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Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days?

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On 5/14/2017 10:03 AM, Tim Wescott wrote:
> Got curious after a question on EmbeddedRelated.com -- is there a unified
> SBC market, or is it totally splattered?  20 years ago if someone said
> "industrial SBC" then there was probably a PC-104 board in the mix, and
> if they said "military SBC" then it was probably VME.
>
> I'm wondering if that's still the case, or if the world has been taken
> over by BeagleBxxx and XXXX-Pi boards.
>
> Hard evidence (i.e., what you've actually worked on or next to, or market
> surveys by independent third parties) is to be preferred.  Googling for
> market surveys doesn't lead to much satisfaction, but that could just be
> my lack of Google-Fu.

Before I started my current automation project, I canvassed the available
offerings with an eye towards just making "daughter cards" and "software"
so folks wishing to replicate my work could buy the bulk of the kit
from a third party (I don't want to manufacture).

There didn't appear to be a gorilla in the room.  Rather, trends that
seemed to change almost like "fashion".  I concluded this would be
a bad approach, for me, as I'd then be at the mercy of a SBC manufacturer
who might opt to abandon a particular model at any given time (leaving
me scrambling to modify my designs to fit some new offering -- from
that vendor or another).

The difference, now, vs. the 70's is that most hardware is cheaper and
smaller, lower power, etc.  You're not facing "card cages" to support
a large memory board, digital I/O, analog I/O, motor driver, etc. all
packaged in one box.

And, the tools available for designing those boards AND (more importantly)
the software that runs on them are far more affordable and available.
You don't have to BUILD a TTY in order to write code.

Instead, the "market" seems to have moved towards software platforms
that could, potentially, be hosted on different iron at the whim of
the platform developer/maintainer.  The downside is that there seems
to be a diminishing sense of "choice" as everything seems to be
a hammer, just differing colors!

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Thread

What are people using for single-board computers these days? Tim Wescott <tim@seemywebsite.really> - 2017-05-14 12:03 -0500
  Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2017-05-14 15:36 -0500
  Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-05-16 12:13 -0700
  Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-05-17 21:43 -0400
  Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-05-20 00:55 -0700
  Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2017-05-21 15:55 -0400
    Re: What are people using for single-board computers these days? jim.brakefield@ieee.org - 2017-06-01 21:24 -0700

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