Bigger BeagleBone Blacks
It’s been hard to get the BeagleBone Black(BBB); limited production capabilities have fought with some big adoption stories. If you are unfamiliar with the BBB, its a small board computer in the same size factor as the Raspberry Pi, but with eMMC storage, micro-SD slot and lots of I/O pins – what it lacks in media player cores, it makes up for in clock speed.
Thats “hard to get” nature is about to change though according to a blog post. Production is being ramped up at CircuitCo where they are also upping the storage from 2GB to 4GB which will give more breathing space to the new Debian distribution being shipped on the eMMC of BeagleBones, replacing the previous default Angstrom Linux. The upgraded boards will be referred to as Rev C BBBs. The price will likely be going up to cover the extra memory and production ramp-up but with a back-orders for 150,000 units, CircuitCo are going to be busy.
There’s also a new logo program for the BeagleBone line with Farnell/Element14 being the exclusive licensee. They don’t need to work out how to make BBBs though, for the last year their subsidiary Embest has been selling their own version but only in China. The logo program means they’ll be able to sell globally and it should see even more BeagleBone Blacks out there.
Thoughts on Raspberry Pi’s Module
You’ll have most likely seen the announcement of Raspberry Pi’s SO-DIMM sized module which incorporates the Pi’s SoC with 4GB of eMMC storage on a stick for popping into custom designed boards to provide compute power. That eMMC storage is more than just standing in for an SD card; its fast and having used devices with eMMC storage its a great upgrade.
Right now, the Foundation is pushing this as a way to bring the Pi ecosystem to the world of embedded devices. But are they missing a trick? Alongside the Compute Module is a Generic I/O board(pdf) which brings out most of the pins in a more accessible fashion. That means you can plug in HDMI, USB, two camera ports and two display connectors – not on the I/O board is the Ethernet port, implemented on the Pi as a USB device, and SD card slot.
It got me wondering though… what about a Pi Board for the module which made up for that gap, maybe even put WiFi on board. Packaged right, the Compute Module could be used with it to give an upgradable “Pi Pro”. But would you want a Pi Pro? What more would it need to make it distinctly better from the Pi.
Over in China, there’s companies who’ve already decided what they want in their own improved “Pi” – take the Banana Pi with a dual core AllWinner A20 CPU, gigabit Ethernet, SATA interface, IR reciever, three programmable buttons on board and all in a package the same size and layout of the Pi, including having the IO pins in the same location. Sounds super, all it lacks is one killer feature – anywhere to buy it from.
Codescaling 
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