7 ms·

The title is a bit misleading, this Beaglebone iteration is oriented towards robotics mainly. It can do autopilot but not without external hardware (e.g GPS). I

The title is a bit misleading, this Beaglebone iteration is oriented towards robotics mainly. It can do autopilot but not without external hardware (e.g GPS). It does have hardware useful in robotics though that common autopilot boards miss. It is very interesting and the price point is good (about €80). A thing that troubles me is that, with a very quick look, I couldn't find a nice programming guide. Recently I switched to Raspberry Pi 3 with a Navio2 HAT for an autopilot project. Whilst the Navio2 hardware may be expensive and closed, their software and documentation are top notch. They provide their own rasp pi distro, with code examples for accessing all sensors and even expose some of the hardware in sys-fs.

mr337 10y ago
Same here, I was looking at the PRU and was completely lost on to how to program and utilize them. I ended up going Navio2 and haven't looked back. Also the RPI3 is powerful enough to run list ROS tasks.
- lsaferite 10y ago
  Here are some resources you could use to get started. https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php http://elinux.org/ECE497_BeagleBone_PRU http://elinux.org/ECE497_BeagleBone_PRU http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/PRU_Linux_Application_Loader_API_Guide#prussdrv_map_prumem http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/PRU_Linux_Applicatio... http://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/an-introduction-to-the-beaglebone-pru/ http://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/an-introduction-to-the-beagle...
  - fisherjeff 10y ago
    I'd add Ken Shirriff's guide to that list: http://www.righto.com/2016/09/how-to-run-c-programs-on-beaglebones.html?m=1 http://www.righto.com/2016/09/how-to-run-c-programs-on-beagl...
workerIbe 10y ago
I think they are running on pi 2 but their hardware is open http://www.dronin.org http://www.dronin.org flyingPi
ajross 10y ago
> They provide their own rasp pi distro The story of why this world of "linux" machines is a disaster in seven words. I'm sure this new BeagleBone is just a tarball flinger too.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  TI (manufacturer of the core on the BeagleBone line) has much better Linux support than the generic SoC makers out of Asia. https://git.ti.com/sitara-linux https://git.ti.com/sitara-linux
  - ajross 10y ago
    Literally the first repository in that list is their kernel: a 3.14.26 tree. The 3.14 tree was tagged fully THREE YEARS ago. 3.14 is not a LTS release, and its last patch version (.26) was released in December of 2014. It's likely missing a bunch of important fixes that went into the 3.16 LTS tree since. I don't see anywhere on that site where they're maintaining a more recent "development" or "upstreaming" kernel either. They just have this one tree. So given that, tell me what you think the likelihood is of these Sitara changes ever reaching the mainline kernel tree? Zero? I'll put my money on zero. "Much better" than Rockchip or Allwinner maybe. Not "good".
    - lathiat 10y ago
      If you look into it they (beagle probably? Rather than TI) actually employed a guy (rcn-ee) who spent a lot of time getting various beaglebone code including the support for capes (basically dynamic hardware loading - something previously relatively not done in ARM - there are no busses like PCIE) - that took some 3 years because of the mess of support in Linux and getting it done in a "Linux"/upstream happy way. So it might be better than you think but in general this is still a problem in the entire space. But as best I can tell the beagle guys are way ahead of most on this. google rcn-ee for more info and forgive any inaccuracies in my recollection above.
    - joezydeco 10y ago
      Yeah, linking to the Sitara repo probably wasn't the best example. Here's another TI repo where they're at 4.4.32: https://git.ti.com/processor-sdk https://git.ti.com/processor-sdk Release notes (dated 12/2016): http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Processor_SDK_Linux_Kernel_Release_Notes http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Processor_SDK_Linux_...

mr337 10y ago

Same here, I was looking at the PRU and was completely lost on to how to program and utilize them. I ended up going Navio2 and haven't looked back. Also the RPI3 is powerful enough to run list ROS tasks.

lsaferite 10y ago
Here are some resources you could use to get started. https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php http://elinux.org/ECE497_BeagleBone_PRU http://elinux.org/ECE497_BeagleBone_PRU http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/PRU_Linux_Application_Loader_API_Guide#prussdrv_map_prumem http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/PRU_Linux_Applicatio... http://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/an-introduction-to-the-beaglebone-pru/ http://hackaday.com/2014/06/22/an-introduction-to-the-beagle...
- fisherjeff 10y ago
  I'd add Ken Shirriff's guide to that list: http://www.righto.com/2016/09/how-to-run-c-programs-on-beaglebones.html?m=1 http://www.righto.com/2016/09/how-to-run-c-programs-on-beagl...

workerIbe 10y ago

I think they are running on pi 2 but their hardware is open http://www.dronin.org http://www.dronin.org flyingPi

ajross 10y ago

> They provide their own rasp pi distro The story of why this world of "linux" machines is a disaster in seven words. I'm sure this new BeagleBone is just a tarball flinger too.

joezydeco 10y ago
TI (manufacturer of the core on the BeagleBone line) has much better Linux support than the generic SoC makers out of Asia. https://git.ti.com/sitara-linux https://git.ti.com/sitara-linux
- ajross 10y ago
  Literally the first repository in that list is their kernel: a 3.14.26 tree. The 3.14 tree was tagged fully THREE YEARS ago. 3.14 is not a LTS release, and its last patch version (.26) was released in December of 2014. It's likely missing a bunch of important fixes that went into the 3.16 LTS tree since. I don't see anywhere on that site where they're maintaining a more recent "development" or "upstreaming" kernel either. They just have this one tree. So given that, tell me what you think the likelihood is of these Sitara changes ever reaching the mainline kernel tree? Zero? I'll put my money on zero. "Much better" than Rockchip or Allwinner maybe. Not "good".
  - lathiat 10y ago
    If you look into it they (beagle probably? Rather than TI) actually employed a guy (rcn-ee) who spent a lot of time getting various beaglebone code including the support for capes (basically dynamic hardware loading - something previously relatively not done in ARM - there are no busses like PCIE) - that took some 3 years because of the mess of support in Linux and getting it done in a "Linux"/upstream happy way. So it might be better than you think but in general this is still a problem in the entire space. But as best I can tell the beagle guys are way ahead of most on this. google rcn-ee for more info and forgive any inaccuracies in my recollection above.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    Yeah, linking to the Sitara repo probably wasn't the best example. Here's another TI repo where they're at 4.4.32: https://git.ti.com/processor-sdk https://git.ti.com/processor-sdk Release notes (dated 12/2016): http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Processor_SDK_Linux_Kernel_Release_Notes http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Processor_SDK_Linux_...