bbb vs raspberrypi2 - victronenergy/venus GitHub Wiki

We're comparing different single board computers, the BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi 2+, as these are most wide-spread, have the largest communities and offer most features and power for the price.

Conclusion so far: For Venus to run, both the RPI 2+ and the BeagleBone Black could be used.

Both are very similar in cost, for the BBB a USB hub must be added, for the RPI a CAN controller.

The BBB has 3 clear advantages over the RPI for this application:

  • The onboard 4GB eMMC flash is as fast as a class 10 SD card. So the BBB is fast out of the box. And better matches the CCGX, which also has onboard flash.
  • The BBB has an onboard-PMIC IC, that makes some kind of UPS function not too difficult to implement.
  • 4x UART

Special care must be taken to avoid problems when loosing power and/or LAN. The BBB sports 2 PRU's, that are like seperate 32bit µC's that can be used for real-time control.: PRU's

Comparison table

BeagleBone Black RPI 2+
1USB (Hub needed $2.50?) 4USB (Internal hub, LAN9514)
Onboard storage 4GB flash. eMMC flash is as fast as class 10 SD cards. Also microSD No, only SD card.
4 freely available UARTS and 1 for console. CAN bus on SOC. Performance should be way better that an external SPI CAN. Needs transceiver just as with Rpi. 1 uart Raspbian supports MCP2515 CAN controller ($1.40@ 100pcs)
100Mbit LAN 100Mbit LAN
65 GPIO 40GPIO
Open source hardware Proprietary hardware, even the Broadcomm SOC
Lower when idle (300...500mA) Comparable at load (500mA). Model A only 150mA
0.25mln pcs sold 6mln pcs sold (all models)
512MB RAM 1GB RAM
over 100 “capes” available (DCAN, RS485, USB.) Not all open source. Only a few pretty useless add-on “Hats”
(touch) LCD Addon available" (touch) LCD Addon available"
$55 $42
VE.bus via MKIII (like CCGX) (Needs UART) VE.bus via MKIII (like CCGX)
Internal PMIC can handle safe shutdown in case of power failure. Prevention of Flash corruption should be done in the file system Will corrupt SD card in case of power failure. Needs to be solved in File system
2 PRU’s (µC's for real time applications) none
datasheet available No datasheet for the broadcomm BCM2836

Future proof? AM3359 EOL?

From the forum:

BeagleBone Black at this point has no processor future due to TI's dead end road map. We are working on the BeagleBoard-X15 which is the next product to come out. Due to the form factor of the BBB, it cannot support the AM5728 processor. The BBB is just too small, but it does fit in the Altoids box. Gerald

The AM335x was introduced 2010, so until >2020. Device status is “active”

It is unclear if TI still actively pushes support for the Sitara chips.

Other issues

Beaglebone USB hotplugging: didn’t work in 2013, not 100% if it does now. The BeagleBone has a seperate connector (J1) for the debugger console. And UART3 wich is TX only. So UARTS 1,2,4,5 can be used all 4, which is great: 3x VE.Direct and 1x VE.Bus,

Any other SBC’s?

Pandaboard, UDOO, MinnowBoard, BeagleBoard-X15, all too expensive >$75, Or (appear to) lack maturity, such as the Banana Pi,/Pro.

2016-06-10: added some more intesting boards: