"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you"
Flexible USB Swivel Adapter – This flexible USB swivel adapter will extend your USB port out of the way. Useful when you want to attach a ‘bulky’ USB device without blocking a secondary port. We thought this would be handy for BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi users. Rotates 180 degrees in two axes, with a very nice solid construction.
The extra sauce with this hub is that you can power it with an external 5V adapter. There’s a 2 Amp adapter included, which should be plenty to run even power-hungry cameras, WiFi adapters, and flash disks. The hub is fused for two amps using a resettable PTC fuse. Unlike cheaper hubs, this one has a single chip that provides all 7 ports instead of having two 4 port hubs chained inside. This is a great companion to your Bone or Pi, as they only have one or two USB ports and limited powering capability – we’ve tested it with great success on both as well as our Mac and Windows desktop machines
Comes with a 7-port hub, a USB extender cable, 5V 2A UL listed power adapter that can be used with 100-240VAC wall power.
7 USB 2.0 ports
Multiple Transaction Translator supports low-speed and high-bandwidth USB devices
Wrap-around cable protects port when not in use
Versatile bus or AC powered with over-current protection; hot-swappable
During my recent trip to Dallas, TX, my friends at Texas Instruments were nice enough to arrange a meeting for me with Clint Cooley and Bob Smith at CircuitCo. CircuitCo is a contract manufacturer, who happens to be the company that manufactures TI’s ARM-basedBeagle boards.
The main focus of my visit was discussing how best for a prototyping and manufacturing company like CircuitCo to interact with the online community. There have been an increasing number of open source or amateur electronics projects that have managed to find a market large enough to overwhelm the original design’s ability to build it. CircuitCo is the perfect type of company to go to once you realize that trying to build a couple thousand of your widget on your kitchen table really sucks; they have a small scale RPM plant at their main location in Richardson, TX, but have additional manufacturing capacity outside of the United States. In addition to their manufacturing capabilities, they also offer engineering services, so even if your design isn’t quite ready to be manufactured yet, they can probably help you out.
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 microcomputer 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…
I decided to attempt to connect the PSP Screen I fumbled together earlier to the Beagle board since all the necessary signals are readily available and a display driver is included in the Ångström distro. How hard could it be ? Right ..?
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Beaglebone Capes are recognized by the kernel via their eeprom. This memory holds identification and configuration data for each Cape. In order to impersonate the DVI Cape I used an ATmega32 to talk to Beagle’s I2C bus and mimicking that very specific eeprom. The actual memory contents for the DVI Cape eeprom can be downloaded from the website.
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!
I present… the TwitterMatrixTicker! I currently have it configured to watch for any tweets mentioning me (@KWF), and then having it print each tweet line by line on this great piece of printer history, so feel free to send me tweets and enjoy the thought of them interrupting my evening as they print out on this ridiculous loud monstrosity.
The hardware is relatively straight forward; a BeagleBone (Thanks to TI for giving me one for free!) uses Twitter’s API to search for @KWF tweets, then parses out the usernames and text and sends it to the Star NP-10 over a USB-to-Centronics adapter.
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!
If you are coming at this from the Arduino, you will notice 3 significant differences from the Arduino IDE:
You don’t upload your code to the board. The Beaglebone is more like a PC than an Arduino – the code is stored on its file system, and you just run it.
You can debug your code. Not Arduino’s form of debugging – print statements to the console (though you can do that too) — but real debugging, as in breakpoints, watch variables, step-by-step execution.
The coding language is Javascript, not C. Specifically, it’s node.js, which is Javascript optimized for running on a server, rather than in a browser, by way of some extra libraries. The “server” in this case is the little old Beaglebone. As you might imagine, node.js is not the fastest environment for running code on the Beaglebone, but for LED blinking and many other types of prototyping, it’s fast enough.
Despite the differences, Arduino coders should find the transition to Cloud9 and bonescript to be quite easy. The blinkled.js code looks very much like Arduino code. That’s no coincidence: the README for the bonescript project, which you can find on its github page here, says that the goal is “to have something that provides most of the Arduino functions and is generally usable by Summer 2012″.
There is a ton of good information here, and there are a whole bunch more BeagleBone 101 tutorials on the site.
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!
Add a typing interface to your project with this microcontroller-friendly miniature keyboard. We found the smallest PS/2+USB keyboard available, a mere 8.75″ x 4″ x 0.6″ (220mm x 103mm x 16mm)! It’s small but usable to make a great accompaniment to either a microcontroller project or a computer such as the Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi. The keyboard supports either USB or PS/2 interface and will automatically adjust to whichever its plugged into (there’s an adapter included).
Comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, and has a num-lock number pad. Nearly all microcontrollers have existing PS/2 keyboard examples that would work fine with this keyboard. For Ardiuno users, we tried out PJRC’s PS2_Keyboard library with great success – just check the ‘simple text’ example for which pins you can connect to on your ‘duino (on an Uno we used digital pins 2 and 3). We suggest our PS/2 adapter cable to make the wiring easy. Start typing and you’ll see the data appear in the serial terminal!
Brian Lam has a nice article in the New York Times today profiling the OpenROV project. OpenROV is a low cost submarine that will launch on Kickstarter later this summer for around $750.
The OpenROV uses common parts to cut the cost. The depth sensor they plan to use is commonly found in a scuba diver’s computer. High definition video camera is scavenged from a cheap Web-camera that people use to video chat. The most expensive part inside is the computer, a little Linux computer called a BeagleBone that costs $89. Still, the team thinks they can get costs down by buying parts in bulk.
The main body is a plastic tube where the computer, the camera, and LEDs are protected from the elements by the use of double rubber o-rings seated with silicone grease. A small hole sealed with epoxy allows power cables to pass through the end caps, and to the horizontal and vertical thrusters, as well as the battery packs. Controls and video are relayed using a pair of twisted copper wires like the kind used in old landline phones. The wires spool out like a fishing reel so the robot will eventually be able to reach 100 meters under water.
Instead of being built in a factory, OpenROV’s chassis is constructed using laser cutter machines that Mr. Stackpole pays to use at San Francisco’s TechShop, a community tool-share and clubhouse for tech wizards and designers in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco.
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! This is the same microcontroller used in the OpenROV project. 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!
I’ve been hacking away on the BeagleBone some more, and I’ve come up with a controller for the common SSD1306 LCD controller, using the SPI interface. This controller is behind a bunch of the available small graphical LCD panels out there.
I’ve also written supporting libraries to display both text and PNG files, although don’t expect too much from a 128×32 monochrome image!
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!
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.
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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