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 09:30:03 pmRaspberry Pi OS; previously Raspian [edit: since 2013]I'm unsure how this changes anything and what your point is?@RichardCrowley; What has held me back from getting a !rPi is the lack of software stability. The support varies for the other "fruits", it's a matter of researching what exists and if it meets your requirements.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:13:48 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 09:30:03 pmApart obviously from some documentation for the CPU and peripherals, the main blocking point is often the boot process, which most of the time is completely undocumented and proprietary, and anything related - the base firmware, which initializes RAM and other stuff.Even though the Pi's firmware is not open-source (AFAIK), it's relatively well known now.Ultibo is also a cool project:https://ultibo.org/Circle is also great - I didn't use it directly, but certainly got some valuable information in there to write my own stuff:https://circle-rpi.readthedocs.io/en/45.0

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:20:44 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 19, 2023, 10:13:48 pmThe number of people interested in developing their own boot loader for the rPi has to be small. Most surely would use some alternative ARM based development board. Also a tangent of the OP's thread intent.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 10:47:28 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 19, 2023, 08:53:47 pmAll RISC-V SBCs I know of can be programmed bare metal, and with basically the same code, with the exception of DRAM initialisation and obviously differing memory maps and peripherals.This includes anything based on SiFive U54 or U74 cores (HiFive Unleashed and Unmatched, PolarFire SoC FPGAs, BeagleV beta board, VisionFive 1, VisionFive 2, Pine64 Star64), and anything based on the AllWinner D1 (T-Head C906 core).

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 11:12:25 pm
content: Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 10:09:56 pmRaspbianstill exists, it didn't rename itself. What does your/foundation's/Wikipedia's "previously" actually mean? What do you yourself mean by it?The foundationforkedRaspbian into Raspberry Pi OS, because they didn't want to be associated with Debian, or anything Linux. To avoid anyone asking questions why, they presented it as if Raspbian renamed themselves as Raspberry Pi OS. They didn't; they just forked it, putting themselves downstream from Raspbian. Any further questions?Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 19, 2023, 10:13:48 pmAmlogic and Rockchip SoCs useu-boot(amlogic,rockchip), and u-boot can even bootRaspberry Piboards.U-Boot can boot Linux, Android, and Chrome OS kernels. Depending on the board vendor, the image may or may not contain binary blobs; Amlogic ARMv8 usesTrusted Firmware-A; seeu-boot Trusted Firmware-A for Amlogic boardsand the BSD-licensedupstream source tree(to which Amlogic may or may not have made changes to).For example, for Odroids, take a look atgithub.com/hardkernel/u-boot(and theOdroid Wikifor things like schematics and pinouts).I do know that Rockchip has a pretty good stance towards open source developers, see both theirWikiand theirgithub repos. (Note that theydopush any changes they do to upstream u-boot and Linux kernels. That alone is worth supporting them and buying their boards. Plus it means that once a board is supported in Linux and u-boot, you no longer need to rely on vendor support. Of course, thereareSBC manufacturers using Rockchip SoCs who keep everything secret, making them difficult/impossible to work with, so the SoC itself does not suffice; we also need support from the SBC vendor in the form of Device Trees and u-boot configs.)To repeat, I haven't looked into this in detail myself, because I'm happy to use the Linux kernel on these SBCs, so I truly do not know whether the above (and other available) information is sufficient. This post is not intended to convince anyone otherwise either, only show the resources I would start looking at to find out the actual answer.However, this does affect OP too, because the support one has from both the SoC and the board vendors reflects on longevity and maintainability.Again, if the board support is already in upstream open source projects, we as the user are no longer dependent on the vendor to backport bug fixes, much less upgrade to later versions for new features. That, and not any ideological reasons, is why having the support in upstream open source projects is important to us users.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 11:35:53 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 11:12:25 pm1. You claimed Raspberry Pi foundation had a "deep-seated dislike of anything Linux". From 2013 until 2022 (when Raspberry Pi OS was officially released for 64 bit) Raspbian was the recommended distro, no? Based on Debian.2. AFAIU the 32bit version is still based on Raspbian.3. The 64 bit version wasn't forked from Raspbian at all. The userspace is based on the arm64 Debian.I love your notion that you can fork a Linux distro (even though your notion of forked is incorrect) and thereby dissassociate yourself from Linux.And no, I don't have any more questions for you :-)

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 11:51:31 pm
content: Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 11:35:53 pmOf course not. Anything that shows that people you appreciate and like to work with actually don't have your interests in their mind at all, can be quite offputting; it is much easier to just smirk at people talking about that stuff (and call them "conspiracy theorists" or "Linux zealots" or whatever; I've been called all of them at one point or another), and ignore them.Instead of listening to me, just take a look at how the Raspberry Pi Foundation operates. Do they support the open source projects their commercial products are based on? No, they do not. They could, if they wanted to, but they do not want to.They forked –– essentially relabeled –– Raspbian, only to rename it as "Raspberry Pi OS"; and present it as if Raspbian changed its name. It didn't, so what the fuck could "Raspberry Pi OS" be then but a fork?They fully rely on the Debian project, but do they contribute anything to Debian? No. Many companies do, the non-profit foundation chooses not to, because.. Well, why not ask them? You could ask why they hire temporary people to interface to open source projects their products are based on, with the core Foundation never interacting directly with the open source projects their products are based one, too. Just note that if you do ask those questions at the Raspberry Pi Forums, do expect to be banned by Liz Upton.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2023, 11:58:05 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 11:51:31 pmI've worked for a major Linux distro for the last 20 years. The idea that you can disassociate yourself from Debian or Linux by forking lacks any understanding for how distros actually operate. Where are you going to get your updates from? If you truly were going to disassociate yourself then you'd be writing your own code from the fork point on. The reality is that you're either going to periodically rebase or you're going to staff-up and directly pull from the constituent open source projects (kernel, toolchain, etc). Neither of these disassociates yourself from anything.Your actual issue seems to be that you believe the rPi foundation are "leaches", that they take but they don't contribute back.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 12:00:48 am
content: Also, my understanding is that Rasbian requested the name change. Unsurprisingly they didn't want the rPi foundation associating the name "Raspbian" (for 64 bit) with something that wasn't Raspbian.

author: wasedadoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 12:40:05 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on January 19, 2023, 08:10:20 pmI expected someone in the US to have a better grasp of English. Nothing I wrote can be interpreted as RPis being "unobtainium" by hobbyists or that one should wait till mid-2023.For your information, Adafruit had RPi4B 4Gbyte RAM in stock 19 January 2023. At the official price of US$55 plus taxes and shipping.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 01:01:56 am
content: Quote from: wasedadoc on January 20, 2023, 12:40:05 amThat's fantastic. I've been on 3 US vendors lists for the 2GB and 4GB rPi4 since October. Nothing. I'm not going to argue language semantics but my experience - in the USA where I and the OP reside - they are still challenging to purchase at list price.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 01:26:43 am
content: If you want to start a pissing contest about experience, I'm game. Did you know how Linus let Tove show some pro moves by throwing Linus around at student parties before they married? I first started using Linux before they did get married, too.I would be willing to bet $1 that you still use Windows as your main desktop machine.(The reason is simple: even though you say you've worked for a Linux distribution, you seem to understand nothing about how open source projects work. It just isn't something you understand. Therefore, "vendor-oriented" products like Windows and Raspberry Pi feel more attractive to you. This is not a slight, just an observation.)Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 11:58:05 pmHow dense can you be? All that is just for PR purposes, to make Raspberry Pi a walled garden, where everything you use is provided by the Foundation. PR and smoke, to hide the reality underneath. They do not care about the technical details like that, they only care how it looks to the general public; and what kind of environment their users think they act in.PR, that's all.Just look at how RPi users ask things when they step outside that "garden". They way too often act like they were a paying customer, and everybody should cater to their needs right now. This is the culture the Foundation fosters. Nowadays, it is a well known safe tactic in many FOSS projects to just ignore any posts mentioning "Raspberry" or "RPi", to avoid having to deal with that.There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you get paid by a Linux distro vendor, then you may want the maximum number of users possible.Volunteer-based open source projects don't need or even want users, they want contributors (be that proper bug reports, translations, maintenance, or whatever). You obviously have never participated in such, or you'd have understood why and how it is the culture the Foundation fosters, with their Walled Garden ideology, creating hordes of "their customers" bothering other open source projects, demanding support, and at the same time, badmouthing everything except the Foundation products.Like you yourself did. Pi's all have a serious hardware USB bug, making them physically unreliable because the hardware can occasionally drop USB packets. This is worked around somewhat by tweaks in their firmware; it is "solved" by making it "statistically unlikely to occur". LOTS of SBCs are more reliable than Pi's; and claiming that other SBCs lacked the "software stability" of Pi boards is idiotic. Allwinner SoCs are definitely unreliable, because the manufacturer doesn't provide any info, and their entire support is based on reverse engineering and guesswork, but there are lots of SBCs based on other SoCs that are actually reliable. Pi boards are not.If you model the Raspberry Pi Foundation as a PR arm of Broadcom, their entire behaviour and choices become obvious and clear. It explains their stance (the core foundation team) and reluctance to directly interact with open source projects (because Broadcom), and so on.Is it wrong? Does that make them evil?Not evil, no. Like I said, if you are happy to work within the ecosystem supported by the Foundation, there's nothing wrong. Pi will suit you fine.For all other cases, there are better options than Raspberry Pi, for example some of the Odroid boards. With an eMMC module they're rock solid; don't have to look for a really reliable microSD card for boot media or anything. And the USB subsystem won't accidentally drop packets without notice.Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 11:58:05 pmHow about you stop imagining what I believe, and actually read what I wrote?They're not leeches, they're the nonprofit PR arm of Broadcom.I already said they use temporary and fixed-term hires to contribute, so that their core team does not have to interact with FOSS projects.It is their approach to the entire open source ecosystem that I dislike, creating "customer users" who refuse to accept the rules of interaction in open source projects (if you do not contribute your own time and effort in describing the problem and doing most of the work yourself, why the fuck should anyone else bother to help you?), and basically using a non-profit organization as the PR arm of a SoC vendor.How much do I dislike them? I dislike Allwinner even more, but still have at least one A20 SBC. If a friend needs help with a 'Pi, I'll help, and not mention my preferences unless they bring it up.But when someone asks about building projects –– possibly appliances –– on top of some SBC, I will recommend using something else instead.Sooner or later such someone will have to step outside the Foundation garden, and interact in the real world. I want their interactions to be mutually beneficial. To do that, they need to have a realistic understanding of how the projects work, and how to interact with them.Now, reread my posts in this thread keeping that last paragraph in mind, and ask yourself, which one of us is the zealot?

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 02:00:32 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 20, 2023, 01:26:43 amI read what you wrote. I'm confident the #patches I have in the upstream Linux kernel exceeds you. Beyond this I don't intend to engage further with you. You seem the type who wants to "win" via personal attacks and from what I've seen you demonstrate here, it's not a style of interaction that works well in the open-source community. Feel free to continue ranting .....

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2023, 02:19:46 am
content: Quote from: dorkshoei on January 20, 2023, 02:00:32 amYou remind me of a certain RedHat employee!@Richard Crowley:If you are familiar with RPi's, and are comfortable working with them within the Pi ecosystem, feel free to do so: you're not harming anyone, and everything is fine.Only if you intend to get some more understanding about systems integration, perhaps creating your own dedicated installation based on a suitable Linux distribution (Debian is an excellent basis, but there are many others as well), then looking explicitly outside the Pi land may be warranted. If so, look atmy reply #6as to what to consider and check out for yourself. Just be aware that the way things happen in Pi land is not how things work elsewhere, and a certain kind of tit-for-tat is implied: you need to show your own efforts first and be willing to do the work yourself, with others only helping a bit.

author: spostma
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2023, 06:55:16 pm
content: Indeed!rPi baremetal programming in C++: CircleOS:https://github.com/rsta2/circlerPi baremetal programming in FreePascal/Laczarus: Ultibo:https://ultibo.org/Both are great and deserve more attention than they get!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2023, 06:58:53 pm
content: Quote from: dorkshoei on January 19, 2023, 09:00:03 pmWhat else can they run? I thought the vast majority of Broadcom chips run Linux. I used to work for a company that made settop boxes and they were all Broadcom based and ran Linux, every router I've owned ran Linux. I was not aware of anything else that would run on the RPis.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2023, 07:04:27 pm
content: Quote from: spostma on January 21, 2023, 06:55:16 pmYep, mentioned both in this thread a few posts ago.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2023, 07:09:48 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 21, 2023, 06:58:53 pmWindows (including Windows 11) run on RPi and likely also Android. But both are really niche choices and not something that is super popular or supported.

author: dorkshoei
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2023, 08:53:19 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 21, 2023, 06:58:53 pmI think you should be quoting someone else as I agree with you.There has historically been friction between Broadcom and the open source community. Prior to the SoC era it was due to Broadcom being unwilling to release documentation for their wireless products. My Macbook Retina Pro laptop boots only Linux but still requires the b43 binary mess to get wifi working. So it's not truly open source.It has persisted into the Pi era due to the various binary blobs.https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=285875I doubt most Pi hobbyists care about such distinctions as the system is "open source" at the level they consider important. From this thread it appears some consider these users brainwashed fools :-/It's all a million miles from the OPs question on alternatives to the rPi under $50.

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2023, 01:45:03 am
content: Quote from: Psi on January 19, 2023, 09:04:05 pmAnother vote for LattePanda3 Delta 864, at least after playing with it for 2 hours.Not the cheapest SBC out there ($279, well over the OP's requested budgetary limit) but it comes with a Win10 IoT LTSC license, which is the least-crapified version of Windows currently available. It's fast enough to be considered a 'real' PC and used accordingly. Really digging this little board; thanks for the suggestion.

author: rounin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2023, 03:35:52 am
content: I like the i.mx6 / i.mx8 family. Documentation is really good. Things mostly just work. i.mx6ULL has graphics and can be bought for ~$55 at qty 100. Dev kit is ~100$ for a module and ~100 for a carrier from Variscite.https://www.variscite.com/product/system-on-module-som/cortex-a7/var-som-6ul-nxp-imx6ul-6ull-6ulz/I've designed these into a few things, but haven't actually used the video support. There are lots of vendors, I just have used these guy's and liked their documentation / example device trees / example debian images.Maybe not quite <50$ since you need a carrier board, and its only 50$ if you buy 100. Not sure if the video has much acceleration on the imx6.I don't think video is VGA though, its probably an LVDS interface for a TFT panel.

author: rounin
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2023, 03:37:27 am
content: But a key thing I like about i.mx is NXP gives you a few thousand page reference manual, support in mainline linux kernel is good, and you can get full industrial temp range and lots of proper industrial io interfaces to the card edge (eg, 8x uart, 4x i2c, 2x CAN) and can use most of them at the same time.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2023, 09:27:36 pm
content: I second the suggestion for the iMX6 and iMX8 SOCs. I have used these myself for several projects. The software is mature, the documentation is good and the manufacturer / community support is also very good. Maybe the iMX6 / iMX8 is a little bit more expensive but unless this is a high volume (>50k) product the lower NRE cost can easely offset the price difference. I'm not sure though whether the iMX6 is the best choice where it comes to long term product availability. The iMX8M-mini might be a better choice.

author: dobsonr741
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2023, 11:38:39 pm
content: How about a $5 VGA video card add-on to any of the no video out SBC candidates, like the Teensy? Would you settle with 1280x960 resolution?https://www.breatharian.eu/hw/picovga/index_en.html

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 21, 2023, 03:48:25 pm
content: why has the search for a single board computer turned into a linux contest?To the original question, RS recommend the Rock boards but they are dearer and unsurprisingly made by RS or at least a company it owns. RS used to be a contract manufacturer for RPi and the falling out may be part of the supply shortage although I am guessing that it comes down to shortage of the processors that RPi insist on using. Yes it took time but we converted from RPi to Rock4.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2023, 09:47:48 pm
content: So much useless/offtopic answers!$26,Banana Pi Zero m2$35,Orange Pi Zero 2$46,Orange Pi 3 LTS

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 08:20:50 am
content: Quote from: Simon on April 21, 2023, 03:48:25 pmBut then you are tied to Rockchip. Fine for doing projects that don't need long term support but what if you need to be able to produce a product for 10+ years? And how about manufacturer support for the software?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 10:11:20 am
content: The software is a linux application. This is kind of the advantage of a single board computer, linux is linux broadly. Where we had a problem was say doing auto brightness control for the screen as this requires getting dirtier with the OS but it was something we were happy to drop.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 02:00:31 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 22, 2023, 08:20:50 amFortunately, Rockchip is one of the rare manufacturers who actually push the support of their SoCs upstream to vanilla Linux kernels, and actually has developers working directly on the Linux kernel (submitting their changes to the Torvalds' kernel).This is key innot being dependent on the manufacturer supportat all. For additional info on Rockchip chips with Linux, seetheir open source Wikiand LKML.When developing Linux-based appliances, relying on manufacturer support is a major limitation. It means you cannot leverage the Linux kernel 'commons' at all, and even in the best case (when the manufacturer support of mainline tip ends in a few years like italwaysdoes) your maintenance workload is doubled: you cannot move to more recent mainline kernels because the manufacturer never supported those, so to include kernel commons (bug fixes, new features) you need tobackportthem to your old manufacturer kernel fork.Simply put, the development model you obliquely revealed, is absolutely non-sustainable long term with Linux. Youneeda manufacturer that pushes the chip support (for the SoCs and chips you intend to use) upstream to the Linux kernel proper, not keep it in "manufacturer support" or "SDK's".That way, the manufacturer support is not a limiting factor, but an additional support resource that can save you development resources. Win-win.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 03:40:09 pm
content: You are both misunderstanding: with manufacturer support I mean fixing bugs in any of the software and help to work around silicon bugs. There is much more than just the Linux kernel; that is just a small part. Typically you'll need to deal with bootloaders, signing bootloaders, generating register settings for specific memory, providing binary drivers for multimedia accellerators, etc, etc, etc. Actually I couldn't care less about a mainstream Linux kernel or specific kernel. The kernel is going to be fixed anyway because it likely needs some tweaks & extra drivers to work for a specific project. None of the embedded systems I have created using Linux has a standard kernel due to customer requirements going beyond with what the standard Linux kernel is equiped with. In addition, the manufacturer maintained kernel fork has the most recent fixes applied which may take longer to propagate into a stable mainstream kernel. You wouldn't want to run a release candidate kernel on a product that is to be sold. I very much prefer a stable kernel version with device specific patches applied to it. That way you know the base kernel is production grade.Upgrading a Linux kernel to a newer version is not worth it in most cases as you'd need to port product specific drivers, check the software for kernel specific requirements and revalidate / retest the entire product for regressions which costs a lot of money. The only reason to do this (= spend the money) is when it adds value to the customer but I have not seen the need to ever do this for 10+ years once a product has reached the production state. If it ain't broken don't ruin it.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 03:58:27 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 19, 2023, 08:48:47 pmThat's weird. A number of companies push additions to GPL3 projects through third parties, because of uncertainly over patent provisions in GPL3. Issues like that shouldn't affect the Linux kernel.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 04:39:22 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 22, 2023, 03:40:09 pmThe most problems I see in practice in embedded appliances using the Linux kernel are related to the systems integration, stemming from using horribly poorly set up vendor SDKs and example systems.I would never, ever build a product where I rely on binary kernel blobs inside a Linux kernel. They make kernel-level debugging non-fun drudge work with no guarantees of being able to fix the issues. I know this intimately: I have done this.Quote from: nctnico on April 22, 2023, 03:40:09 pmThat means you're stuck on that kernel for the lifetime of your product.My point is that if the manufacturer pushes most recent fixes to upstream kernels, with proper notes to LTS kernel maintainers to include them in long-term kernels, both you and the manufacturer win. You're not dependent on your personal relationship with the vendor (which currently generally involves recurring payments to work).If your device does not need the mutability and evolution of the Linux kernel, you're most likely better off using one of the realtime kernels or microkernels instead. Picking Linux only because it costs the least amount of money is rather stupid, long-term.Quote from: nctnico on April 22, 2023, 03:40:09 pmI disagree. I prefer an LTS kernel (currently 4.14, 4.19, 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, or 6.1) with minimal (code) patches, with all patches applied published (and suggested upstream).What you have described, isenterprise grade. (It is not a positive term.)I am extremely familiar with the approach, and I'm just saying it is not the most effective one, even if it is the one most businesses insist on.To be specific: If your main target is extracting value from open source and Linux, that approach is very effective. If, however, your target is providing good, robust products that actually do what your marketing materials claim and do actually do intend to support them for 10+ years, that approach is ineffective and especially costly in the latter half of the planned product lifetime.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2023, 04:52:23 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 22, 2023, 08:20:50 amThe OP didn't mention anything about that being a requirement. If it is then you probably shouldn't be using any of the <$50 hobbyist SBCs.

author: barshatriplee
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2023, 03:13:49 pm
content: Orange pi is an option.