A community board is a cheap object, and it seems to work fine, with apparent support, drivers and tools available around the web. It was done for a single hobbyist user that wants to play a game, install it at home to listen to music, control the window shades or watch a movie or anything else requiring intelligence and not otherwise available.

They are great to experiment with for an application at a prototype level. Fast, cheap, lots of free software you can use and reuse. Perfect for experimenting with.

The use of these kinds of boards for an industrial application, opens the door to a long list of unexpected problems, starting with the availability of the board when you need it (they are sold when they have it, no more…). Think of the quality problems you may have due to a fast-cheap and approximate production cycle. Think about the mostly hidden and dangerous problems you may have from the field because they are not designed to be used on a 100% on line mission or to survive EMC or environmental stresses, or to be connected and reconnected multiple times.
At the end, the community board that seemed so nice when you started, becomes a nightmare when you have a really specific problem, and nobody is obligated to help you.

And you may say yes from the Hardware discussion, and from the SW side? These “Raspmood” boards support Debian Linux O.S., used from the famous community board as it is, so you can simply install your application exactly as you install it now on your community board. Nothing to be recoded nothing to reassemble. No problems to be expected.

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