New from the fine people who have brought us the Beagle Board, we now have a smaller, lighter, but powerful single board linux computer, Beagle Bone! We like this move to a more compact and integrated SBC. For example, there is onboard Ethernet and USB host, as well as a USB client interface (a FTDI chip for shell access). It even comes preloaded with Angstrom Linux on the 4 GB microSD card!
The Beagle Bone is a great step up from microcontrollers (such as AVR, PIC, ARM Cortex M3, 8051, Propeller, etc) to microcomputers. Unlike a microcontroller, where the FLASH, EEPROM, RAM, etc is all in one chip, a microcontroller has them separated out, like a classic computer such as a desktop or laptop machine. The Beagle Bone has a main processor core running at 700MHz, a chunk of 256M DDR RAM, and permanent storage onto a microSD card. This makes for a powerful machine, that has no problems running Linux, a webserver, Python, FTP clients, SSH, etc.
The Bone also has great accessories built in, such as onboard Ethernet with 10/100M connectivity, mini USB port with TTL serial converter, JTAG debugger for advanced hacking, USB A host port for connecting a hub/WiFi/etc, power management IC that keeps the board safe from a misplugged adapter, and tons of 0.1″ spaced breakouts
One of the powerful abilities of the Bone is that it has I2C, SPI, and GPIO at a hobbyist-friendly 3.3V level (instead of the more difficult to interface 1.8V) while also running complex applications such as a webserver. This allows for more complex projects that would tax an Arduino.
NEW PRODUCT – Miniature WiFi (802.11b/g/n) Module – Perfect For Beagle Bone. Make your Internet of Things device cable-free by adding WiFi. Take advantage of the Beagle Bone’s USB port to add a low cost, but high-reliability wireless link. We tried half a dozen modules to find one that works well with the Bone without the need of recompiling any kernels, its supported by the Angstrom installation that comes with each Bone. You’ll have wireless Internet in 10 minutes! Works great with 802.11b/g/n networks.
Hitachi HD44780 compatible LCD screens are those common displays we see all over the place. Getting them to display some information is fairly easy, as all you have to do is send the appropriate bits to each of the LCD screen inputs.
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of parsable metadata about photos such as the cameras settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they dont output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content.
The technology at the core of the Descriptive Camera is Amazons Mechanical Turk API. It allows a developer to submit Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for workers on the internet to complete. The developer sets the guidelines for each task and designs the interface for the worker to submit their results. The developer also sets the price theyre willing to pay for the successful completion of each task. An approval and reputation system ensures that workers are incented to deliver acceptable results. For faster and cheaper results, the camera can also be put into accomplice mode, where it will send an instant message to any other person. That IM will contain a link to the picture and a form where they can input the description of the image.
The camera itself is powered by the BeagleBone, an embedded Linux platform from Texas Instruments. Attached to the BeagleBone is a USB webcam, a thermal printer from Adafruit, a trio of status LEDs and a shutter button. A series of Python scripts define the interface and bring together all the different parts from capture, processing, error handling, and the printed output. My mrBBIO module is used for GPIO control (the LEDs and the shutter button), and I used open-source command line utilities to communicate with Mechanical Turk. The device connects to the internet via ethernet and gets power from an external 5 volt source, but I would love to make a another version thats battery operated and uses wireless data. Ideally, The Descriptive Camera would look and feel like a typical digital camera.
The BeagleBone is a low-cost open-hardware development board. If you thought of it as a more powerful Arduino that wouldn’t be terrible, but it wouldn’t but quite right. The ARM processor on the board runs a full-scale operating system and ships with version of Linux (Angstrom) designed for embedded applications. There are tons of operating systems that run ARM processors, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and many many others.
After a couple of months of searching, reading, patching, and compiling, I finally have managed to get a build of linux working on the BeagleBone with userland SPI that you can access through the file system.
The path was paved for me by an excellent tutorial by Brian Hensley on how to get the BeagleBone’s big brother, the BeagleBoard xM running with userland SPI. I figured out how to modify his instructions for the bone and combined it with a patch by Craig Berscheidt I found on the BeagleBoard mailing list (which I had to re-create for the 3.2 kernel). I’m going to be working on getting a full tutorial up, but since that may take me a week or more I figured I’d first share an image of my working system. Just write this image to a 4gb micro SD card as you would any other disk image and you’re good to go (These directions on how to write disk images for hacking on the Nook Color should point you in the right direction if you haven’t mucked about with disk images before). The username is ‘ubuntu’ and the password is ‘temppwd’.
If you’re excited about getting into embedded Linux platforms for electronics projects, Matt shows you how to get started on the BeagleBone. By the end of the how-to, you’ll be able to blink and LED, but hopefully you’ll be inspired to to take something on that’s a little more complex.
I was so happy when I figured out how to work with the GPIO pins on the BeagleBone, I had to share what I did. I think I’ll do a full step-by-step for this, but in the meantime, the code is on Github.
IN STOCK – Beagle Bone + Extras [Rev. A5]. New from the fine people who have brought us the Beagle Board, we now have a smaller, lighter, but powerful single board linux computer, Beagle Bone! We like this move to a more compact and integrated SBC. For example, there is onboard Ethernet and USB host, as well as a USB client interface (a FTDI chip for shell access). It even comes preloaded with Angstrom Linux on the 4 GB microSD card!
At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.
NEW PRODUCT – Stacking Header Set for Beagle Bone Capes (2×23). Stack to the max with our Beagle Bone Proto Cape using these ingenious stacking headers. They’re just like 2×23 0.1″ spaced female headers but with a twist! The ‘legs’ are extra-long so you can solder it -through- a PCB and plug it into the Bone. You can stack as many as you’d like, for modular design. Neat, right?
Each package comes with two pieces of 2×23 header so you only need one per Proto Cape kit. The Proto Cape is not included, so pick one of those up in the shop. Because of the huge number of connections, its easy to plug in but more difficult to pull out. When removing a stacked cape, be very slow and carefully pry each side up just a little bit to avoid bending the pins as they exit.
NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit Beagle Bone Starter Pack. If you’ve heard about the Beagle Bone and you want to hit the ground running, this starter pack is for you. We’ve picked out everything you need to start out, with essential parts and accessories to save on a bundle.
Adafruit Proto Plate for Beagle Bone – holds your ‘Bone alongside a half-sized breadboard for perfect prototyping. Comes with standoffs, hardware and bumpers
Half-sized breadboard – place it onto the plastic plate, plenty of space for prototyping!
5V / 2000mA UL-listed power adapter – the ideal power adapter for the Beagle Bone, with enough power to run the computer as well as additional components or USB add-ons
Breadboarding Wire Bundle – These flexible wires are great for plugging into breadboards and headers such as those on the Beagle Bone
Beagle Bone Sticker – This vinyl sticker is excellent quality, sticks to stuff and is weatherproof but won’t damage whats underneath
For technical details, check the product pages of each item.
The plate is made of 3mm thick laser-cut clear acrylic with nice engraving showing alignment. There are four 4-40 screws, standoffs and hex-nuts to attach the ‘Bone on and the halfsized breadboard can be stuck on (just remove the paper backing from it). Finally, there are four rubber bumpers you can use to lift the plate off of your table, so it won’t slide around.
Recently I became the proud owner of a BeagleBone. In case you’ve never heard of it, a BeagleBone is a 700mHz ARM Cortex computer that can fit in an Altoids tin. It has gobs and gobs of ways to talk to the outside world including USB, Ethernet, and over 60 GPIO pins! It comes complete with a micro SD card loaded with Angstrom Linux and lots of nice software goodies including Node.js and python.
Beagle Bone! New from the fine people who have brought us the Beagle Board, we now have a smaller, lighter, but powerful single board linux computer, Beagle Bone! We like this move to a more compact and integrated SBC. For example, there is onboard Ethernet and USB host, as well as a USB client interface (a FTDI chip for shell access). It even comes preloaded with Angstrom Linux on the 4GB microSD card!
At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.
Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″
Shipped with 4GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1″ spacing
On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
256MB of DDR2
700-MHz super-scalar ARM Cortex™-A8
Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.
The enclosure comes as 6 laser cut acrylic pieces, 4 plastic standoffs, 8 hex-nuts and 8 1/2″ 4-40 screws. Assembly is easy, and requires only a Phillips screwdriver. Once assembled, the box has lovely engraved ends with cut-outs for the DC power, Ethernet, microSD card, USB host and USB debug ports.
The ends are even bone shaped – they act as a bumper to keep the attachment screws from scratching your desk.
Beagle Bone! New from the fine people who have brought us the Beagle Board, we now have a smaller, lighter, but powerful single board linux computer, Beagle Bone! We like this move to a more compact and integrated SBC. For example, there is onboard Ethernet and USB host, as well as a USB client interface (a FTDI chip for shell access). It even comes preloaded with Angstrom Linux on the 4GB microSD card!
At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.
Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″
Shipped with 4GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1″ spacing
On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
256MB of DDR2
700-MHz super-scalar ARM Cortex™-A8
Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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