04-12-2016, 10:19 AM
My primary reason for buying the pine is the same as many boards of its nature:
1) what can i do with the gpio
2) can it do pps on the gpio for ntp relatively accurately (the pine has 2 very attractive qualities for this; gig ethernet thats not on usb and should have very accurate gpio)
3) how well would it go as a server in various roles
4) how much performance you can get out of it as a router.
For some reason high accuracy time keeping has been something i cant seem to lose interest in, and these days its kinda harder to do it with off the shelf hardware then it used to be (ironically). The older serial connections on x86 used to be perfect, but more modern ones actually cause accuracy issues. The RPi's have become a popular platform for it due to how popular the platform is in general and how cheaply it can be done, but the rpi has usb connected 100m ethernet (both of which degrade its accuracy). The RPi can be out-gunned by an even cheaper and much lower spec'd chip in the atheros ar9331, but 100m holds it back a little and sometimes the lack of grunt can be a minor issue. The Pine should be just about perfect, i hope.
1) what can i do with the gpio
2) can it do pps on the gpio for ntp relatively accurately (the pine has 2 very attractive qualities for this; gig ethernet thats not on usb and should have very accurate gpio)
3) how well would it go as a server in various roles
4) how much performance you can get out of it as a router.
For some reason high accuracy time keeping has been something i cant seem to lose interest in, and these days its kinda harder to do it with off the shelf hardware then it used to be (ironically). The older serial connections on x86 used to be perfect, but more modern ones actually cause accuracy issues. The RPi's have become a popular platform for it due to how popular the platform is in general and how cheaply it can be done, but the rpi has usb connected 100m ethernet (both of which degrade its accuracy). The RPi can be out-gunned by an even cheaper and much lower spec'd chip in the atheros ar9331, but 100m holds it back a little and sometimes the lack of grunt can be a minor issue. The Pine should be just about perfect, i hope.