Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi vs. CubieBoard vs. Gooseberry vs. APC Rock vs. OLinuXino vs. Hackberry A10

Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi vs. CubieBoard vs. Gooseberry vs. APC Rock vs. OLinuXino vs. Hackberry A10

A long time ago, Earth was ruled by dinosaurs. Then they died and we began to play with Motorola HC11.
These were prehistoric times, when debugging involved an oscilloscope. (Yes, I am that old.)

Then Massimo Banzi invented a new single board: Arduino.
And everyone was happy. At last, prototyping was easy, cheap, and fast.

Then the unexpected happened: David Braben invented the Raspberry Pi. Everyone became happier. Prototyping became easier, cheaper, and faster.

The story does not end here: now we have CubieBoard, Gooseberry, APC Rock, OLinuXino, Hackberry A10, et caetera.

Each one of them is different. Here is how:
PDF filePDF file

Board name Price Version Licence Community Docs Processor Clock Speed SoC GPU RAM Memory Max Memory GPIO Analog In Analog Out USB USB host Ethernet Wifi HDMI VGA Video out SD µSD Audio out Audio Line In Mic. In Sata Infrared Linux Android Android Play Store
Arduino Uno $27 20€ Rev 3 CC BY-SA 2.5 HugeHugeHuge Very Good ATmega328 16Mhz / / 2KB 32KB 32KB 14 6 No 1 Optional Optional Optional No No LCD out via GPIO Optional Optional Via GPIO No No No Via GPIO No No No
Arduino Due $53 39€ Rev 1 CC BY-SA 2.5 Growing Very Good AT91SAM3X8E 85MHz / / 96KB 512KB 512KB 54 12 2 1 1 Optional Optional No No LCD out via GPIO Optional Optional Via GPIO No No No Via GPIO No No No
Raspberry Pi, model B $35 26€ Rev 2 ? HugeHugeHuge OK ARM11 700MHz Broadcom BCM2835 VideoCore IV 512MB None 32GB via SD 26 No No 2 No Yes Optional Yes No Composite Yes Yes No No No No Yes Not stable No
CubieBoard $49 36€ Rev 1 ? Growing OK ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Mali-400 1GB 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD 96 No No 2 1 Yes Optional Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Gooseberry $63 46€ Rev 1 ? Growing OK ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Mali-400 ? 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD None No No 0 1 Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No No No Possible Yes ?
APC Rock $79 59€ Rev 1 ? Growing OK ARM Cortex-A9 800MHz Wondermedia Prizm WM9950 ARM Mali-400 512MB 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD 24 No No 2 1 Yes Optional Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No No Possible Yes No
A13 OLinuXino Wifi $74 55€ Rev. E CC BY-SA 3.0 Growing Very Good ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz Allwinner A13 ARM Mali-400 512MB 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD 68/74 No No 3 1 Via UEXT Modules Yes No Yes LCD Out Yes Yes No Yes No No ? Yes ?
A10 OlinuXino ? ? TBA CC BY-SA 3.0 Growing ? ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Mali-400 1GB 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD 132 No No 2 1 Yes Optional Yes Yes LCD Out Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No ? Yes ?
Hackberry A10 $65 48€ Rev 1 ? Growing OK ARM Cortex-A8 1.2GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Mali-400 1GB 4GB NAND flash 32GB via SD None No No 2 0 Yes Yes Yes No Composite Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes ?

If you see any error in this, please feel free to leave a comment below.

If you want to play it safe, you should probably go with an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi.
If you are more audacious, it will depend on your need.
I like the CubieBoard a lot, even if its GPIO pins are 2mm (really painful…) instead of the usual 2.54mm (1/10 inch).
The A10 OlinuXino seems to be very promising.
Arduino vs. Raspberry Pi vs. CubieBoard vs. Gooseberry vs. APC Rock vs. OLinuXino

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Benjamin Bellamy

Paris, Beirut, NYC & Agen // e-commerce, social media, open-source & geek // follow me on twitter: @benjaminbellamy.

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19 Comments

  1. cnxsoft February 8, 2013 at 3:11 am

    Not really an error, but you can get VGA and CVBS from the Cubieboard. There’s no VGA connector nor RCA connectors, but those signals are accessible via the headers.

  2. Benjamin Bellamy February 8, 2013 at 8:57 am

    Thanks, I’ll correct that.

  3. André February 8, 2013 at 8:58 am

    Wasn’t the Olimex OlinuXino A10 suppoded to get 2 GB of RAM?

  4. Benjamin Bellamy February 8, 2013 at 10:36 am

    I don’t know if Olinuxino A10 will have 1 or 2GB.
    http://olimex.wordpress.com/tag/2gb/

  5. Brian February 8, 2013 at 2:35 pm

    Great list! There’s a lot of boards on there which I had not heard of yet. One you may have missed is the BeagleBone. I’d say it’s fairly popular but not quite as large of a community as Arduino or RaspberryPi.

    http://beagleboard.org/bone

  6. Simon February 9, 2013 at 6:02 pm

    hardkernel’s Exynos devices get as low as $69, which is within the price range you have there, and will have much higher performance than anything listed so far.

    wandboard’s i.MX6 boards are at similar price points. They have fewer CPU cores but they do have gigabit ethernet and the potential to attach a SATA connector, which have offer much higher performance than USB peripherals.

    Cubieboard has SATA on it, too.

  7. Pavel February 9, 2013 at 10:06 pm

    What does it mean “usb host”? I thought if I can attach usb keyboard etc, this means device (RPi) is not acting as slave, it has usb host.

  8. Coop, AA1WW February 10, 2013 at 12:41 am

    Nice table. Some others to consider: Netduino and the .NET Gadgeteer stuff is kind of neat because you develop with Visual Studio and you get full source debugging with breakpoints, single-step, examine/modify, etc. Arduino is debugged by print statements which work ok. BeagleBoard and BeagleBone are worth mentioning as are Pinguino and Rascal Micro. And at the low end is the TI MSP430 LaunchPad for $4.30USD! I suppose by the time you fill out the list another couple boards have been developed … it never ends … and that’s a good thing! Coop, AA1WW

  9. Benjamin Bellamy February 13, 2013 at 2:47 pm

    I’ll update the table with new boards when I have some spare time.

  10. Pete February 17, 2013 at 10:07 pm

    Thanks for your informative comparison table.
    Perhaps you might want to add dimensions of the boards to it, which would be (to my knowledge) 85,60×53,98x17mm for the Raspberry Pi, and 10x6x2cm for the Cubieboard.

    For some more Pi-related info, see my blog at http://hmastuff.com

  11. Kevin February 24, 2013 at 12:41 am

    Great article! Thanks for gathering all of this information together. A few corrections/additions:

    * The Gooseberry has 512MB of RAM, a microSD slot, and does not have Ethernet.
    * The Cubieboard, the A10 OlinuXino, and the A13 OlinuXino all have microSD slots.

  12. 123Microcontroller March 8, 2013 at 1:30 am

    Nice table, Could you please add pcDuino in this table, Thanks

  14. Curt March 13, 2013 at 5:19 pm

    As Pavel said above, the USB ports on the RPi are host-by-default and _can’t_ be switched into client mode without losing the networking (and that is connected to the USB hub). Really your table need a seperate “USB client” and “USB host” column

  15. joe March 17, 2013 at 2:43 pm

    cubie has uSD not SD

  16. Nelson Sicuro March 22, 2013 at 7:12 pm

    In the Raspberry PI both USB are host, the difference between USB and USB Host in the chart is confusing.

  17. Chandrashekar March 25, 2013 at 2:52 pm

    Thank you, May be missed out are MarsBoard, i.MX6 based boards.

  18. arno March 30, 2013 at 10:42 pm

    I recently stumbled upon a few really good -though pricier- options:
    – HardKernel’s ODroid U2 and ODroid X2 (~$90 U2, $135 X2) http://www.hardkernel.com
    – Arndale ($250 bare) arndaleboard.org (expensive but this is a samsung-backed community project)
    - PCDuino ($60) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11712

    The ODroid seems to pack enough punch and have enough memory (2GB) to be a viable platform for a number of demanding projects. At that price, I’m willing to try. I researched a lot recently for a project I am working on that does not need interfacing with external hardware, so it is going to be the U2 for me.
    hope this helps!

  19. Ahmed Sanhoury April 8, 2013 at 12:04 am

    Thanks for your effort. Sharing with you this link. I hope you find it useful.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_computers