Pandora Buying A Beagleboard While Waiting For Pandora

[efegea]

I'm planning to get a BeagleBoard, as I'd like to have Pangea GUI running on actual hardware before the Pandora gets released.

I don't have too much money, so I have to think a lot about it before I buy one. Do you think is a good idea or is better to just wait for the Pandora? Is there something I must know before I decide to buy it? I don't know much about it yet.

 

[lulzfish]

I've been thinking about this too.
The thing that bothers me is that there's no LAN port. Apparently they removed anything that could be replaced with a USB device, so they expect you to buy your own network adapter. There's not even wireless on it, because you can get a USB wireless adapter.

Kinda ruins the "single-board computer", really. Jerks.

 

[JayFoxRox]

I own a beagleboard revision B myself and was let down by it. I was REALLY pissed off by the support etc.
Here is my story:
I knew about the beagleboard because I heard about the Pandora before and also wanted it as devboard just in the case that I would order the Pandora. When I saw the 3D Videos on youtube I was amazed and bought the beagleboard.
I thought it would do the 3D stuff shown in the videos. I didn't have a digital monitor at that time so I was happy to see that there is a video-out port. I had a TV-Capture-Card so I thought I could just output the video on my computer screen. In order to make it more optimal I decided to also buy a VGA-Box so I can also use the beagleboard without my computer.
So: The beagleboard was around 120 euro, I expected some cost for import tax. That was about 30 euro. The VGA-Box was 50 euro. Thats it I thought when the beagleboard arrived. However: one week later an mail rolled in asking for additional tax: 20 euro. Heyho!? Right.. Import tax is not all it seems. So that makes it: 170 euro only for the beagleboard + 50 additional euro so I can use the board without my pc = 220 euro.
If you thought thats it, no!
I received the board and had to find out that my power-plug (5V - hot center) doesn't work because it doesn't provide enough current, even tho it should. Additionally the revision B is missing the USB Host port so I had to buy an cable for it and a powered USB Hub.
So I went to the electronics store and got a universal power supply for the beagleboard: about 20 euro I think. Then an ethernet network adapter for 5 euro, active USB Hub for about 15 euro and I bought a USB cable for 10 euro which I had to modify afterwards - so I wasted 50 euro for additional items.
If you thought that this would be the end of the story you are dead wrong.
At home I connected everything and fired up the beagleboard. Now what I had to find out was that the video out didn't have a driver back then. So I had to wait more than a month for christmas and got a new monitor so I could use the beagleboard - another 200 euro.. + a DVI-D cable which was another 20 euro
Additionally, the SGX didn't have any public drivers back then which made 3D impossible which was shown in the videos. No real support because TI didn't give me the drivers, even more than one month after asking for it I didn't have a reply.
Now I was there after christmas with a "working" beagleboard. Working as in getting it to power up and to the angstrom desktop. However: Everything was kinda slow and a lot of applications gave kernel panics.

I consider the beagleboard to be one of my worst decisions of my life as a customer.

Ofcourse, software is more stable now and the revision C should have a working USB Host Port, but still.. I wasted about 500 euro for the whole thing and wish I had it spent in another way. The monitor wasn't really a beagleboard only thing because I still use it as my main monitor now etc. But even without it, its still about 300 euro.

Until now, I only got the SGX to work one single time and all I was able to do with the beagleboard so far was browsing the internet until the next kernel panic.

 

[javaJake]

The BeagleBoard is not designed for the average user who expects everything to come in a nicely wrapped box. The BeagleBoard is meant to be used by hardware and low-level software hackers. For everyone else, the BeagleBoard will have quite the learning curve.

My experience is not too far off from JayFoxRox's, but I went into this knowing I'd be in slightly over my head. For starters, I tried to get as few accessories for the Beagle as possible. Big mistake. The powered USB hub, I2C-to-serial converter, DVI or S-Video adapters, power cord, a card reader (if you don't have one), and an SD card you don't care about destroying are all necessary. The $120 price tag is for the base unit, but you should really add another $50, at least.

Even then, you're given a Beagle with no software. You're expected to go out into the wild, find a kernel, find a Linux Angstrom/Gentoo/whatever tarball, format the SD card precisely as instructed, and then tweak your own system kernel and terminal settings to communicate properly with the Beagle through the serial port, and then perhaps networking (if you can figure out NAT on Linux, which is a pain).

All in all? Be prepared for a challenge. The hardware is not too far off from the Pandora, but the entire Beagle "experience" is not meant for every-day consumers. Don't be discouraged - it can be done with patience and time - but don't expect an easy cushioned ride.

If you do decide to purchase a Beagle, look at this list. It's pretty accurate to what you need: http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/...ardShoppingList . Buy things you don't think you need. For example, I didn't get the case. Now my Beagle is starting to go on me, likely because of dust and constant handling. The case would've protected it. Another example: buy one of the recommended networking USB devices. Networking through a host PC is a real pain. One last example: if you have a DVI or HDMI monitor/TV, buy the appropriate adapters (and skip S-Video if you can).

 

[ldesnogu]

It perhaps was your worst consumer decision because you did it based on a 3d video seen on youtube
When I got my BB, I already had everything in hand that was required because I had spent a few weeks looking at tutos, discussing with devs and so on. This is not an end-user product, it's a development board, so you have to look yourself at what you need.

OTOH most of what you say is true (except that you can buy in Europe directly now IIRC so that you wouldn't have to pay taxes).

To sum up: the BB and the Pandora have very different markets; using a BB waiting for a Pandora can only be justified if you are a developer and have enough money for it (plus don't forget, you need a PC with a serial port; these tend to disappear, and USB serial cables are not all very reliable).

 

[hlidegp2x]

lol, i'll second JayFoxRox. If you are not a hardware and linux geek, you are totally lost and alone. I have a BB rev. B which has no USB host. The decision about how to power up the board was another annoyance too. So basically, you need :

- to buy a HDMI-to-DVI-D cable
- to buy a USB hub with its own power adaptor + a USB to 5mm Jack to power up the board
- to have a serial cable (RS232) to use it as a terminal (a little buggy on rev. before C)
- to have a linux machine so you can build kernel and linux images and tranfer them into SD

well, that's too much for me for what i wanted to do with.

 

[TheGoodDoktor]

I have a rev C Beagleboard and I'm very pleased with it. I wasn't going to get one originally as I was planning on waiting for the Pandora, well what do you know - I got impatient!
This board is definitely not for the beginner in fact I'd only recommend it if you are planning on developing for it. You also really need a good working knowledge of Linux although that can be learned on the way (making the learning curve even steeper)

I would say that if you're thinking of getting it to run software then you should be prepared to build the software yourself.

On another note related to the initial post, you can get a really nice little USB hub with Ethernet integrated into it. Plug that into the host port, attach a keyboard & mouse to it and you're away! You'll also need a good regulated 5V power supply. I can dig up links on where to get these in the UK if anyone is interested.

One note of caution is that you WILL need a monitor with a DVI input, the Beagleboard only provides a digital signal so you can't use only of those DVI->VGA converters.

I've had mine for just over a month and I've managed to get 2 commercial games running on it using the SGX and even managed to debug them remotely on my PC. It can be frustrating to work with at times but for me it has been the stepping stone to the Pandora that I so badly needed.

 

[efegea]

Well..

-I consider myself a linux geek. I run gnu/linux 24hours/day since I was 16 (that was on 2001) first debian, and then gentoo linux since 2005. Linux is not a problem for me. Neither is having to use a terminal (as in serial terminal, I have built a few serial cables, for routers and even one for a 8086 amstrad PC which I used as a terminal just for fun-and played a movie using mplayer and aalib, it was fun :lol The only thing I can't do is kernel level coding, but I don't think I'll have to do that on the beagleboard. I even have built my own linux system from scratch, so linux is not a secret for me
-I already know what buying a beagleboard means, in the terms of hardware and linux "hacking". I've investigated about it before posting this.

-I have serial cables, crossover and normal ones. Also a linux machine with serial port. Well, a few of them.
-I have a DVI-D TFT screen, why is the HDMI-to-DVI-D cable needed? I though it had a DVI-D port, not a HDMI one.

But I'll have to buy the things I don't have, thanks for the tips! Anyway, I still haven't decided what I'll do. I'll think about it..

 

[TheGoodDoktor]

The only thing I can't do is kernel level coding, but I don't think I'll have to do that on the beagleboard. I even have built my own linux system from scratch, so linux is not a secret for me
-I already know what buying a beagleboard means, in the terms of hardware and linux "hacking". I've investigated about it before posting this.

-I have serial cables, crossover and normal ones. Also a linux machine with serial port. Well, a few of them.
-I have a DVI-D TFT screen, why is the HDMI-to-DVI-D cable needed? I though it had a DVI-D port, not a HDMI one.

But I'll have to buy the things I don't have, thanks for the tips! Anyway, I still haven't decided what I'll do. I'll think about it..

It is DVI-D but through an HDMI socket (probably for size reasons) it isn't full HDMI as TI specify on numerous occasions! (I think due to licensing).

 

[darkblu]

sorry to hear about your tedious experiences with the BB, guys. that's always a probability with such niche and/or experimental boards aimed at non-consumer markets. i just want to mention that in contrast my recent efika (an exotic low-power ppc board) purchase was one of the best purchasing decisions in my life - the board costed me 100 usd (it's in clearance at most online stores that still carry it), and then i also spent 75 cad more on a radeon pci card (not that i couldn't have used another cheaper/free one, i just wanted this particular ati chip), and finally, 45 cad more for a 2.5" mini pata hdd (which, again, i could've easily spared but i wanted to have a dedicated drive just for this setup). so the setup costed me ~230 cad + ~20 more for the board's shipping.

software setup was almost a breeze - took me slightly more than a weekend to setup, and that's all because of my mistakes - wasted most of the time trying to figure why the efika's usb bus was shutting down on me half-way through some transfers, until i realised the self-powered usb hub i was using was grid-unplugged and thus overloading the low-power board! also, wasted some more time with a corrupt ext (formatted from osx) partition.

lessons learned, i could setup a similar board for about .5h from scratch now, and i've been in ppc heaven with this little setup; i've been using it for various development tasks. the moral of the story (which was already spelled out by Laurent) - be well prepared with these purchases. most often it's not the product's fault, but buyer's wrong angle with it.

ps: i don't consider myself a linux geek by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[JayFoxRox]

I was thinking that the Pandora would come in december and therefore decided to not wait for the beagleboard C revision because I was thinking I would have my Pandora in hands by then.

I planned the purchase of my beagleboard just like others - but there was little information and I expected the video out to be working because I haven't heard anything else (no, I even read that it works - which it does: but not under a linux distro, all it does is play the Tennis video in the test image).

Also there was no information that the SGX wasn't having a driver yet. All they said was that you had to ask TI about it. However: I didn't know that TI was THAT slow. I expected it to take about 1-2 weeks and not more than 4 weeks - I still didn't get a reply btw. More than 6 month later

Laurent: I can't see how it would be bad to make the final decission because of the 3D videos. I mainly thought about switching from PSP to beagleboard / Pandora because the SGX was said to have a programmable pipeline which the PSP doesn't provide. The performance of the videos was pretty good and I decided to buy the beagleboard. I had the required hardware:
- S-Video to VGA (VGA-Box) | Doesn't work because S-Video doesn't work under linux
- Power supply with 5V, correct plug | Doesn't work because it doesn't provide enough power it seems, even tho it should
- RS232 cable | Worked!
- SD card | Worked!
(and I knew I would have to buy a USB adapter cable and a USB hub)

Ofcourse I did check the requirements and was prepared to pay more, but if I read "3D support", "Linux", "Video-Out", "USB Host" etc. I expect these to work.

I own a lot of microcontrollers, some dev-boards for other hardware and worked with routers (//Edit: More specific: router hardware ) which had a better support and were easier to use - I would expect a device like the beagleboard to have better support.

 

[viridior]

I also bought a BB rev B for Pandora development. The buy guide that javaJake put up is an excellent resource to use as a checklist for crucial items, if you don't follow the list then you know what you got yourself into.

Most BB users use Angstrom. This is a mixed blessing. The good thing is that you can likely download an image, follow the instructions (exactly) and get your BB working (loose term) within an hour or two. The bad thing is that the devs often use an automated build and you may have to go back a few images and kernels, mix-and-match, until you get a good stable configuration. The kernels are almost always a complete hit-or-miss and they get updated frequently.

If you are not interested in using Angstrom there are a few popular alternatives and quite a few projects for porting other OSes. Gentoo (we have a working image that we use for pandora development), Debian, Ubuntu, Openmoko, *BSD, etc, etc have been ported with more-or-less success.

I would say that a BB would be good idea if you are doing pandora dev work and also have a contingency plan to use it for media-center/multimedia net device. DO NOT get it if you just want to install Angstrom and think that you are going to mess with high-level configurations/installs without a good understanding of low-level OS inner-workings. Almost everything on the BB is under development and may break every other update.

Quite a few of the Gentoo embedded devs have BBs and are working on its development. You can join us in IRC FreeNode#gentoo-pandora if you would like to discuss specifics. Good luck.

 

[ldesnogu]

.

Also there was no information that the SGX wasn't having a driver yet. All they said was that you had to ask TI about it. However: I didn't know that TI was THAT slow. I expected it to take about 1-2 weeks and not more than 4 weeks - I still didn't get a reply btw. More than 6 month later

Laurent: I can't see how it would be bad to make the final decission because of the 3D videos.

I'm surprised by what you write, because when I got it back in August all the community knew about all these issues. There was plenty of information. But I probably got all of that because I was spending time on BB IRC channel, and for the 3D stuff I've learned never to trust manufacturers that promise that a driver release will happen soon :rolleyes:

 

[JayFoxRox]

Ironicly enough, I also have been on the IRC and read almost the whole wiki etc.
It should be somewhere in the logs then.

And about the SGX Driver: I knew that the driver would be far away because they announced to release it soon so often before (*cough*like openpandora*cough*) and still never came up with a final, public release*cough again*.
But it was said that you could get it by sending them in email - which didn't seem to work for me.
So these are actually the only 2 Points I'm pissed off about:

- Non-Working video-out with any of the linux-distros so you can actually use the desktop without a digital monitor | There might be information now since they changed display driver (?) but the commands mentioned here: http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxHints didn't work in any pre-compiled linux image for me.
- Bad support by TI and lack of information | Solved because the drivers are more or less public now, but why do I have to bitbake them myself? I don't have enough hdd-space for that so I'm screwed AGAIN.

I'doubt you can blame me for buying the beagleboard.
The only point where I think that I was stupid, was that I bought the revision B and didn't wait for revision C because I was ignorant enough to think that the Pandora would be shipped "in 2 month"
Additionally the thing which pissed me off most besides the problems with the beagleboard itself, was the additional 20 euro I had to pay one week after the beagleboard arrived because I didn't expect that - I still don't know what that money was good for. I knew about the 30 euro import tax but additional 20 euro?! That sucks.

 

[efegea]

Well, now that I think about it, running my inteface on the beagle is not that different than running on my desktop pc. Perhaps I can't know what the perfomance will be, but anyway I don't think performance would be a problem when running an interface. If I want to run it on real hardware I should just wait for the Pandora, because anyway the beagle doesn't have a 800x480 4,3" touch screen and I won't be able to adquire one. Pandora's keyboard and game buttons and sticks can be "emulated" by usb keyboard and gamepad, touchscreen by a mouse, but I will never get the same experiencie than running on a real Pandora. So buying a beagle will be an error for sure.

 

[ldesnogu]

Additionally the thing which pissed me off most besides the problems with the beagleboard itself, was the additional 20 euro I had to pay one week after the beagleboard arrived because I didn't expect that - I still don't know what that money was good for. I knew about the 30 euro import tax but additional 20 euro?! That sucks.

Isn't that an UPS thing? I know that on top of custom taxes they add some money because they took care of customs...

 

[Tor]

Yeah, UPS works OK but they screw you a bit on the taxes. For my board they artificially increased the BB price by 30%, and calculated the VAT I had to pay from that inflated price. They call it 'statistical adjustment' or some such. And then they also charge some additional sum to cover their flawed VAT handling.

But I knew about that before I ordered the BB, UPS does it the same way with everything. So all in all I got what I expected when I ordered the BB (I happened to know that it is a development board, not a single-board computer.. ). The only thing I'm missing in my setup is a good case. I would've liked that nice Special Computing case, but unlike DigiKey they charge a lot for shipping and shipping makes the case almost 3 times as expensive. Plus the UPS tax on everything increased by some 'statistical' factor.

 

[Squidge]

Last time I ordered something via ups the parcel arrived and I wasn't asked for costs upon delivery. A week later I received an invoice from them which I refused to pay on the grounds that I never gave them permission to setup a credit agreement in my name. They sent another letter with the usual legal jargon which I also ignored, and never heard from them again.

 

[younghifi]

efegea:
You are right in your last post Just for the sake of testing your interface software prior to the shipping of Pandoras doesn't really justify buying a BB IMHO. Never mind that you've obviously got the know-how to run a BB . It's just common sense.


One thing that would be cool though is if it would be possible to setup a virtual Pandora on our PCs. With qemu for instance. After a bit of googling I found this:
http://code.google.com/p/qemu-omap3/wiki/Q...map3_for_Gentoo

I've read on IRC that the beagleboard images for qemu are still a bit "flaky", but then again, maybe we should try and make something similar for the Pandora devs?

 

[warmi]

Well there is another option ... the latest iPhone 3GS with Imagination Technologies SGX GPU ( the same as in Pandora) - it supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and 1.x etc ..