Is BBB worth investing in at this point?

General Discussion
1

Hello. Just joined as I’m doing research for my startup in the sustainable energy space and am looking for a platform to base our compute capabilities on. I have some decent experience doing projects on the RPi platform and am trying to get up to speed on the BB platform. I have been a programmer and hardware hacker for a long time, although I won’t be doing the bulk of this work long term, as a founder, I am vested in the platform decision and want to make sure we’re making a good one.

On paper, the BB platform seems ideal. The BBB in particular seems perfect for our application as it allows a good amount of IO, reasonable compute speeds, decent memory and storage options, and supports a lot of comms protocols. Our requirements need a lot of environmental sensors (GNSS/RTK, temp, pressure, moisture, Hall effect/voltage/amperage instrumentation, compass/accelerometers, lots of relay/on/off switch stuff, etc). Our needs are not heavy compute like the BB AI boards are geared for, but lots of IO and compute of the “if this then turn on that” sort of compute in near real time.

From this perspective, the BBB competes very favorably with the RPi or ESP platforms in almost every aspect.

However, as I go to look for BBB to start prototyping on, I’m having trouble finding boards in stock anywhere. For most electronics distributors (Digikey, Mouser, etc), they are discontinued and have been for awhile. I’m specifically looking for the BBB wireless to start and I can’t find it available anywhere.

Also, I’m worried about support for various sensors and capes/boards, as our requirements need a lot of environmental sensors as I mentioned. I’m not expecting a ton of plug n play boards like you see on the RPi, and I know that some of those boards could even be adapted to work with the BB IO pins, but there just seems to be a vast dearth of choices that are BBB specific. This makes me feel like there’s just a general lack of support by vendors.

Lastly, as I read through the forums, I see relatively little community activity, and just a handful of names that speak with expertise and real world authority. This compared to very engaged and deep communities on the RPi and ESP forums. Most of the topics seem to be with basic “getting things to work” topics, like driver support or flakey OS configuration details, which concerns me that some of the software just isn’t fully baked. Our applications need to be fairly reliable (as reliable as hardware/software tends to get).

From the outside, I really feel like the BB project has everything we would want for our product sets, but don’t want to get into it and realize 6 months later that this was a dead end and have to switch development to another platform altogether. Especially the RPi platform, as it already feels limited for what we want to do.

So I ask for candor and objectivity as humbly as I can: would you start a new project on BB today? What are the pros/cons, particularly given the rough requirements I’ve mentioned? Are we missing something in our evaluation criteria that you would recommend considering?

Thanks in advance for your engagement and thoughts. Cheers!

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Can’t comment on the suitability to your project, but there are plenty of BBB in stock.

Mouser currently says they have 1630 BBB Green in stock with another 526 coming next week…Or maybe you are looking for a different model?

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Sorry, I meant BBB as in Beagle Bone Black. Yes, Mouser has Black and Green in stock, but not the wireless version of Black, which doesn’t show a replenishment until October. Also at a nearly 3x premium, which seems excessive for just Wifi instead of Ethernet.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/BeagleBoard-by-GHI/BBBWL-SC-562?qs=k%2Fsw%252B3Yi%2FUbELBjXQpiBUQ%3D%3D

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adding wifi dongle is an option, if your project does not use the USB 2.0 A socket.

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If you don’t need HDMI, check the Beaglebone Green from Seeed Studio. I use the Beaglebone Green for 2 different embedded applications and the Green has been working fine for me. I’ve shipped about 300 of them and I have not yet had a failure. The Green is compatible with the Black, except no HDMI.

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6

Couple thoughts.

Beaglebone Black, with its ease of access to on-chip-peripherals + expansion options, is a solid platform for embedded/home systems and prototyping. Whether that should or should not play a role in determining its value as an investment is worth careful consideration. While there is still apparently a market context for using the 32-bit Arm Linux Kernel, its important to qualify that with the current pace of 32-bit Linux development, which is quaint compared with that of 64-bit ARM and, increasingly, RISC-V architectures. Perhaps the first question you should be asking yourself is if 32-bit Linux is necessary for your purposes vs. if it’s more appropriate (with relatively no knowledge of your application) to use alternative HW – a microcontroller with eg. micropython or Zephyr installed might provide all the specific IO and basic programmability you need (and probably cheaper). Oh, and BTW there is a ton of community thread activity related to BBB on GoogleGroups… you might try searching Google for info re. low-overhead IO processing using the AM3358 PRUs.

Green Wireless has wireless capabilities on-board, as does the Blue, the latter of which is currently in-stock at Arrow for an eye-popping $16.

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7

Yes.

I am not afraid of it any way(bbb). We use it current designs, currently have one in testing for a new product that streams sensor data using tcp on wire.

Keep in mind the 8051 and 68hc11 are still in production, I used those back in the day when they were the big dogs. Same thing with bbb, that chip, opensource board layout, its not going anywhere.

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I get the legacy aspect of this and how it potentially satisfies the safety in numbers problem. What do you think about that version of the platform relative to some of the requirements I laid out? Are the more modern versions better suited for what we’re looking for?

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Lots of great points to consider here!

64 vs 32 bit. This is something I hadn’t considered previously. It will be difficult to keep up to date on OS and software if the chips only support 32 bit. Are the more modern versions of the BB able to run 64 bit kernels?

I’ll definitely check out the Google groups. I’ve only looked on this forum so far thinking this was the place to be.

Thanks for your thoughts.

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10

WOW!!

If you don’t order several of those it would be a big mistake. I have not used that one, however at the price you cannot go wrong.

You did not mention anything about graphics, that will be an issue. Big thing is you can buy a book about the bbb and it will get you up and running.

Clearly define your needs first, gtk, fltk, console, all of that makes a difference. On the bbb I use a nextion HMI on the uart port. If you don’t need to render dynamic content it is the best solution. Your SoC can focus on the business end of things, much better platform, so much easier to develop for. If you need to run Vulkan 3D you will have to get a metal box with a graphics card, at the other end of things. All of SBC’s fall short on horsepower or some feature that is critical.

Only opinion I would have regarding this is, clearly define exactly what is needed. Buy a board, before getting into the project make sure you have 100% control over the peripherals you need, light up a simple demo of the graphics package you will use. If you cannot get any of it running in a basic functionality test, ditch the board, then get another board. If you need more than “blinky” fully test that before getting in too deep. Its a very costly mistake…

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and i though my 45$ buy was good.
others are selling them for over 100$

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32 vs 64 bit is only an issue is your using a lot of cpu usage.
i use RPI4 for NVR, seen a big difference switching from 32 to 64 bit.
from near 100% with 32 bit, reduced to about 60% with 64 bit.
FWIW

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Good luck trying to order this. I’ve tried for 2 days. Their site has been having problems the entire time and still won’t process a credit card correctly.

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@BeagleCurious
well, it (arrow) took my info, 2 boards for 42.51 with shipping and taxes.
16.14 each
claims i’ll get them by 9/11
now i just need to find 2 new projects for them.

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With wifi those would make really cool security devices, plenty of opportunity there. I have a case of atomic pi in the basement just waiting for a cool hobby project. Got those for around $30 with a camera and breakout, I was doing the happy dance with that. I got even better after we did testing on them. That board and break out is rock solid, I was hoping that one would go main stream so they would build new ones using the intel platform. Pretty sure you will find something cool to run with that board.

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Yep, all the other boards currently listed at Board Selection - BeagleBoard besides BBB are 64-bit, including the new new BeagleV boards for running RISC-V.

Last I checked, updated 32-bit Linux kernel images for the Black continue to be released regularly. I assume that these updates are mostly security-related in comparison with modern features such as one might see in the 64-bit kernel, which has the momentous advantage of corporate investment driving development.

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Good luck!

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Been a couple years since attempting a desktop on my Black; mostly ran it “headless”
. Closest I came to a full blown DE was twm over VNC! This was around the time wayland was just coming out and think I remember 32-bit compatibility lagging somewhat behind 64-bit. Not sure where that stands currently.

Since then I have largely migrated to BeaglePlay and have been patiently sitting on my hands for full Vulkan support in Mesa.

19

Pretty sure you will have a long wait on that one.

Some of these companies are either flat out lying about vulkan compatibility or they are protecting the top 10% of their customer base from competitors. Its also hard to believe that vulkan will even run on SoC, have some GPUs in the metal boxes and they cannot run it. Plus that is a fairly healthy thermal issue. Yet, I see claims of Vulkan, no trial demo code to test it out. I do have an imx8 here and they shipped a demo, it is extremely good, however it cannot be replicated… So you know what that means…

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LOL just had to nerd out there a second! Rather not hijack this thread/ will continue to cross my fingers, though I am more than tempted to explore potential GPU applications on the AM625!