4 ms·

I love the BeagleBone Black and I own several of them. I also bought some for work. But I hate setting them up. I wasted days getting one to boot again, after a

by maho 12y ago

I love the BeagleBone Black and I own several of them. I also bought some for work. But I hate setting them up. I wasted days getting one to boot again, after an update made booting from uSD impossible. Setting up the GPIO pins and the PRUs (programmable real time units) is a pain in the behind, because the set-up-method keeps changing. The article mentions device tree overlays, which are relatively new, but these were actually thrown out of the latest Ubuntu builds. And don't get me started on uEnv.txt. For beginner/intermediate users, this is suboptimal.

heuermh 12y ago
What is the best set up method at this point then? I have a BeagleBone Black but it still hasn't made it out of its box. I'm hoping to use it to write simple synths/audio effects and connect lots of buttons/pots/switches/sensors and such to the GPIO pins. In the meantime I've been using the Teensy to build I/O devices and then send MIDI/OSC to and route audio through my laptop.
- maho 12y ago
  If you are not using it online, then you might be better off not applying any updates. In my experience, updates caused as many problems as they were solving. The 3.8 Kernel was the only one that supported Device Tree Overlays. I found that to be easiest to work with, although there are a few bugs. Last time I tried, removing overlays did not work reliably - a reboot was usually better. I am currently on Ubuntu 14.04, which unfortunately does not support device tree overlays. I installed it a few weeks ago and kept a few notes on the process here: http://hoeckerson.de/notes/beaglebone-black-overview/ http://hoeckerson.de/notes/beaglebone-black-overview/
hartror 12y ago
Ew. This is sold as a better RaspberryPi but the experience you describe is far from that.
mng2 12y ago
I have a project/cape that I want to move from BB to BBB, and it's the stuff you describe that makes me put it off. Thankfully there's no rush.

by maho 12y ago

heuermh 12y ago

What is the best set up method at this point then? I have a BeagleBone Black but it still hasn't made it out of its box. I'm hoping to use it to write simple synths/audio effects and connect lots of buttons/pots/switches/sensors and such to the GPIO pins. In the meantime I've been using the Teensy to build I/O devices and then send MIDI/OSC to and route audio through my laptop.

maho 12y ago
If you are not using it online, then you might be better off not applying any updates. In my experience, updates caused as many problems as they were solving. The 3.8 Kernel was the only one that supported Device Tree Overlays. I found that to be easiest to work with, although there are a few bugs. Last time I tried, removing overlays did not work reliably - a reboot was usually better. I am currently on Ubuntu 14.04, which unfortunately does not support device tree overlays. I installed it a few weeks ago and kept a few notes on the process here: http://hoeckerson.de/notes/beaglebone-black-overview/ http://hoeckerson.de/notes/beaglebone-black-overview/

hartror 12y ago

Ew. This is sold as a better RaspberryPi but the experience you describe is far from that.

mng2 12y ago

I have a project/cape that I want to move from BB to BBB, and it's the stuff you describe that makes me put it off. Thankfully there's no rush.