How does Beaglebone look to you (aka: TI's AM335x Sitara line?).
I've played with it some but I'm no professional here. I personally do consider it a major contender thanks to OSD335x SiP modules (although I haven't built an OSD335x, the deadbug demo intrigues me: https://octavosystems.com/2019/04/12/osd335x-c-sip-dead-bug/).
Beaglebones have been the proving ground of numerous successful consumer electronics. The beaglebone itself isn't a platform but a vehicle for components that are bundled together on a custom board. It's a prototype and evaluation board for their OMAP line.
That being said I wouldn't recommend shipping an OMAP product in this day and age. Something with a MediaTek SOC is probably more palatable if you plan to spin up production at volume.
> It's a prototype and evaluation board for their OMAP line.
Oh, I see the confusion now. I didn't realize that Beagleboard was OMAP old.
I was talking about Beaglebone Black/Green, which is a 10-year-old design yes, but the AM335x line of Ti chips (while a decade old) seems well supported and working with mainline Linux.
Beaglebone Black/Green seems to be comparable to Rasp. Pi 1 or Rasp. Pi 2, though with far less power consumption, better documentation. I'm impressed by it, though I haven't made the leap into a custom design yet.
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But yeah, I guess I only became aware of Beaglebone around Beaglebone Black era / Sitara line. I always saw them as the "Industrial Rasp. Pi" if I wanted to reach for a more serious project, though I haven't really done any good electronics work back then. I'm doing a bit more of an electronics push these days again though.
I'm more interested in Beaglebone Black / Green because AM335x has 0.80mm pin pitch BGAs, which looks doable on OSHPark 6-layer 5mil trace/space.
More recent Beaglebone Play / AM625 has far superior specs (quadcore + CortexM4 onboard / etc. etc.), but 0.5mm trace is literally impossible at 5mil trace/space.
Any Cortex A8 would probably suffice. I've been out of the game for a while but there was definitely a vendor push to 64-bit SoCs for even mundane tasks, not to mention all samples being Android based...
If you can get away with something low spec then you'll be fine, generally. Board bringup for any Cortex A8 or similar is comically easier than for lines ending in double digits.
I found Rockchip much easier to work with than TI, fwiw.
Pretty much what the other comment said about the BB being proven etc.
Because of better support from TI, BB always had a more professional feel than the Raspberry Pi, specially for documentation etc. It's a fine chip, if you can source it (haven't messed with anything from Octavo, but it seems solid to me). All the software issues are pretty much solved and upstreamed at this point.
Yeah, building on a literally 10+-year-old chip feels weird coming in from the computer industry. But if its _still_ reasonably popular after this long, I think its clearly got some long-term legs to stand on.
I think the main advantage, for my hobbyist self at least, is the 0.80mm pitch BGA which is doable on OSHPark.
TI's more recent AM625 is 0.50mm pitch, which is too small for OSHPark 5mil trace/space, lol. Perhaps a bad reason to a professional but... I'm filtering out for chips that I can actually affordably make a PCB for on a hobbyist scale.
AM3352BZCZ100 is literally #6 on Digikey's list of MPUs right now with 6058 in stock (ignoring "marketplace products"). That's a singular SKU as well, multiple chips in the series means that in practice, the Sitara has more than enough supply.
Mouser also has 3000, 4000, 5000 in stock depending on SKU ( AM3357BZCZA80 vs AM3352BZCZA80). Easily 15,000+ at Mouser if you're not picky about the particular part in the series.
You may struggle getting 400-500k units in a single bin in Shenzhen, if that is your goal. If it's not, sure, go nuts. I'm from a world where we were spot buying 40k units multiple times a week to avoid being ransomed by manufacturing. I have no idea what the yield is like on those parts but TI's reputation proceeds itself in terms of truly off the charts "go fuck yourself" yields.
I've played with it some but I'm no professional here. I personally do consider it a major contender thanks to OSD335x SiP modules (although I haven't built an OSD335x, the deadbug demo intrigues me: https://octavosystems.com/2019/04/12/osd335x-c-sip-dead-bug/).