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back to article Raspberry Pi 3 tops SBC poll for self-brew hackers and Linux folk

The 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 has topped a poll of 81 single-board Linux and Android systems among Linux folk. The 2016 Single Board Computer (SBC) Survey saw the Raspberry Pi 3 slide into the number one slot ahead of the Odroid-C2 and BeagleBone. A Raspberry Pi 2 topped the SBC poll in 2015, only this time organisers reckoned …

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  1. Dadmin
    Facepalm

    My nipples implode with despair

    "How can a cheap, RISC, barebones system, without a bunch of crazy support chips (that we also make and sell for many $$) be beating the holy living crap out of our outstanding NUC systems that cost 10 times more?!" -- Chipzilla

    22 2 Reply
    1. theOtherJT Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: My nipples implode with despair

      To call the result "Unsurprising" seems like an understatement.

      Why use a Pi? Because it's like an order of magnitude cheaper than anything x86 and for the vast majority of people it'll be the only non x86 board they've ever heard of. Bit of a no brainer it seems to me, that.

      12 1 Reply
      1. Ben Burch
        Reply Icon

        And they are solid performers.

        I mean, what's not to like? Multi-thread, enough RAM, HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB ports, I/O pins, small, and cheap!

        There is very little you cannot do with it and it just plain works.

        5 0 Reply
    2. Ashley_Pomeroy
      Reply Icon

      Re: My nipples implode with despair

      My Raspberry Pi is full of eels.

      15 0 Reply
      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Re: My nipples implode with despair

        Really? Mines full of Penguins!

        8 1 Reply
        1. Stoneshop
          Reply Icon
          Headmaster

          Re: My nipples implode with despair

          Mines full of Penguins!

          Coppermines? (probably not in this case, because that's x86)

          1 0 Reply
  2. Howard Hanek
    Childcatcher

    Dare I Say It?

    ....out of a tiny acorn a mighty oak tree grows. There! Now I feel better having gotten THAT off my chest.

    Oak trees also don't suffer from 'exploding nipples'.

    10 0 Reply
  3. Robert Moore

    Community and price.

    No surprise that the R-Pi 3 is the most popular.

    The community that has grown up around it is fantastic. Very helpful, and hardly ever a RTFM reply to a question.

    Then there is the price. At the price for a R-Pi 3 if I make a critical mistake with my project and all the magic smoke escapes, I say a couple of bad words, then go online and order a replacement. No big deal.

    Now if I could just get a Pi Zero in Canada at a reasonable price, I would be a happy man.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Gene Cash Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Community and price.

      Plus with that large community you get cool add-on boards like the PiFace Digital (which runs my garage door, with limit sensors and all) and a dual CANBUS board that talks to my electric motorcycle and runs a small dashboard and some datalogging.

      I looked at Arduino, and it was US$85 dollars for a wi-fi shield. Ridiculous.

      The USB power is a hidden plus, as it means you can run it anywhere you have cellphone charging, so I can use the cigarette lighter jack in my car or my motorcycles.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Stoneshop
        Reply Icon

        Re: Community and price.

        I looked at Arduino, and it was US$85 dollars for a wi-fi shield. Ridiculous.

        Sounds like you're looking in the wrong place then. The average Chinese tat bazaar like DealExtreme, TinyDeal and BangGood has them starting from US$15, occasionally even cheaper. And even sites like Adafruit and Sparkfun have them for less than half of that US$85, including Arduino base boards with integrated WiFi.

        0 0 Reply
  4. Tom 7

    "it’s encouraging to see the growing interest in gnarly-looking circuit boards

    that require" a couple of leads to turn them into the gizmo of one’s dreams.

    4 0 Reply
  5. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Fun Factor

    That's what all the competition seems to miss. They take the whole thing too seriously - as if it's a life & death struggle.

    10 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    On that subject, does anyone know of a source for USB/HDMI cables with small plugs (that fit inside the socket, ideally)? The board itself is really tidy, but as soon as you attempt to do anything with it, it ends up looking like a bloody octopus.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Stoneshop
      Reply Icon

      Micro-USB

      If you need a micro-USB for supplying power: obtain one of those wireless charging gizmos you can fit inside a smartphone (such as this one http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Wireless-Charging-Receiver-micro-USB/dp/B00H7FJXCC/ Mind the orientation of the plug w.r.t. the cable) , open it up (they all seem to have the actual electronics and coil sandwiched between two plastic sheets that come apart fairly easily), figure out the polarity, unsolder the flatcable from the electronics and solder some wires on.

      For full-blown (micro-)USB/HDMI I'd start by looking at DIY plugs and male PCB-mounted connectors. I had no actual need for those, so I don't have links to usable items.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Micro-USB

        Appreciated Stoneshop. It's the HDMI and the full-size USB ports that are causing me the problems though. With all plugs in, the plugs and that bit of cable near the plug that you can't bend without wrecking it, you more-or-less double the size of the board in wasted space; which is important when you're trying for something portable.

        Not too worried about power - an eBay search for "5v 2A charger 18650" will bring up a shedload of cheap options (although if you see a £10 solar charger claiming to have 100,000 mAh don't believe it...it contains nowhere near that and also I left it outside for 2 days in Spain (only direct sunlight for 2hrs/day though) on half charge just to see what would happen, and it actually had less charge at the end...but it contains 3-4 phones-full of charge and fits in the pocket, so no complaints for ten quid).

        DIY plugs (also in HDMI flavour) (search terms of "DIY male type A USB plugs" "DIY male HDMI plugs", respectively, and the flat cable is referred to as "noodle cable") would do it, I suppose, and they're cheap enough but I generally try to avoid any plans that have me soldering as part of them. It's been 15 years since I accidentally soldered myself to my own keyboard and the kids still sarcastically run for cover, put crash helmets on and/or start laying out medical supplies if they see me with a soldering iron. Soldering irons hate me and 19 pins is just asking for trouble. Also worth noting is that you don't get any sympathy for self-inflicted soldering wounds...just more sarcasm.

        6 0 Reply
    2. Youngone Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      There you go

      Moiety asks a perfectly reasonable question, Stoneshop gives a great, really helpful looking answer.

      That's why Raspberry Pi is the best.

      9 0 Reply
  7. Chemist

    Micro-USB

    BTW - I have 4 Pi3 and they all work happily with a cheap USB/microUSB lead to provide power from a laptop and a standard ethernet cable to allow VNC. Quite portable if you want to develop software whilst traveling

    3 0 Reply
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow

    A whole 473 people surveyed, next you will be telling us that women* prefer a particular brand of shampoo.

    BTW this isn't about the RPi being best, I have over 50 in the field and an Odroid Csomething on the shelf.

    *another insignificant number.

    0 5 Reply
  9. OliP

    Yup - the only problem i've had with the Pi (any of them) is not having enough.

    Lost 3 to family wide-eyed syndrome already. (kodi)

    5 0 Reply
    1. Mystic Megabyte
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Disclaimer: I have no connection other than being a customer

      Now your birthday or Christmas present buying dilemma is solved!

      https://thepihut.com/products/kodi-edition-raspberry-pi-case

      0 0 Reply
    2. Ben Burch
      Reply Icon

      I can't see, to hang on to any of my older ones... As soon as a new generation comes along I find a need to give the older ones away to children, nephews, and co-workers...

      0 0 Reply
  10. Camilla Smythe

    Meh

    Every time I load Jessie on my B2, wheezy no longer available, and upgrade it bash auto-complete disappears...

    And do not even try to suggest to me that I should edit some bash resource file in order to get it back.

    Idiots.

    Presumably I should blame systemD.

    2 6 Reply
    1. Grifter
      Reply Icon

      Re: Meh

      Hi, going to assume you're talking about bash_completion and not just auto-completing filenames, the more advanced bash_completion is made available by the package bash-completion, it sounds to me like that package just isn't installed, so first step is to check that. If it is installed and you still don't have it enabled then we're unfortunately going to have to suggest you check your bash resources; check your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file if they contain:

      if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then

      . /etc/bash_completion

      fi

      That's the default one anyway, I mean you don't really need that whole if statement, you just need to source /etc/bash_completion really. Anyway, to get bash_completion going it's one of those two steps (or possibly both) that are giving you crap, and that's how you fix it.

      If I have misunderstood you and your problem isn't really with bash_completion, but rather just basic tab-hitting to auto-complete filenames and hitting tab itself has stopped working, may I suggest that you might have befucked your ~/.inputrc - this file needs to be copied from /etc into your home and then modifications added afterwards, if you just add a single modifier, _all_ other bindings will stop working, the file needs to be complete.

      If this still isn't the case I'd be rather interested in hearing more about your issue, sounds like an interesting puzzle (:

      5 0 Reply
      1. Martin an gof Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Meh

        Or - and this one has hit me several times with Pis that I'm using to play videos on loops - it's simply out of space. Tab-completion stops working when there's no free disc space.

        M.

        0 0 Reply
      2. Stoneshop
        Reply Icon
        Holmes

        Re: Meh

        You're replying to Camilla Smythe, known (but apparently not to you, yet) for stringing together techno-gobbledygook apparently to rile up other commentards and garner downvotes.

        Note that CS has, in this case, vehemently excluded the most obvious route to solving the problem. A tactic observed more often.

        0 0 Reply
  11. BlartVersenwaldIII
    Flame

    The Pi is an inferior product

    ...and yet is infinitely more desirable than the alternatives by the dint of being, y'know, actually available.

    Disclaimer: I bought a couple of first-gen Pi B's within about four nanoseconds of them being available via Farnell. Had an eye on tinkerating for a couple of household pet projects like an e-paper shopping list in the kitchen or a press-the-button-and-be-on-every-screen-in-da-house doorbell. Found the Pi lacking in many respects, not least of all shoddy network connectivity (which is still a bit shit TBH due to the way the SoC is designed).

    But actually... the Pi is still better than owt else out there. The closest I've found out there that meets my desires so far has been the Gameworks' awesome-on-paper Ventana SBCs... and they're not even available via their own website (despite being apparently a year old already) and especially not through anything so gauche as a UK reseller, perish the thought! Even then, the last gen models are still thrice the price of the Pi.

    And so I find, with the Pi, that with its rather spectacular community and third-party support, I can work around its shortcomings to many a degree. But even then there is fuck-all out there by way of competition, if only because no-one else is trying as hard as the RPi guys.

    aptitude install motion && goodnight

    1 0 Reply
    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: The Pi is an inferior product

      "aptitude install motion && goodnight"

      Surely if one is off to bed for the night it would be more appropriate to uninstall motion otherwise things might get messy.

      2 0 Reply
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fixed

    What a fixed pole

    The Raspberry Pi can not run Android a requirement and suffer over heating problems needing Intel size heat sinks..

    0 12 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fixed

      I'm guessing you voted leave?

      Bloody Poles....

      Why would I want a Pi to run Android?

      Never had one overheat either, even without cooling, they just run and run.

      10 2 Reply
  13. Mikel

    Been meaning to get me a few.

    Want to do a few maker projects. Garden control with automatic sensor driven watering, misting, and Internet monitoring via periodic picture email and on-demand live streaming for example. Maybe archiving periodic pics so I can make an annual time lapse movie.

    They seem to have cured the stock-out problems with this model.

    As for the gnarly circuit board, a broad variety of cases are available.

    1 0 Reply
  14. Simon Ritchie

    Or there's the Pine64

    I have a coupLe of Raspberry Pi 2 machines and they are lovely, but I also like the shiny new kid on the block, the Pine64. It's the result of a very successful Kickstarter project and it's not on the open market yet, because they are still running around trying to fulfill the Kickstarter orders. It is (or was, before some bunch of old romantics kicked the crap out of the pound) about £5 cheaper than the Pi, has faster networking and promises "almost full motion" (whatever that means" 4K video. The hardware is there but the drivers are not ready just yet.

    Oh, and it runs both Android and Linux.

    0 0 Reply

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