11 ms·

BeagleBone Black: A 1-GHz computer for $45

146 points by ca98am79 14y ago

llgrrl_ 14y ago
Got the Black delivered on my door today, will try to post a quickie review tomorrow :-)
- outside1234 14y ago
  Do you have a power meter by any miracle? The main advantage I see to this over the Raspberry Pi (for my application) is its spartan power usage.
  - llgrrl_ 14y ago
    No I don't have a power meter. I know the Black works on a USB 2.0 port of my laptop and my desktop too, so it uses less than 500mA. From my experience working with Ti's stuff, they are often pretty good about power consumption though. My main problem with the Pi is that it is very finicky... plug a USB device in, and it dies/connection drops and all kinds of weird things happen. I have seen none so far on the Black.
    - Cixelyn 14y ago
      Isn't the finickiness related to power consumption? USB is only rated up to 500mA, so drawing too much power from the Raspberry Pi's own USB port will cause all sorts of havoc especially when the RPi itself is powered off another computer's USB port. In fact technically RPi model B's official spec is that it requires 700mA. You can often get away with less, but you'll definitely start to hit 500mA+ under stress and with peripherals, which is above what USB can officially supply. Your best bet is to get a nice solid cellphone wall-wart type charger, preferably rated 2A and up. With enough juice powering the Pi, all the issues relating to USB disconnects, freezing, and ethernet dropping stop happening. Gonna guess that the stability you're seeing with the beaglebone is just from its much lower power requirement.
      - shrikant 14y ago
        I can vouch for this. I use a Blackberry wall-wart type charger for my Pi, and it's been rock solid. I only power it down it when I'm off travelling someplace for more than a day. pi@raspberrypi ~ $ uptime 10:58:03 up 17 days, 13:45, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05 pi@raspberrypi ~ $
        llgrrl_ 14y ago
        Of course if you never plug anything in, it will stay up for a long time. The problem arises when there are things being plugged in and out. Many USB devices don't work with the Pi. It's pretty picky. pi@mia ~ $ uptime 15:40:15 up 94 days, 23:03, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
        shrikant 14y ago
        I have a 1 TB USB HDD plugged in at all times (separately powered though), which acts as my NAS.
      - happycube 14y ago
        The USB implementation in the rpi's chip is rather... odd.
    - outside1234 14y ago
      I've seen that flakiness as well - thanks for that report that it doesn't happen on the Black.
  - notatoad 14y ago
    if you haven't found an answer to this by monday, send me an email (notatoad-gmail) and i'll let you know. doing a power consumption test between beaglebone and beaglebone black is on my to-do list.
  - lhl 14y ago
    The spec sheet[1] says power consumption is 210-460mA@5V (the rpi-B in comparison is specced at 700mA right?) [1] http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I got three of these. I need controllers like I need a hole in my head but hey, they are really really cute. A bit of trouble with the release that was on them but downloaded and burned in the latest and they were fine. Sadly no, I have not yet put them on a meter but will when they are near such a setup. Something that sets these apart from the Raspberry Pi are that they full of easy access I/O, and two the Cloud9 IDE. It is insanely fun to write javascript code in a browser talking to this thing wirelessly and have it do stuff. For me who likes to do mobile robots this is the really really great. I've got one of the old Rovio telepresence [1] things (its a mobile base with a Web cam and a WiFi link) and this board is going to be its new brain. The angstrom distro on it is very similar to the distro that the Chumby came with only a bit more stuff (Python, yay!). The HDMI output is ok (its not 1080p so don't even think you're going to do XMBC on this thing) but nothing to write home about. One USB port so get a hub, but on the plus side you can provide you own 5V power supply and that means you don't need a powered hub (unless you're trying to run high power peripherals). The Logitech Unifying receiver works well if you want to add a keyboard and mouse in one plug. (Now if that Unifying Reciever did WiFi it would kick butt) All in all I think its a really good board. Nice mix of features. It will put pricing pressure on the Arduino Due I suspect. [1] http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-WebCam/dp/B001CQLGD6 http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-WebCam/dp...
- wyager 14y ago
  Is the Ethernet PHY connected to the main processor over USB or something faster/more efficient? One of my biggest complaints about the Raspberry Pi is that the Ethernet is capped at a few dozen mbps, presumably due to constraints associated with USB.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Ethernet is built into the SOC [1] and brought out to a phy. It can do gigabit Ethernet. With the wireless dongle in the USB plug it was doing 10.5MB/sec (megabytes per second) according to scp. [1] http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/am3358.pdf http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/am3358.pdf
jboynyc 14y ago
Great to see that ArchLinux ARM already has support for the BeagleBone Black [1]. I have a Hackberry A 10 that I'm very happy with, but this looks like a great product as well. I'm definitely tempted to go for this rather than the Hackberry next time. 1: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/beaglebone-black http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/beaglebone-black
- kbar13 14y ago
  archlinux arm is so baller
mrmagooey 14y ago
I realise this is a different unit, but I tried the BeagleBoard-XM and trying to get it to display Ubuntu on my run-of-the-mill Sony TV was an exercise in frustration. The instructions for it were fairly opaque, and between relying on random shell scripts, random online build systems, and endless conf file changes, I never got it to work. Plugging the Raspberry Pi in and having it display immediately on the TV almost brought tears to my eyes. Maybe the situation is improved for the BeagleBone?
kwantam 14y ago
Hey, what a coincidence. I just wrote up some notes from the time I spent this evening tuning up the Debian Wheezy base image for the BBK: http://github.jfet.org/BBKNotes1.html http://github.jfet.org/BBKNotes1.html
msoad 14y ago
I got Cubieboard. It's pretty much same specs and it has SATA. https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/cubieboard-1gb https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/produ...
- lhl 14y ago
  Looks like the Cubieboard has nominally better specs - twice the RAM and NAND), but a couple things worth noting if people are looking to do electronics-type hacking: * the Cubieboard comes w/ male headers for its I/O pins. This is a lot less convenient from a practical perspective. There's an additional baseboard you can get but it's huge or I guess you can put your own blocks on. * the Beaglebone comes w/ two PRUs if you need to do real-time work this is pretty sweet * For general I/O, libraries like PyBBIO and Bonescript make the Beaglebone dead simple to program with. As far as I can tell, to access GPIO for the Cubieboard, there's a custom kernel module driver you'll need to install to access via /sys and no clear docs on PWM or other "basic" stuff. Also looks like right now, the Cubieboard is a lot less mature and it's unclear what the timeline is for it to get better - for example, looking at the Google Groups threads, looks like there's the VPU/GPU acceleration is a bit finicky (the Cubieboard uses Mali-400, Beaglebone uses SGX530, both closed source/binary only drivers). There also seems to be a pretty active contingent of... less than helpful people on a lot of threads.
DigitalSea 14y ago
The impulse buying tech nerd within me sees a $45 computer with potential for being able to make anything and I am stuck for ideas as to what I could use this for. Does anyone have any suggestions?
- EwanToo 14y ago
  My original Beaglebone has been stuck in a colo facility for a while now (18 months?) and has cost me about $20 of hosting fees so far. The power consumption is stupidly low, the colo company had to find a different meter to measure it from their normal server oriented one. I use it as a DNS server, and SSH tunnel destination.
  - lemming 14y ago
    Out of curiosity, where do you have it hosted?
    - EwanToo 14y ago
      Jump networks are the company, but it's in one of the Telehouse buildings in London http://www.jump.net.uk/ http://www.jump.net.uk/
      - antihero 14y ago
        Ooh, so can you just mail them one of these and they'll hook it up, and charge you ?? per month?
        EwanToo 14y ago
        Yeah pretty much exactly that. They gave me an IP address, subnet mask, and gateway, I preconfigured it, and posted them the board in a cheap case, plus the power supply with plug. They invoice me annually for the power used including an amount of bandwidth which I never come near. This is the PSU I use: http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=1716974 http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=17169... with http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1716984&MER=baynote-1716984-pr http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=17169...
krishna2 14y ago
Got mine couple of days back and here are a few tips: - The default OS version had some issues that I was not able to ssh into the board. Once I downloaded and loaded the latest version available on the site, I was able to ssh as root. - I was not able to connect serially (from my mac). Turns out that the FTDI driver they provide is 32 bit but (my) Mac needs a 64 bit. So you have to install the 32 bit, save the Info.plist, then install the 64 bit and copy it back and chmod permissions correctly. - While trying to do a "opkg upgrade", be careful. Mine got into some issues installing a downloaded version half way through the process. But this also somehow broke the network connection. So no more updates. I almost thought I bricked my board. But I was able to again use my SD (from the previous downloaded latest version) to the rescue and bring it back to life again.
- gardarh 14y ago
  Also there is a nice Ubuntu port available. It feels rather stable and more familiar than Angstrom, I recommend it. Of course you'll lose Cloud9 from the box.
  - krishna2 14y ago
    Yes, I am planning to go Ubuntu as well.
- mintyfresh 14y ago
  I had the same issue not being able to ssh into the shipped OS. While updating to the latest OS, I ran into similar issues writing the latest version to the eMMC memory and also thought I bricked my board. The external SD port and the eMMC Flasher images really are a "get out of jail free card." This board is a beautiful little piece of hardware. I'm really looking forward to tinkering around with it.
- peddamat 14y ago
  Wow, ordered on Friday, received today, with the standard shipping option. Digikey rocks! After reading this post, I thought I would be clever and just install the proper drivers, turns out, you do have to follow krishna2's instructions exactly. Hopefully this saves others the slight headache, I went through: - Install the HoRNDIS-rel4.pkg network drivers included on the board. - Install the FTDI_Ser.dmg serial drivers included on the board. When I installed them, an error message popped up stating something about the OS being unable to use the driver. - Download the 64-bit drivers here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm . As of this posting, this is the latest version: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP/MacOSX/FTDIUSBSerialDriver_v2_2_18.dmg http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP/MacOSX/FTDIUSBSerialDriv... - Before installing the latest serial drivers: cp /System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist /tmp - Install the new drivers. - cp /tmp/Info.plist /System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist - Enjoy! Here's the error message, for SEO juice: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 5A-1813BBBK0554 0x1d6b 0x104 0x308 HoRNDIS: init: HoRNDIS tethering driver for Snow Leopard+, by Joshua Wise 0 0 dgmdmcontrol: start - Failed to find the CDC driver HoRNDIS: rndisInit: their MTU 1486 HoRNDIS: init: starting up with MTU 1486 HoRNDISUSBInterface: Ethernet address c8:a0:30:ab:92:29 0 0 AppleUSBCDCACMData: start - allocateResources failed 0 1 AppleUSBCDCECMData: start - Find CDC driver for ECM data interface failed 0 0 dgmdmcontrol: start - Failed to find the CDC driver 0 [Level 5] [com.apple.message.domain com.apple.commssw.cdc.device] [com.apple.message.driver AppleUSBCDCACMData] [com.apple.message.vendor_id 0x1D6B] [com.apple.message.product_id 0x104] AppleUSBCDCACMData: Version number - 4.1.23, Input buffers 8, Output buffers 16 HoRNDIS: rndisCommand: unsupported: RNDIS_MSG_INDICATE AppleUSBCDC: Version number - 4.1.23 Sandbox: sandboxd(36667) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd Kext com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver not found for unload request. Kext com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver not found for unload request.
mcescalante 14y ago
I've been using the BeagleBone A6 (pre-Black) at my University this semester for an embedded systems lab (Computer Engineering undergrad). TI provided them to see what we could do. Cloud9 was fun to play with, and allowed quick access to all the functions you might want on the headers. Pretty easy to develop on, and requires very minimal setup or work to actually start programming in js. Next, I put Ubuntu (Angstrom is very similar) on it and played around and was able to get familiar with where all of the pin input and output files lived, and how the muxing was put together in the OS. Once you explore a bit it's pretty quick. At that point, just pick a language and start writing whatever you want. I've written shell, C, and python for it for various projects this semester. It's super easy to run a web server on it to control the board from afar which makes for a killer demo at a hackathon or something. Also would be super easy to have it control things around your home from your smartphone. Some notes / reminders: - X11 (Xming for PC) if you don't want to / can't use HDMI and you want a GUI (lxde). - Don't put a 5V data line into the UART pins (or most pins), classmates busted at least 5 A6's this way (new model may have improved). I haven't used a Pi yet, and have a Model B coming my way now, but I'm absolutely grabbing a Black or two to see if it's any better. Would definitely recommend it!
datarake 14y ago
do you have some "motivational" examples of using this kind of board?
- fridgehead 14y ago
  I used the original white beaglebone to build something to alert us when the dishes needed doing http://imakethin.gs/blog/the-great-opencv-washing-up-detector http://imakethin.gs/blog/the-great-opencv-washing-up-detecto...
  - datarake 14y ago
    nice work :)
ww520 14y ago
I got the MK808B for $48. It's a dual core 1GB PC with WIFI in the size of a thumb drive. It comes with Android and connects to TV via HMDI. Works pretty well as a Android TV device. Want to get another one to install Linux to play with it.
- chopsueyar 14y ago
  Can you please provide a link? I have been playing w/ an MK802 stick and it has a few issues.
  - ww520 14y ago
    Various sellers from $40 and up. The free shipping ones from reputable sellers are close to $48. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00ALSZNLW/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00ALSZNLW/ref=dp_olp... PicUntu http://ubuntu.g8.net/ http://ubuntu.g8.net/ seems to got Ubuntu booted and running on the device.
    - chopsueyar 14y ago
      Have you personally been able to get XBMC working and decoding 1080p?
mememememememe 14y ago
So. We got so many of these products on the market. Why though?
marcocampos 14y ago
Similar to this: pcDuino [1] [1] http://www.pcduino.com/ http://www.pcduino.com/
Intermernet 14y ago
"Carlos Betancourt, a marketing engineer for TI's Sitara processors, described BeagleBone Black as "truly" open source. He noted that open source software is not always as open as it claims to be. "When it comes to hardware, open source means you can buy all these chips and use them for your own design," Betancourt said. " I'm sorry, but that is NOT open source "when it comes to hardware". It's very cool, it's open source when it comes to software, but open source hardware is a completely different kettle of beagles, and I find it annoying that TI spokespeople would be trying to claim as much. It makes us "hackers" dis-trusting and TI look disengenuous. Still think it's awesome! Just wish TI marketing would stop hitching a free ride. EDIT: What is a "marketing engineer"?
- tmuir 14y ago
  The schematics, bill of materials, and PCB layout files are freely available here: http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack... What more do you want?
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    I think he wants masks for every chip, microcode, design files, free licensing from ARM, and access to the TI fab so he can make his own chips. I don't think people realize how much stuff is in these chips and how much work and NRE it takes to make something like a $10 SoC happen. It's nice to see the advantages of scale being useful and -yay- we all get cheap XBMC players, but don't take it for granted.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  You realize the Beagle project is developed by TI, right? I think their marketing has been just superb on this platform, and it's a huge turnaround from the days of $4,000 EVKs for their chips.
  - Intermernet 14y ago
    Their marketing has, indeed been superb. My issue is with the use of the term open source with regards to hardware that seems not to be. Sorry, it's really just a semantic point, but I find that marketing departments are all too aware of semantics and take advantage of them all the time. My definition of open source hardware is nicely outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware . Once again, I think the project is awesome, I think the marketing, despite good, is, well, marketing.
larrydag 14y ago
Dallas Makerspace has a good list of embedded Linux hardware. https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux_Computers https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux_Computers
Splendor 14y ago
I've been thinking about making a small PC dedicated to NES and SNES emulation. Is there anything that would make the BeagleBone a better or worse choice than a Raspberry Pi for this project?
- mansr 14y ago
  The BeagleBone CPU is much faster than the RPi. The GPU is less sophisticated, but that hardly matters for your application.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  If you want your SNES emulation to be accurate, this won't cut it I'm afraid. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-o... But if you're just doing run-of-the-mill SNES emulation, it should be great. The raspi does have analog video output, but it's composite. If you're an old school gaming purist you'd want something with analog RGB output.
- omni 14y ago
  I've got a Raspberry Pi set up emulating a bunch of NES and SNES games like you plan on doing. I had to overclock it pretty far to get SNES working at all, and higher-end games (particularly those using the FX chip like Star Fox) really struggle. The emulators can't really use the Pi's better video card as far as I know, but I think the stronger CPU on the BeagleBone may give it the edge.
postscapes1 14y ago
Great piece of kit. For some reference we just put together a listing of 30+ prototyping platforms: http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware that people have been using for "Internet of Things" DIY projects.

146 points by ca98am79 14y ago

llgrrl_ 14y ago

Got the Black delivered on my door today, will try to post a quickie review tomorrow :-)

outside1234 14y ago
Do you have a power meter by any miracle? The main advantage I see to this over the Raspberry Pi (for my application) is its spartan power usage.
- llgrrl_ 14y ago
  No I don't have a power meter. I know the Black works on a USB 2.0 port of my laptop and my desktop too, so it uses less than 500mA. From my experience working with Ti's stuff, they are often pretty good about power consumption though. My main problem with the Pi is that it is very finicky... plug a USB device in, and it dies/connection drops and all kinds of weird things happen. I have seen none so far on the Black.
  - Cixelyn 14y ago
    Isn't the finickiness related to power consumption? USB is only rated up to 500mA, so drawing too much power from the Raspberry Pi's own USB port will cause all sorts of havoc especially when the RPi itself is powered off another computer's USB port. In fact technically RPi model B's official spec is that it requires 700mA. You can often get away with less, but you'll definitely start to hit 500mA+ under stress and with peripherals, which is above what USB can officially supply. Your best bet is to get a nice solid cellphone wall-wart type charger, preferably rated 2A and up. With enough juice powering the Pi, all the issues relating to USB disconnects, freezing, and ethernet dropping stop happening. Gonna guess that the stability you're seeing with the beaglebone is just from its much lower power requirement.
    - shrikant 14y ago
      I can vouch for this. I use a Blackberry wall-wart type charger for my Pi, and it's been rock solid. I only power it down it when I'm off travelling someplace for more than a day. pi@raspberrypi ~ $ uptime 10:58:03 up 17 days, 13:45, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05 pi@raspberrypi ~ $
      - llgrrl_ 14y ago
        Of course if you never plug anything in, it will stay up for a long time. The problem arises when there are things being plugged in and out. Many USB devices don't work with the Pi. It's pretty picky. pi@mia ~ $ uptime 15:40:15 up 94 days, 23:03, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
        shrikant 14y ago
        I have a 1 TB USB HDD plugged in at all times (separately powered though), which acts as my NAS.
    - happycube 14y ago
      The USB implementation in the rpi's chip is rather... odd.
  - outside1234 14y ago
    I've seen that flakiness as well - thanks for that report that it doesn't happen on the Black.
- notatoad 14y ago
  if you haven't found an answer to this by monday, send me an email (notatoad-gmail) and i'll let you know. doing a power consumption test between beaglebone and beaglebone black is on my to-do list.
- lhl 14y ago
  The spec sheet[1] says power consumption is 210-460mA@5V (the rpi-B in comparison is specced at 700mA right?) [1] http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I got three of these. I need controllers like I need a hole in my head but hey, they are really really cute. A bit of trouble with the release that was on them but downloaded and burned in the latest and they were fine. Sadly no, I have not yet put them on a meter but will when they are near such a setup. Something that sets these apart from the Raspberry Pi are that they full of easy access I/O, and two the Cloud9 IDE. It is insanely fun to write javascript code in a browser talking to this thing wirelessly and have it do stuff. For me who likes to do mobile robots this is the really really great. I've got one of the old Rovio telepresence [1] things (its a mobile base with a Web cam and a WiFi link) and this board is going to be its new brain. The angstrom distro on it is very similar to the distro that the Chumby came with only a bit more stuff (Python, yay!). The HDMI output is ok (its not 1080p so don't even think you're going to do XMBC on this thing) but nothing to write home about. One USB port so get a hub, but on the plus side you can provide you own 5V power supply and that means you don't need a powered hub (unless you're trying to run high power peripherals). The Logitech Unifying receiver works well if you want to add a keyboard and mouse in one plug. (Now if that Unifying Reciever did WiFi it would kick butt) All in all I think its a really good board. Nice mix of features. It will put pricing pressure on the Arduino Due I suspect. [1] http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-WebCam/dp/B001CQLGD6 http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-WebCam/dp...

wyager 14y ago
Is the Ethernet PHY connected to the main processor over USB or something faster/more efficient? One of my biggest complaints about the Raspberry Pi is that the Ethernet is capped at a few dozen mbps, presumably due to constraints associated with USB.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Ethernet is built into the SOC [1] and brought out to a phy. It can do gigabit Ethernet. With the wireless dongle in the USB plug it was doing 10.5MB/sec (megabytes per second) according to scp. [1] http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/am3358.pdf http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/am3358.pdf

jboynyc 14y ago

Great to see that ArchLinux ARM already has support for the BeagleBone Black [1]. I have a Hackberry A 10 that I'm very happy with, but this looks like a great product as well. I'm definitely tempted to go for this rather than the Hackberry next time. 1: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/beaglebone-black http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/beaglebone-black

kbar13 14y ago
archlinux arm is so baller

mrmagooey 14y ago

I realise this is a different unit, but I tried the BeagleBoard-XM and trying to get it to display Ubuntu on my run-of-the-mill Sony TV was an exercise in frustration. The instructions for it were fairly opaque, and between relying on random shell scripts, random online build systems, and endless conf file changes, I never got it to work. Plugging the Raspberry Pi in and having it display immediately on the TV almost brought tears to my eyes. Maybe the situation is improved for the BeagleBone?

kwantam 14y ago

Hey, what a coincidence. I just wrote up some notes from the time I spent this evening tuning up the Debian Wheezy base image for the BBK: http://github.jfet.org/BBKNotes1.html http://github.jfet.org/BBKNotes1.html

msoad 14y ago

I got Cubieboard. It's pretty much same specs and it has SATA. https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/cubieboard-1gb https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/produ...

lhl 14y ago
Looks like the Cubieboard has nominally better specs - twice the RAM and NAND), but a couple things worth noting if people are looking to do electronics-type hacking: * the Cubieboard comes w/ male headers for its I/O pins. This is a lot less convenient from a practical perspective. There's an additional baseboard you can get but it's huge or I guess you can put your own blocks on. * the Beaglebone comes w/ two PRUs if you need to do real-time work this is pretty sweet * For general I/O, libraries like PyBBIO and Bonescript make the Beaglebone dead simple to program with. As far as I can tell, to access GPIO for the Cubieboard, there's a custom kernel module driver you'll need to install to access via /sys and no clear docs on PWM or other "basic" stuff. Also looks like right now, the Cubieboard is a lot less mature and it's unclear what the timeline is for it to get better - for example, looking at the Google Groups threads, looks like there's the VPU/GPU acceleration is a bit finicky (the Cubieboard uses Mali-400, Beaglebone uses SGX530, both closed source/binary only drivers). There also seems to be a pretty active contingent of... less than helpful people on a lot of threads.

DigitalSea 14y ago

The impulse buying tech nerd within me sees a $45 computer with potential for being able to make anything and I am stuck for ideas as to what I could use this for. Does anyone have any suggestions?

EwanToo 14y ago
My original Beaglebone has been stuck in a colo facility for a while now (18 months?) and has cost me about $20 of hosting fees so far. The power consumption is stupidly low, the colo company had to find a different meter to measure it from their normal server oriented one. I use it as a DNS server, and SSH tunnel destination.
- lemming 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, where do you have it hosted?
  - EwanToo 14y ago
    Jump networks are the company, but it's in one of the Telehouse buildings in London http://www.jump.net.uk/ http://www.jump.net.uk/
    - antihero 14y ago
      Ooh, so can you just mail them one of these and they'll hook it up, and charge you ?? per month?
      - EwanToo 14y ago
        Yeah pretty much exactly that. They gave me an IP address, subnet mask, and gateway, I preconfigured it, and posted them the board in a cheap case, plus the power supply with plug. They invoice me annually for the power used including an amount of bandwidth which I never come near. This is the PSU I use: http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=1716974 http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=17169... with http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1716984&MER=baynote-1716984-pr http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=17169...

krishna2 14y ago

Got mine couple of days back and here are a few tips: - The default OS version had some issues that I was not able to ssh into the board. Once I downloaded and loaded the latest version available on the site, I was able to ssh as root. - I was not able to connect serially (from my mac). Turns out that the FTDI driver they provide is 32 bit but (my) Mac needs a 64 bit. So you have to install the 32 bit, save the Info.plist, then install the 64 bit and copy it back and chmod permissions correctly. - While trying to do a "opkg upgrade", be careful. Mine got into some issues installing a downloaded version half way through the process. But this also somehow broke the network connection. So no more updates. I almost thought I bricked my board. But I was able to again use my SD (from the previous downloaded latest version) to the rescue and bring it back to life again.

gardarh 14y ago
Also there is a nice Ubuntu port available. It feels rather stable and more familiar than Angstrom, I recommend it. Of course you'll lose Cloud9 from the box.
- krishna2 14y ago
  Yes, I am planning to go Ubuntu as well.
mintyfresh 14y ago
I had the same issue not being able to ssh into the shipped OS. While updating to the latest OS, I ran into similar issues writing the latest version to the eMMC memory and also thought I bricked my board. The external SD port and the eMMC Flasher images really are a "get out of jail free card." This board is a beautiful little piece of hardware. I'm really looking forward to tinkering around with it.
peddamat 14y ago
Wow, ordered on Friday, received today, with the standard shipping option. Digikey rocks! After reading this post, I thought I would be clever and just install the proper drivers, turns out, you do have to follow krishna2's instructions exactly. Hopefully this saves others the slight headache, I went through: - Install the HoRNDIS-rel4.pkg network drivers included on the board. - Install the FTDI_Ser.dmg serial drivers included on the board. When I installed them, an error message popped up stating something about the OS being unable to use the driver. - Download the 64-bit drivers here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm . As of this posting, this is the latest version: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP/MacOSX/FTDIUSBSerialDriver_v2_2_18.dmg http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP/MacOSX/FTDIUSBSerialDriv... - Before installing the latest serial drivers: cp /System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist /tmp - Install the new drivers. - cp /tmp/Info.plist /System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist - Enjoy! Here's the error message, for SEO juice: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 5A-1813BBBK0554 0x1d6b 0x104 0x308 HoRNDIS: init: HoRNDIS tethering driver for Snow Leopard+, by Joshua Wise 0 0 dgmdmcontrol: start - Failed to find the CDC driver HoRNDIS: rndisInit: their MTU 1486 HoRNDIS: init: starting up with MTU 1486 HoRNDISUSBInterface: Ethernet address c8:a0:30:ab:92:29 0 0 AppleUSBCDCACMData: start - allocateResources failed 0 1 AppleUSBCDCECMData: start - Find CDC driver for ECM data interface failed 0 0 dgmdmcontrol: start - Failed to find the CDC driver 0 [Level 5] [com.apple.message.domain com.apple.commssw.cdc.device] [com.apple.message.driver AppleUSBCDCACMData] [com.apple.message.vendor_id 0x1D6B] [com.apple.message.product_id 0x104] AppleUSBCDCACMData: Version number - 4.1.23, Input buffers 8, Output buffers 16 HoRNDIS: rndisCommand: unsupported: RNDIS_MSG_INDICATE AppleUSBCDC: Version number - 4.1.23 Sandbox: sandboxd(36667) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd Kext com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver not found for unload request. Kext com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver not found for unload request.

mcescalante 14y ago

I've been using the BeagleBone A6 (pre-Black) at my University this semester for an embedded systems lab (Computer Engineering undergrad). TI provided them to see what we could do. Cloud9 was fun to play with, and allowed quick access to all the functions you might want on the headers. Pretty easy to develop on, and requires very minimal setup or work to actually start programming in js. Next, I put Ubuntu (Angstrom is very similar) on it and played around and was able to get familiar with where all of the pin input and output files lived, and how the muxing was put together in the OS. Once you explore a bit it's pretty quick. At that point, just pick a language and start writing whatever you want. I've written shell, C, and python for it for various projects this semester. It's super easy to run a web server on it to control the board from afar which makes for a killer demo at a hackathon or something. Also would be super easy to have it control things around your home from your smartphone. Some notes / reminders: - X11 (Xming for PC) if you don't want to / can't use HDMI and you want a GUI (lxde). - Don't put a 5V data line into the UART pins (or most pins), classmates busted at least 5 A6's this way (new model may have improved). I haven't used a Pi yet, and have a Model B coming my way now, but I'm absolutely grabbing a Black or two to see if it's any better. Would definitely recommend it!

datarake 14y ago

do you have some "motivational" examples of using this kind of board?

fridgehead 14y ago
I used the original white beaglebone to build something to alert us when the dishes needed doing http://imakethin.gs/blog/the-great-opencv-washing-up-detector http://imakethin.gs/blog/the-great-opencv-washing-up-detecto...
- datarake 14y ago
  nice work :)

ww520 14y ago

I got the MK808B for $48. It's a dual core 1GB PC with WIFI in the size of a thumb drive. It comes with Android and connects to TV via HMDI. Works pretty well as a Android TV device. Want to get another one to install Linux to play with it.

chopsueyar 14y ago
Can you please provide a link? I have been playing w/ an MK802 stick and it has a few issues.
- ww520 14y ago
  Various sellers from $40 and up. The free shipping ones from reputable sellers are close to $48. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00ALSZNLW/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00ALSZNLW/ref=dp_olp... PicUntu http://ubuntu.g8.net/ http://ubuntu.g8.net/ seems to got Ubuntu booted and running on the device.
  - chopsueyar 14y ago
    Have you personally been able to get XBMC working and decoding 1080p?

mememememememe 14y ago

So. We got so many of these products on the market. Why though?

marcocampos 14y ago

Similar to this: pcDuino [1] [1] http://www.pcduino.com/ http://www.pcduino.com/

Intermernet 14y ago

"Carlos Betancourt, a marketing engineer for TI's Sitara processors, described BeagleBone Black as "truly" open source. He noted that open source software is not always as open as it claims to be. "When it comes to hardware, open source means you can buy all these chips and use them for your own design," Betancourt said. " I'm sorry, but that is NOT open source "when it comes to hardware". It's very cool, it's open source when it comes to software, but open source hardware is a completely different kettle of beagles, and I find it annoying that TI spokespeople would be trying to claim as much. It makes us "hackers" dis-trusting and TI look disengenuous. Still think it's awesome! Just wish TI marketing would stop hitching a free ride. EDIT: What is a "marketing engineer"?

tmuir 14y ago
The schematics, bill of materials, and PCB layout files are freely available here: http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack... What more do you want?
- joezydeco 14y ago
  I think he wants masks for every chip, microcode, design files, free licensing from ARM, and access to the TI fab so he can make his own chips. I don't think people realize how much stuff is in these chips and how much work and NRE it takes to make something like a $10 SoC happen. It's nice to see the advantages of scale being useful and -yay- we all get cheap XBMC players, but don't take it for granted.
joezydeco 14y ago
You realize the Beagle project is developed by TI, right? I think their marketing has been just superb on this platform, and it's a huge turnaround from the days of $4,000 EVKs for their chips.
- Intermernet 14y ago
  Their marketing has, indeed been superb. My issue is with the use of the term open source with regards to hardware that seems not to be. Sorry, it's really just a semantic point, but I find that marketing departments are all too aware of semantics and take advantage of them all the time. My definition of open source hardware is nicely outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware . Once again, I think the project is awesome, I think the marketing, despite good, is, well, marketing.

larrydag 14y ago

Dallas Makerspace has a good list of embedded Linux hardware. https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux_Computers https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux_Computers

Splendor 14y ago

I've been thinking about making a small PC dedicated to NES and SNES emulation. Is there anything that would make the BeagleBone a better or worse choice than a Raspberry Pi for this project?

mansr 14y ago
The BeagleBone CPU is much faster than the RPi. The GPU is less sophisticated, but that hardly matters for your application.
JonnieCache 14y ago
If you want your SNES emulation to be accurate, this won't cut it I'm afraid. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-o... But if you're just doing run-of-the-mill SNES emulation, it should be great. The raspi does have analog video output, but it's composite. If you're an old school gaming purist you'd want something with analog RGB output.
omni 14y ago
I've got a Raspberry Pi set up emulating a bunch of NES and SNES games like you plan on doing. I had to overclock it pretty far to get SNES working at all, and higher-end games (particularly those using the FX chip like Star Fox) really struggle. The emulators can't really use the Pi's better video card as far as I know, but I think the stronger CPU on the BeagleBone may give it the edge.

postscapes1 14y ago

Great piece of kit. For some reference we just put together a listing of 30+ prototyping platforms: http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware that people have been using for "Internet of Things" DIY projects.