09-14-2016, 06:30 PM
So whilst the board was over-hyped, making people expect more from it than it could deliver, and are now understandably annoyed, I do have to agree with Marcus that it is a very powerful board for it's price. I bought a Cubietruck (CT) two (or 3?) years back for around $120 (so only 3 times more expensive!) when it was released, and it has arguably similar specs... (yes I know, it has a SATA, but has 2 less CPU cores and is 32 bit, but also has onboard wifi/BT and battery support). I bought it for the GbE capability, as the ethernet RPi was, to be frank, useless. Due to the ethernet and USB being on the same chip, when the ethernet was used to share files from the USB, it would consistently and erratically drop it's ethernet connection. The CT had a separate ethernet controller, and it was GbE to boot. After re-configuring the pine64 to get more sensible network speeds, the pine64 can give a board that is three times it's price a run for it's money (when transferring to and from the USB). So it certainly has potential, but then again I'm also happy with it being a more development board than a media center board... but certainly don't think that my intended useage is the norm... far from it, considering the marketing.
I remember when the first Raspberry Pi Bs came out, and had issues with power, due to the protection polyfuse placed on the input, which they promptly advised people to bypass, as there was a faulty batch. Then there was the small snaffo they encountered during manufacture when their manufacturer realised it integrated the wrong ethernet jack, soldering a non-magnetic port into the circuit board. Not so good if your network capable model can't go on there internet.... bet they were glad they could that one during manufacture, before they made it into the wild!
So whilst we're here singing praises of the Raspberry Pi... it wasn't always as good as it is now. It has taken time, and the pine64 has the potential to get as good with a good community behind it. For it's price point, once the teething gremlins such as software de-optimisations, hardware flaws and spread out or non-existent documentation are resolved it will be a nice board. It has a faster processor than the Raspberry Pi (RPi) (actually no, RPi 3 is the same speed and 64bit also), has facility for built in wifi/bt (RPi 3 has onboard), has more memory than the RPi (only the Pine 2GB, as RPi 2&3 both have 1GB ram), has GbE ethernet (when it works, and even when it doesn't, unless the RPi finally fixed their crappy shared USB/ethernet host design, even the 100MB link on the pine64 will be more reliable than the RPi), has a PMIC allowing for USB and battery power (which the RPi does not have - you'd have to look at the Banana Pi for that).
And yes, shipping was a fiasco... and still is for some people (myself included... I'm still waiting for that board and case!!!). So I feel the pain also, but look at thinks a bit cynically after backing more than few kickstarters. That plus the fact they got 55 times the backing they were aiming for, so it's just a wee bit hard to scale up things up that much! I wasn't expecting a glossy instructions manual, and a genie in the bottle to walk me through using the board, etc... but I was expecting something better than what was provided, based on on the marketing, and other products that are on the market. However, that wasn't the case, so it's better to try and help out, and get it there, so that we can stop worrying about that, and get on with using the board and having a fun time!
Moving forward, I'd like to see the wiki opened up for editing, as that is the more sensible place to be putting documentation and how-to guides. More stickies need to go up on the forum, particularly in the newbie/startup thread, linking to known issues, documentation and how-to guides. It's the little things like that that make a big difference, especially since due to the low price of the pine64 board, a lot of people are willing to give it ago, even if they don't know anything about SBCs, linux, etc. It will all come together eventually, it just takes time as this is a community effort, and we are doing what we can in our spare time...
I could easily go on and on, as there are a lot of things that went wrong (ABS case, GbE failures, RPi compatability, lithum battery connector), and went right (GbE ethernet(?!), price, GPIOs, modular wireless). However, I just want to point out that it wasn't all good, and it wasn't all bad. And progress is being made - it's just that communication is not a strong point of this project at times. As you can see from the recent product release, efforts are being made to improve on that, and things will get better for the pine64 board as well given
I remember when the first Raspberry Pi Bs came out, and had issues with power, due to the protection polyfuse placed on the input, which they promptly advised people to bypass, as there was a faulty batch. Then there was the small snaffo they encountered during manufacture when their manufacturer realised it integrated the wrong ethernet jack, soldering a non-magnetic port into the circuit board. Not so good if your network capable model can't go on there internet.... bet they were glad they could that one during manufacture, before they made it into the wild!
So whilst we're here singing praises of the Raspberry Pi... it wasn't always as good as it is now. It has taken time, and the pine64 has the potential to get as good with a good community behind it. For it's price point, once the teething gremlins such as software de-optimisations, hardware flaws and spread out or non-existent documentation are resolved it will be a nice board. It has a faster processor than the Raspberry Pi (RPi) (actually no, RPi 3 is the same speed and 64bit also), has facility for built in wifi/bt (RPi 3 has onboard), has more memory than the RPi (only the Pine 2GB, as RPi 2&3 both have 1GB ram), has GbE ethernet (when it works, and even when it doesn't, unless the RPi finally fixed their crappy shared USB/ethernet host design, even the 100MB link on the pine64 will be more reliable than the RPi), has a PMIC allowing for USB and battery power (which the RPi does not have - you'd have to look at the Banana Pi for that).
And yes, shipping was a fiasco... and still is for some people (myself included... I'm still waiting for that board and case!!!). So I feel the pain also, but look at thinks a bit cynically after backing more than few kickstarters. That plus the fact they got 55 times the backing they were aiming for, so it's just a wee bit hard to scale up things up that much! I wasn't expecting a glossy instructions manual, and a genie in the bottle to walk me through using the board, etc... but I was expecting something better than what was provided, based on on the marketing, and other products that are on the market. However, that wasn't the case, so it's better to try and help out, and get it there, so that we can stop worrying about that, and get on with using the board and having a fun time!
Moving forward, I'd like to see the wiki opened up for editing, as that is the more sensible place to be putting documentation and how-to guides. More stickies need to go up on the forum, particularly in the newbie/startup thread, linking to known issues, documentation and how-to guides. It's the little things like that that make a big difference, especially since due to the low price of the pine64 board, a lot of people are willing to give it ago, even if they don't know anything about SBCs, linux, etc. It will all come together eventually, it just takes time as this is a community effort, and we are doing what we can in our spare time...
I could easily go on and on, as there are a lot of things that went wrong (ABS case, GbE failures, RPi compatability, lithum battery connector), and went right (GbE ethernet(?!), price, GPIOs, modular wireless). However, I just want to point out that it wasn't all good, and it wasn't all bad. And progress is being made - it's just that communication is not a strong point of this project at times. As you can see from the recent product release, efforts are being made to improve on that, and things will get better for the pine64 board as well given
(09-14-2016, 09:38 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote: So the two serpents were unleashed ! 1) shipping fiasco, and 2) unsatisfied expectations.
That's just autopsy with minor, but fair, blame. The questions that should be asked at this point are how to move forward 'realistically' and how to set 'reasonable' expectations in the future?