What is funny is that it still seems to be expected that everyone who buys a BBB should be required to have the capability to make it work correctly. Your argument is valid but still only for a small proportion of buyers. Think of all the people out there who have brought a BBB to maybe be a step up from their Arduino. They have never used linux etc, its a hell of a learning curve.
It find it hard to believe that it should be expected that everyone who buys a BBB should have had at least (say) 5 years of linux experience before they even consider buying one. This is targeted at a wide range of users, which includes hobbyists who have never touch embedded development boards before. The price of the BBB is irrelevant. What is relevant is there are a ton of people stuck, and a bunch of experienced linux people who are capable of fixing issues and making the BBB work as they require, slagging of everyone else who is not capable and saying they shouldn't have purchased in the first place. Or that all these inexperienced users should harden up and take a concrete pill and figure it out themselves. Ridiculous. Swap places and see how far you get. Making GPIO do things, writing basic application code etc, basically turning a BBB into a glorified Arduino, no problem for most people and that is something that can easily be learnt. Rewriting kernels and drivers so supplied hardware even works, this is a problem for most people. Bringing up a discussion to talk about this, how this constitutes as whining or complaining, I don't know. This topic has gone way off topic anyway. End of the day we have great hardware, no one is complaining about that. End of the day we have crap supporting software and now it seems no official (paid) developers, and issues relating to kernels which most users are not capable of fixing or understanding themselves. This is what we are talking about. Terry. On Thursday, 2 January 2014 10:42:29 UTC+13, William Hermans wrote: > > You know what I find "funny" ? > > That here is one hell of a piece of hardware ( complete system ), that > costs $45( very good price ), that works very well if you're willing to > spend some time working on it ( software ). And all a bunch of people on > this list can do is complain, find conspiracy theories, or otherwise just > try to find something wrong with it or the situation. > > There is *NOTHING* better out there right now as a learning platform. > PERIOD. In fact, not only is it a very good learning platform, there are > people I know for a fact who use MANY of these in commercial type > applications. I have talked to 1-2 people who claimed to have purchased 100 > or more of these, and have talked with several people who have over 10. > Here, we own 2, and eventually we will probably own many more. > > Is the BBB perfect ? Well that is debatable, and really depends on your > needs, but I would say no. Nothing ever is. But for the price, there really > is nothing to complain about. Now if you're incapable of working with the > hardware to make it do what you want. You know what, that is your own > fault. Compulsive buyer is probably how I would initially label these > types. These people can try and twist words from this source and that, but > the truth of the matter is that this system is a learning platform, with > very good potential. *IF YOU'RE WILLING TO WORK AT IT. *Or does every one > else here think we're able to have a complete Dell like support situation > for $45 ? Right . . . keep dreaming. > > Now if these people would come on the list asking for help stating that > x-y-z does not work with x-y-z platform, using x-y-z software etc. Many > people would offer to try and help, even myself. But the same situation > with the exception of complaining about it, pointing fingers, trying to > find conspiracy . . . yeah I have absolutely zero sympathy. You know what > else, I have no idea who works for TI (still ? ), who does not, and what > the motivation is for this project for ANY of the companies involved. Go > out, take the schematics / gerber files etc. Send them off to some PCB fab > company, and TRY to have even just the PCB's made for the same price as > what circuitco sells the PCBA for . . . Gratitude for ya . . . > > Now to the guy talking about the Cortex M3 MCU's, and how they seemingly > went out of production overnight. If you had paid attention to the errata > for these processors in the first place you never would have thought about > using it. Not for anything serious anyway. TI replaced these with Cortex > M4's very quickly, not to mention there are other Cortex "equivalents" ( > geared towards safety, automotive etc. ). > > Anyway, I need to stop as I am starting to scare myself by sounding too > much like a TI Evangelist ( which I am not) But some of you seriously need > to wake up to a fresh cup of reality. > > > On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 1:11 PM, David Anders <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> >> On Wednesday, January 1, 2014 6:55:38 AM UTC-6, Anguel wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wednesday, January 1, 2014 1:37:02 PM UTC+1, Elena Grandi wrote: >>>> >>>> This theory has a problem: Beagleboard.org was born in 2008 or so, >>>> much earlier than the Raspberry (which started to be known to the >>>> public in 2011, and was available in 2012). >>>> >>> >>> Ok, I admit I am not much aware of the way Beagleboard.org worked before >>> the lower-cost Beaglebones were introduced, but it has always been driven >>> by marketing, initially aimed at colleges, according to Wikipedia. >>> I just want to make clear that big companies don't do anything without >>> profit. >>> >>> >> here is the thing: TI has nothing to do with beagleboard.org other than >> they sell the processors to circuitco to make the boards - that's it..... >> >> have a quick read - http://beagleboard.org/about >> >> >>> >>> >>>> >>>> Of course the success of the Raspberry did influence BB.org's >>>> products: back in 2008 the standard price for this kind of >>>> boards was around 150$ (e.g. the original BeagleBoard) and it had been >>>> slowly coming down to just below 100$ (e.g. the BeagleBone White): >>>> it was Raspberry and its extreme corner cutting that brought >>>> prices down below 50$, and other producers had to adapt their >>>> offerings. >>>> >>>> >>> I totally agree. Nobody would buy a BBB for $150 when you can get a >>> Raspberry Pi. But prices of other HW components have probably also dropped >>> significantly since the old days. >>> >>> >> here is the thing: in 2007 when beagleboard was started, the only other >> open hardware platform that was available was the arduino. the idea of an >> open hardware platform was very new. in addition in 2007 you could not >> purchase an arm development platform for less than $1000USD! beagleboard >> was the FIRST arm development platform that cost less than $200 and it was >> the FIRST arm open hardware platform.... >> >> so.... beagleboard has been and always will be the driving force for low >> cost open hardware platforms... >> >> >> Dave >> >> >>> Anguel >>> >> -- >> For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "BeagleBoard" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected] <javascript:>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
