I've just received a small amount of funding for a project to build a bunch of musically responsive robots. In the prototypes I've been working on I've been using a Bela Mini, and it works great. So I'm planning on building about 8 more with the funding I've received.
The question is: should I get Bela Minis or the full-sized Bela boards for this?
The pros and cons as I see it:
- The Minis are cheaper, and they demonstrably can do exactly what I need for this project
- However, these will be essentially free purchase to me, and maybe I should take advantage of that by getting the more expensive models?
- I'll be able to keep them for future projects, and perhaps the bigger models provide more options (analog outputs and speaker outputs, for example)
- I personally find the bigger ones to be easier to mount into projects because they have mounting holes
- If I bought the Minis I could of course afford a few more, maybe 10 instead of 8.
Am I missing anything fundamental about the differences between the Mini and the full sized boards? I know the full sized boards are older, are they at all slower or less efficient (or in danger of being deprecated sooner)? Is there any downside, apart from cost, to buying the bigger boards?
Among the future projects I'm considering is getting into building a modular synth system, am I right in thinking that the full sized boards would be better suited to that?
Any help would be great. Getting little bits of funding can be great but can also lead to decision paralysis!