After I visited Embedded World 2015, we found a growing number of industry people using Raspberry Pi for project prototypes or even in actual projects. Then I started to study the trend of using open hardware/open source SBC - Single Board Computer.
I bought 2 Raspberry 2 Pi Model B (HK$275 each) from RS. There is others online seller Element14(they are more for company than individual). I preordered on PS, it said 1 months and eventually, I got them in just 2 weeks. Now they are in stock, HK$310.
I was really surprised by the price and performance....HKD$275 for 900MHz Cortex A7, Qual-core, GPU, Open GL, OpenVG, 1GB RAM, 1080p30 H.264 video....
Giving the price/performance advantage, it did show up as popular SBC.
From post on linux.com, https://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/773852-top-10-open-source-linux-and-android-sbcs.
Top 10
1. Raspberry Pi Model B -- 1,136 (243, 148, 111)
2. BeagleBone Black -- 814 (154, 138, 76)
3. Odroid-U3 -- 194 (38, 31, 18)
4. CubieTruck -- 193 (36, 28, 29)
5. Banana Pi -- 186 (18, 41, 50)
6. Parallella -- 164 (32, 16, 36)
7. Cubieboard2 -- 158 (21, 27, 41)
8. A10-OLinuXino-Lime -- 138 (30, 20, 8)
9. Galileo -- 135 (11, 30, 42)
10. Udoo Quad -- 128 (19, 24, 23)
2. BeagleBone Black -- 814 (154, 138, 76)
3. Odroid-U3 -- 194 (38, 31, 18)
4. CubieTruck -- 193 (36, 28, 29)
5. Banana Pi -- 186 (18, 41, 50)
6. Parallella -- 164 (32, 16, 36)
7. Cubieboard2 -- 158 (21, 27, 41)
8. A10-OLinuXino-Lime -- 138 (30, 20, 8)
9. Galileo -- 135 (11, 30, 42)
10. Udoo Quad -- 128 (19, 24, 23)
Only top 2, Pi(32.2% 1st choice) and BeagleBone(20.4% 1st choice) have meaning number.
I/my company is considering use Pi for IOT projects. From the survey, the applications are
- Home automation,
- Education,
- Special functions servers,
- Robots/automated vehicles/crafts,
- Arts/entertainment,
- others CE,
- data acquisition/control,
- HMI/Industrial,
- others...
Their listed applications are
{Listed applications include Linux desktops, thin clients, XBMC media players, medical devices, weather stations, amateur and SDR radios, wearables, IoT gizmos, and automotive computers. Two particularly intriguing applications are "fish tank control" and "mining."}
Jack Wong
www.zetakey.com
