{"id":29086,"date":"2018-06-29T13:48:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T13:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/raspberry-pi-3-b-tops-hacker-board-survey\/"},"modified":"2018-06-29T13:48:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T13:48:44","slug":"raspberry-pi-3-b-tops-hacker-board-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/raspberry-pi-3-b-tops-hacker-board-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Tops Hacker Board Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The <\/span>Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+<\/span><\/a> won our 2018 reader survey as the most popular community-backed, Linux\/Android hacker board under $200. The <\/span>survey<\/span><\/a>, run in partnership with LinuxGizmos.com, asked readers to select their favorite boards from among 116 community-backed SBCs that run Linux or Android and sell for under $200. All 116 SBCs are summarized in LinuxGizmos\u2019 recently updated <\/span>hacker board catalog<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>feature comparison spreadsheet<\/span><\/a>. (Downloadable versions of the spreadsheet may be found <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The sample of 683 fell far short of the 1,705 survey respondents for the\u00a0<\/span>June 2017 survey<\/span><\/a> and the 1,721 voters in 2015, but it beat out the 473 total for the <\/span>2016 survey<\/span><\/a>. Considering the modest sample, the survey may not be highly representative of market share, but it\u2019s still indicative of enthusiasm. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To rank the boards, we used <\/span>Borda Count<\/span><\/a> scoring, in which we tripled the number of first choices, then doubled the number of second place selections, and added the two results to the unadjusted third-choice amount. The top 10 boards are shown in the chart below:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, which builds upon the RPi 3 Model B design with a faster Broadcom SoC, faster WiFi and Ethernet, and optional PoE, earned a Borda score of 811. This was about twice the score of the second place (414) <\/span>UDOO X86<\/span><\/a>, which is one of the most powerful of the handful of x86 based hacker boards. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There was a big drop to the next three boards, including the Odroid-XU4 (278), the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (277), which was last year\u2019s runaway winner, and the tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W\/WH (255). The remainder of the top 10 list includes the venerable sixth place BeagleBone Black (126) and the Raspberry Pi like Asus Tinker Board (112) and Odroid-C2 (95). The Raspberry Pi Zero (85) came in 9th and the BeagleBone Black Wireless (67) was 10th.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If you prefer a top 10 list based on first choice only, the top 7 rankings would stay the same, but the Odroid-C2, RPi Zero, and BB Black Wireless would drop lower. This would make way for the UP Squared, Odroid-N1, RockPro64, Orange Pi Zero H2+\/Zero Plus 2 H3\/Zero Plus 2 H5, and the Rock64, all of which had higher first-pick scores.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although the small size of the sample makes it difficult to read too much into the rankings, two trends seem clear: First, SBCs with Raspberry Pi like dimensions and 40-pin expansion connectors continue to do well. Second, it\u2019s tough for a new board to break into the top ranks, at least among LinuxGizmos readers. Seven of the top 10 Borda-ranked boards were also in last year\u2019s top 10, and the RPi 3 B+ was the only top 10 board that was not available a year ago.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A few newcomers did, however, break into our 11-20 ranked group, including the RockPro64, Orange Pi Zero H2+, and DragonBoard 820c. The top 10 list also includes a board that will never see the light of day. We included the <\/span>Odroid-N1<\/span><\/a> with the expectation that it would ship on time in June, but Hardkernel\u2019s Odroid project just <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> that the Rockchip RK3399 based SBC has been cancelled in favor or an Odroid-N2 model with an unnamed new SoC within 5-6 months. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Reader buying priorities and goals<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

In addition to asking survey participants to list their favorite boards, we asked about buying criteria and intended applications. The year-to-year consistency we’re seeing in the answers suggests that a 683 sample may be more significant than we thought. In ranking buying criteria, for example, the rankings were very similar. High-quality open source software again led the list as the top priority, while networking\/wireless I\/O swapped with community ecosystem for second and third places.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When asked about intended applications, home automation was again on top, but the previous second-ranked education category dropped several levels. Home multimedia and special function servers advanced to second and third place, and data acquisition and control also jumped considerably, suggesting a growing role for hacker boards in industrial settings.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a separate question about more general usage, the maker\/hobbyist segment once again led the way, but by a smaller margin. The other three categories increased, with the research and commercial categories seeing the largest gains.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Fifteen randomly selected survey participants will receive a free hacker board in the coming weeks. Many thanks to all the participants who voted, as well as the vendors who donated boards.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Join us at <\/span>Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe<\/span><\/a> in Edinburgh, UK on October 22-24, 2018, for 100+ sessions on Linux, Cloud, Containers, AI, Community, and more.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ won our 2018 reader survey as the most popular community-backed, Linux\/Android hacker board under $200. The survey, run in partnership with LinuxGizmos.com, asked readers to select their favorite boards from among 116 community-backed SBCs that run Linux or Android and sell for under $200. All 116 SBCs are summarized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux-freebsd-unix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}