Post by curious48 on Jul 9, 2016 23:37:41 GMT
There are a few PC boards between $5-$10, so I thought I would compare their mass quantity availability based on my recent research. This would be of interest to those who would be looking to embed them into an existing project.
The Raspberry Pi Zero is not even consistently available in a quantity of one. Counting on getting any large number of these units is a complete non-starter. The magic, unicorn feature of the raspberry pi zero would be mass availability, but this is not like to happen in the near future. The main reason for this is its extremely aggressive price point of $5, which is so far below the equilibrium price that sellers are selling them in up-marked starter sets, limiting sales to 1 per customer (if you can find it!) as a "loss leader" at retail, or tacking on excessive freight charges. (For example, $5.20 shipping, though the weight of the raspberry pi zero amounts to two letter-sized pieces of paper and its size is half of a business card). Therefore the Raspberry Pi Zero is completely unavailable in any appreciable quantity and will be for the near future.
The Orange Pi One is a $10 board that is very similar to (and in fact largely compatible with) the Raspberry Pi Zero. It is somewhat larger, has Ethernet and 2 USB ports, as well as a quad-core processor. Very importantly it is available in mass quantity (thousands) on very short notice. It is a real product that you can buy as many of as you would like, and receive very soon. On the other hand, its support is much poorer than that of Raspberry Pi Zero (especially on the GPU), which is to be expected given the Raspberry Pi's long history with media applications. Like the Raspberry Pi Zero, it also has a camera port. If your application supports it, the Orange Pi One is a product you can buy in quantity today. Buy one and test.
The C.H.I.P. is interesting, because its specs are extremely aggressive: in addition to matching the base specs of the raspberry pi zero, it is built-in 4 GB of storage, built-in WIFI, a second full USB, and bluetooth Low Energy (4.0). All this is worrying, because these are not cheap additions (especially WIFI and bluetooth), so that the price target is extremely aggressive and it is worrying to think that C.H.I.P. might itself be a loss leader (helping to sell peripherals and add-ons.) One point of difference with raspberry pi zero is that HDMI is not available by default, and it does not come from the same video and GPU background. All that said, as an embedded Linux computer it is extremely aggressively priced. At the moment mass quantity is not available. However, C.H.I.P. hopes to be able to fulfill mass orders (such as thousands) in the Fall. I was told by their support:
They are taking this interest very seriously, and I filled out a survey with what requirements I might have. So, within a few months it might certainly be possible to order in quantity.
While you can find other comparison tables on the Internet, here is a summary of the availability of these boards as of July 16, 2016.
The only one of these boards which you can use in mass quantity today is the Orange Pi One, although its support is spotty and some people complain of not being able to get GPU-related applications to work well.
The Raspberry Pi Zero is not even consistently available in a quantity of one. Counting on getting any large number of these units is a complete non-starter. The magic, unicorn feature of the raspberry pi zero would be mass availability, but this is not like to happen in the near future. The main reason for this is its extremely aggressive price point of $5, which is so far below the equilibrium price that sellers are selling them in up-marked starter sets, limiting sales to 1 per customer (if you can find it!) as a "loss leader" at retail, or tacking on excessive freight charges. (For example, $5.20 shipping, though the weight of the raspberry pi zero amounts to two letter-sized pieces of paper and its size is half of a business card). Therefore the Raspberry Pi Zero is completely unavailable in any appreciable quantity and will be for the near future.
The Orange Pi One is a $10 board that is very similar to (and in fact largely compatible with) the Raspberry Pi Zero. It is somewhat larger, has Ethernet and 2 USB ports, as well as a quad-core processor. Very importantly it is available in mass quantity (thousands) on very short notice. It is a real product that you can buy as many of as you would like, and receive very soon. On the other hand, its support is much poorer than that of Raspberry Pi Zero (especially on the GPU), which is to be expected given the Raspberry Pi's long history with media applications. Like the Raspberry Pi Zero, it also has a camera port. If your application supports it, the Orange Pi One is a product you can buy in quantity today. Buy one and test.
The C.H.I.P. is interesting, because its specs are extremely aggressive: in addition to matching the base specs of the raspberry pi zero, it is built-in 4 GB of storage, built-in WIFI, a second full USB, and bluetooth Low Energy (4.0). All this is worrying, because these are not cheap additions (especially WIFI and bluetooth), so that the price target is extremely aggressive and it is worrying to think that C.H.I.P. might itself be a loss leader (helping to sell peripherals and add-ons.) One point of difference with raspberry pi zero is that HDMI is not available by default, and it does not come from the same video and GPU background. All that said, as an embedded Linux computer it is extremely aggressively priced. At the moment mass quantity is not available. However, C.H.I.P. hopes to be able to fulfill mass orders (such as thousands) in the Fall. I was told by their support:
Currently you can pre-order up to 5 C.H.I.P.s at a time. We are working towards being able to fulfill orders of 1000+ C.H.I.P.s starting this fall.
They are taking this interest very seriously, and I filled out a survey with what requirements I might have. So, within a few months it might certainly be possible to order in quantity.
While you can find other comparison tables on the Internet, here is a summary of the availability of these boards as of July 16, 2016.
| BOARD | PRICE | REALLY? | MASS QUANTITY AVAILABLE? | POINTS OF DIFFERENCE |
| Raspberry Pi Zero | $5 | No. | No. (even 1x is hard to find.) | Smallest, best-supported (by far), 1x USB OTG, HDMI, Camera connector only. MicroSD card. |
| Orange Pi One | $10 | Yes. | Yes (1000x+ immediately) | Similar but slightly larger, 2x USB, built-in Ethernet, quad-core. Poorer GPU support. |
| C.H.I.P. | $9 | Yes. | No. Can preorder 5x, maybe 1k in the Fall. | 1x full USB, 1x USB OTG; on-board Flash; on-board Wifi; on-board Bluetooth LE; composite video |
The only one of these boards which you can use in mass quantity today is the Orange Pi One, although its support is spotty and some people complain of not being able to get GPU-related applications to work well.
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