[time-nuts] looking for low-power system for gps ntp timekeeping

NeonJohn jgd at neon-john.com
Tue Jul 2 01:43:43 EDT 2013


Before anyone wastes his money on a BeagleBone, I suggest you join the
mailing list and read the hundreds of messages each day that pass
through, most of them citing problems, mostly with the Linux implementation.

Basically, the ancient implementation of Angstrom Linux is a POS.  Just
barely enough code to be able to say, for example, that SPI works.  It
does - sorta - but not well enough for any application where clock
timing or jitter matters.

I had intended to embed the BB white in my next revision induction
heater.  After several months of frustration and a considerable amount
of money to a kernel programmer to write drivers that actually worked, I
gave up.  I could easily had a man-year in the application that I can do
bare metal in a few months.

The thing that finally canned the BB for me was the short SD card life.
 Even though the implementation uses a virtualized root file system, it
still writes to the SD card about once a second.  The result is that
even industrial grade SD cards rarely live over a year.  With the Black
they tried to address the problem by putting some NAND memory on board
but that only prolongs the problem and with components that are not
easily changed.

A final negative is the support.  The team member, a guy named Gerald,
who provides official support on the mailing lists is one of the most
hateful persons I've encountered on the net. No, I never personally had
an encounter with him but I daily shook my head in amazement that TI
would let such a person rep them.

PS: Before you go to buy the Black, take a careful look at what all they
left off in an effort to compete with the Pi.

PSS:  I have a couple of Whites, one unopened, and a prototyping board
for sale.  Cheap :-)

John



On 07/01/2013 11:14 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:
> Thanks.  I didn't know there were two kinds.  This is more useful for only
> $5 more.


-- 
John DeArmond
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
http://www.fluxeon.com      <-- THE source for induction heaters
http://www.neon-john.com    <-- email from here
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net
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