New in the Maker Shed: BeagleBoard BeagleBone

The BeagleBoard BeagleBone has just arrived in the Maker Shed in a limited quantity. It’s a low cost, high-expansion, hardware-hacker focused BeagleBoard for people that love embedded Linux systems. The ‘Bone is basically a bare bones BeagleBoard and can run alone as a full-featured Linux machine and development environment. It can also act as a peripheral or expansion for your current computer or regular BeagleBoard by connecting via USB or Ethernet. The BeagleBone is small even by BeagleBoard standards and with high-performance ARM capabilities, the BeagleBone brings full-featured Linux (Angstrom) to places it has never gone before.

Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″

TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8-based microprocessor.

Shipped with 2GB 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

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.

Future expansion cards will add additional functionality (like DVI and HDMI output)

NOTE: Requires USB A to Mini B cable for programming.

5 Responses to New in the Maker Shed: BeagleBoard BeagleBone

Justin St. Giles Payne on November 30th, 2011 at 9:11 am said:

So, can I poll a switch? Turn an LED on and off? Or do I need to plug an Arduino into it before its effective as a hobbyist physical computing platform?

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- Romilly Cocking on December 1st, 2011 at 6:16 am said:
  
  Yes, you can poll a switch or blink a led, and no, you don’t need an arduino.
  
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Rex Staehly on December 4th, 2011 at 10:58 am said:

Two words Raspberry Pi

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- Paul Beech on January 13th, 2012 at 6:06 am said:
  
  While the Raspi does have a lot of overlap with the ‘Bone and costs less, this board is more suited for a certain applications.
  
  Mainly those that need a beefier CPU (ARM11 vs Cortex-A8), many many more IO pins, and a better documented chip and mainboard layout (the Raspi should catch up with this in the near future)
  
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Jamie Laing on December 11th, 2011 at 7:43 am said:

I just got my BeagleBone in the mail, and I’m a little disappointed to find there is basically nada out there in terms of example code. The Cloud9 concept is great, but I can’t find anything about attaching servos, reading pins, or any of the basic stuff. I may have been spoiled by the Arduino. I will keep looking!

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