Raspberry Pi vs MK802

http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2012/11/raspberry-pi-vs-mk802.html

by bconway • 14 years ago

44 44 14 years ago

jeffhoogland.blogspot.com

dattaway• 14 years ago

I'm not seeing any I/O pins on the MK802, which I thought was the reason for the Raspberry Pi. Not much hardware hacking potential without these pins.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

The original "reason" for the Raspberry Pi was just to be a super cheap computer that kids could pick up and learn to code for like they did with the old BBC (or VIC20/Commodore 64/Apple II/TRS-80/Atari 8bits/etc). At least, that's what the Raspberry Pi foundation was pushing as the reason.

The GPIO pins and the fairly fast gpu for video rendering were secondary things.

The Raspberry Pi somehow or other really caught the zeitgeist at the right time. It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price, but it is by far the most widely known and thus there are huge network effects that make it a good device to be tinkering with.

This situation is quite similar to smaller microcontrollers where in the minds of many people that whole segment has become nearly synonymous with the Arduino despite the fact that there are many other options, some of them just as capable but far cheaper (eg. TI's MSP430 which you can buy for less than 5 bucks) and some about the same price but far more powerful.

Of course, once all the software, tutorials and/or hardware "shields" crop up for the mind-share winner, that platform certainly becomes the most convenient to hack on and then that popularity feeds on itself. In both cases hopefully the entry device serves as a gateway for the interested hacker, but not their final destination.

beagle36• 14 years ago

> It isn't the only kid on the block doing what it is doing, even when you consider price,

Can you point to others in the price range ($35) that come close? And from your intro above, I would guess "what it is doing" includes GPIO?

ollybee• 14 years ago

This is comparing against an MK802 II there is a recently released dual core version, newer models also have an extra full size USB port. http://store.cloudsto.com/dual-core-rikomagic-mk802-iii.html

mmagin• 14 years ago

It seems like they fit a different need -- the differing number of USB ports and wired/wireless Ethernet are what most users are going to care about.

(Sure, you can use a USB hub, but then you're into another rats nest of cabling.)

hvdm• 14 years ago

The manufacturer of the MK802 claims a processor speed of 1.5 GHz. The CPU runs at 1.0 GHz, the GPU at 500 MHz. They add this to get 1.5 GHz. LOL

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

This is a pretty poor comparison given that the RPi has full linux, hardware accel, etc. The MK802 is not nearly as open. No results about XBMC playback, etc :(

sciurus• 14 years ago

I think the great advantage the Raspberry Pi has over the Mk802 and other Allwinner A10 based devices right now is the community resources.

Let's say I wanted to install Debian on the Raspberry Pi. I can go to http://www.raspbian.org/ and find a healthy project and well-organized documentation. What if I wanted to install it on the MK802? After a lot of googling and skimming results, I'd probably end up at http://linux-sunxi.org/Debian if I wanted to build the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem myself or http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 if I trusted somebody else's work. The experience is very different.

This is why I'm hoping http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod succeeds. I think what they plan to do is exactly what the A10 platform needs to succeeed with hobbyists-

    Maintain a community forum and wiki
    Provide source for everything we create and share it on Github.
    Provide a package repository for the PengPods.
    Provide prebuilt images, with updates as available.
    Provide tools, scripts and guides as we go.

drivebyacct22• 14 years ago

The Allwinner A10 is being outpaced by its competition for the same price. It's too weak and anyone watching this space knows how far to bet on Allwinner for anything.

neverm0re6• 14 years ago

Community resources? The Raspberry Pi has almost zero hardware documentation, a closed black box controlled by a massive binary blob and an absolutely despotic PR disaster named Liz Upton who actively insults and derides developers and others in the RPi community.

Here's a fun excerpt from http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221 :

Liz: ... keep trying to rustle up some outrage if it gives you a kick; I’d recommend finding something else to do soon, though. We don’t want you developing an ulcer.

Developer: Am I allowed to be outraged by the fact that it’s not really open, since I see no mention of actual documentation for the hardware? Or by this: http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ ? Can I get outraged by that?

Liz: Well you /could/, but you wouldn’t half look silly.

Nice going, Liz. That's right, anyone who actually wants to make full utilization of the hardware they paid for is 'silly' and we're only rustling up outrage for 'kicks' when you post a press release announcing how open source you really aren't.

Here, have a nine page thread of people complaining they were banned under weak, insane excuses like 'concern trolling' because they dared to mention things like 'your supplier isn't sending me anything' and 'My SD card gets corrupted when I unplug the device sometimes': https://www.element14.com/community/thread/20081

It's got massive hype since it's a $35 Beagleboard, but otherwise it's bringing nothing new to the table that hasn't been done by others and increasingly done better by other devices.

The remainder of the situation seems to be a collection of people more interested in their awards, hype and press releases than their actual users and developers on their forums. Frankly, there's quite a few ARM SoC boards out there with GPIO pins and all the bells and whistles of the Pi, many of them have even beefier hardware. None of them have this horrible baggage and all of them will run the same software for the most part.

So that's great that many people are going to target this device, but it's hardly an 'exclusive port' to the RPi. The real bet to back is Linux on ARM.

Personally, this board gets me much more hot than the RPi and prices are only going to come down on similar future boards: http://www.arndaleboard.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

_b8r02• 14 years ago

Hmmmm... That's a bit shady, especially charging for MPEG-2 support and other codecs. Not quite sure what they're getting at there.

subsystem2• 14 years ago

"Linux on ARM" has already been won by Android. That's why many ARM SoCs comes with closed Android drivers.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

Having met one of the key RPi developers, I think the issue of "open design" was a trade-off. They could get a high performance SoC with "closed BLOBs" at a cheap price, and still achieve the the educational goals of the board.

guiambros2• 14 years ago

Don't want to speak on behalf of the R-Pi foundation, but you're taking things out of context. This whole thread was disgusting, I wanted to puke reading such douchy comments - from both sides. Example:

Developer: Remember who you are talking to here, and i am currently talking to the developer of the freedreno driver, and the guy REing the tegra, and we are all shaking our heads in disgust over the brashness of this announcement.

Liz: > Remember who you are talking to here Seriously?

Developer: Definitely... Google me.

Yes, R-Pi folks should have clarified that while opening the userland code was definitely a good move (which was the topic of the blog post btw), the videocore blob was still closed - and probably will never be open-sourced.

And while this is fine for most people, some folks will still be frustrated - and they can always vote with their time and money. It'd be much more effective than writing self-aggrandizing comments, regardless their individual achievements.

Let's face it, it's a design trade-off, not the foundation's choice. You know, Broadcom-trade secrets-yadda yadda. May change one day, but I wouldn't bet on it.

HN, as usual, had way more civilized comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692401

mongol• 14 years ago

I agree with this. Raspberry Pi has a community momentum. Looking at every aspect of its hardware, it might not be the best, but it has the momentum to overcome it.

dgerges3• 14 years ago

Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads widely ? Otherwise there are plenty of platforms that would be better for learning programming starting with a simple browser no ?

ConstantineXVI• 14 years ago

You can't program on bare metal or arbitrary hardware I/O with just a browser. And running the OS off a SD card makes recovering from screw-ups easier + less costly, so less barriers to tinkering vs. a "real" PC.

dgerges3• 14 years ago

You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers.

For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you could use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.

dgerges3• 14 years ago

I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)

beagle36• 14 years ago

It's supposed to be a new "BBC Computer". The excitement is trivial if you had ever used one (or it's peers of the era, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC or Oric Atmos -- though the BBC was head and shoulders above the rest when it came to learning to program and tinker). If you haven't - it might take a while to explain (and I'm not going to try in the HN comment box - read about the BBC Master, watch the show "Micro Men", and read about the history of Acorn and ARM if you are interested).

I think it can be summed us thusly: RPi is a project by people who grow up during the golden time of British personal computing - who are trying to reestablish the magic.

Lerc• 14 years ago

Chip wise this is the BroadCom BCM2835 Vs the AllWinner A10

The AllWinner Clearly has the better CPU with a Cortex A8 compared to the ARM1176JZF-S. It's almost twice the speed clock for clock on general code and more so if using things like NEON.

Video decode seems sufficient in each one since both can decode 1080p and then some.

GPU is rather hazy. The BCM2835 has VideoCore IV, The A10 has a single core Mali-400 I haven't seen any real head to head comparisons on straight GPU performance. If anyone knows of a comparison I'd be interested. If anyone has both devices running similar OSs I'd be very appreciative of some benchmarking.

For IO the Raspberry PI wins over the MK802, but the CubieBoard is another A10 device that is better yet again. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cubieboard . The biggest advantages of the CubieBoard are SATA and EtherNet (the R-Pi Ethernet is USB based) VGA is also available from the headers which is a big plus if you are aiming for older monitors.

zemanel• 14 years ago

pardon my lack of electrical engineering conaissence but would it be feasible to use a solar power supply to power these devices ?

orthecreedence• 14 years ago

If the wattage output of your solar panel is greater than the wattage input of the device, then yes.

rwg• 14 years ago

In early 2010, HN went bonkers over Panic's 46" LCD TV dashboard:

http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

It's rather nice, but they picked an expensive (>$2000) TV with an embedded x86 PC designed for digital signage applications.

Since the bottom has fallen out of the consumer LCD TV market, you can now get a brand-name 46-inch LCD TV for about $600. A low profile wall mount will set you back less than $40. One of the various MK802 incarnations will set you back less than $80, and if you pick the right stick incarnation and TV, the TV can power the stick through the HDMI port, meaning that you just give the TV power, plug the stick into the TV, and you're done.

One caveat with the MK802-alike Android sticks is that there are a lot of variants out there, and not all of them use a chipset that's properly (GPL'd drivers w/ source code available) supported by Linux proper. Also, the feature set varies widely. But if you do your homework before buying, I have no doubts that a giant status dashboard thing that's functionally equivalent to Panic's could be created for under $700.

zobzu2• 14 years ago

Everyone talks about having the gpu/vpu/dsp/you-name-it that can decode hd with drivers.

Except, even with drivers, some movies still lag, for example, try http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/h264_1080p_hp_4.1_40mbp...

Yes it's high profile 40mbps 1080p. But then again, if you want to play files from a box and all you do is play baseline blurays, then I don't see the point. I believe such a box should play "anything" HD.

The page also report their own tests http://www.auby.no/files/video_tests/

Bird certainly lags to death on my exynos 4210

DannyBee• 14 years ago

The hardware decode blocks in each processor/GPU/etc are rated to handle certain bitrates at certain profiles. The tech sheets usually specify. Going over those bitrates is usually death on these types of CPU's. They don't put much work into software decode, and even if they did, it wouldn't even come close.

A lot of the cheaper ARM SOC's folks are talking about have decode blocks (either in CPU or GPU) that can only do H.264 high profile @20mbps or 30mbps at best.

By comparison, intel hd graphics (even the oldest ones) will support decode of at least 40mbps of high profile h.264 (and newer ones often have no problem with 100mbps). Nvidia's purevideo hd and ATI's UVD can do the same, obviously.

Realistically, if you want a box that plays stuff out of the mainstream (and honestly, mainstream is 20-30mbps or less right now) you have to pay more for it.

sauce71• 14 years ago

You can run Linux and XBMC on the MK802 add an Arduino to get hardware pins and you're where most of the Pi ppl are. I got them both, haven't booted the Mk yet, but I think it would be nice to use it for running my Reprap and hook up a webcam so I can monitor it in the basement. Could use the Pi also, but I don't think it can handle the camera simultaneous. Or I use the Pi and use the MK as Mediacenter or use the Mediacenter to run my reprap ... Or something :-)

Raspberry Pi vs MK802

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