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Beaglebones have been the proving ground of numerous successful consumer electronics. The beaglebone itself isn't a platform but a vehicle for components that a

Beaglebones have been the proving ground of numerous successful consumer electronics. The beaglebone itself isn't a platform but a vehicle for components that are bundled together on a custom board. It's a prototype and evaluation board for their OMAP line. That being said I wouldn't recommend shipping an OMAP product in this day and age. Something with a MediaTek SOC is probably more palatable if you plan to spin up production at volume.

dragontamer 3y ago
> It's a prototype and evaluation board for their OMAP line. Oh, I see the confusion now. I didn't realize that Beagleboard was OMAP old. I was talking about Beaglebone Black/Green, which is a 10-year-old design yes, but the AM335x line of Ti chips (while a decade old) seems well supported and working with mainline Linux. Beaglebone Black/Green seems to be comparable to Rasp. Pi 1 or Rasp. Pi 2, though with far less power consumption, better documentation. I'm impressed by it, though I haven't made the leap into a custom design yet. ----------- But yeah, I guess I only became aware of Beaglebone around Beaglebone Black era / Sitara line. I always saw them as the "Industrial Rasp. Pi" if I wanted to reach for a more serious project, though I haven't really done any good electronics work back then. I'm doing a bit more of an electronics push these days again though. I'm more interested in Beaglebone Black / Green because AM335x has 0.80mm pin pitch BGAs, which looks doable on OSHPark 6-layer 5mil trace/space. More recent Beaglebone Play / AM625 has far superior specs (quadcore + CortexM4 onboard / etc. etc.), but 0.5mm trace is literally impossible at 5mil trace/space.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  Any Cortex A8 would probably suffice. I've been out of the game for a while but there was definitely a vendor push to 64-bit SoCs for even mundane tasks, not to mention all samples being Android based... If you can get away with something low spec then you'll be fine, generally. Board bringup for any Cortex A8 or similar is comically easier than for lines ending in double digits. I found Rockchip much easier to work with than TI, fwiw.

dragontamer 3y ago

> It's a prototype and evaluation board for their OMAP line. Oh, I see the confusion now. I didn't realize that Beagleboard was OMAP old. I was talking about Beaglebone Black/Green, which is a 10-year-old design yes, but the AM335x line of Ti chips (while a decade old) seems well supported and working with mainline Linux. Beaglebone Black/Green seems to be comparable to Rasp. Pi 1 or Rasp. Pi 2, though with far less power consumption, better documentation. I'm impressed by it, though I haven't made the leap into a custom design yet. ----------- But yeah, I guess I only became aware of Beaglebone around Beaglebone Black era / Sitara line. I always saw them as the "Industrial Rasp. Pi" if I wanted to reach for a more serious project, though I haven't really done any good electronics work back then. I'm doing a bit more of an electronics push these days again though. I'm more interested in Beaglebone Black / Green because AM335x has 0.80mm pin pitch BGAs, which looks doable on OSHPark 6-layer 5mil trace/space. More recent Beaglebone Play / AM625 has far superior specs (quadcore + CortexM4 onboard / etc. etc.), but 0.5mm trace is literally impossible at 5mil trace/space.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
Any Cortex A8 would probably suffice. I've been out of the game for a while but there was definitely a vendor push to 64-bit SoCs for even mundane tasks, not to mention all samples being Android based... If you can get away with something low spec then you'll be fine, generally. Board bringup for any Cortex A8 or similar is comically easier than for lines ending in double digits. I found Rockchip much easier to work with than TI, fwiw.