
BeagleBone Black: A 1-GHz computer for $45 - ca98am79
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/semi-conscious/4413238/BeagleBone-Black--A-1-GHz-computer-for--45
======
ChuckMcM
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...](http://www.amazon.com/WowWee-Rovio-Enabled-Robotic-
WebCam/dp/B001CQLGD6)

~~~
gcb0
No. it's not fun to run any code in a browser <textarea>. especially when you
have a full linux distro with ssh and modern text editors, with decent undo,
column editing, auto-completion, regexp, etc.

never really understood the appeal of the arduino interface or cloud9. Well,
for the arduino i can at least try to explain that, same with android, there
are so many bad tutorials based on copy/past and boasting those IDE, that lots
and lots of people start already thinking that is their only option.

~~~
gardarh
It means you can get started right away. If you want to be more serious, sure,
write stuff in C or whatever, it works fine, after all this is just a Linux
machine (with a simple webserver running cloud9 on port 3000). Or just ssh
into the bone and edit your .js files in vim (it probably makes you feel a
little bit more hardcore but yeah, it's still js).

No need for the negativity, can't blame those guys for wanting to get a larger
userbase by making things easy. In the end the larger volume/bigger community
is beneficial to everyone.

------
krishna2
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
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
Yes, I am planning to go Ubuntu as well.

------
DigitalSea
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?

~~~
jonstjohn
I was interested in getting an arduino for a while but wasn't sure what to do
with it and was busy with other software projects. Recently, I got a pi at
PyCon for free, then shortly after we bought some chicks for raising chickens
for eggs. I put the two together and am building out a monitoring system for
them, that includes a web cam, temperature sensor and remotely controlled
brooder light. I like to call it a chicken pi :)

But, I think it just takes one small project to get you started. I've noticed
that this has a snowball effect as I start reading more and talking to more
people about electronics and automation. Lots of fun! It's all about hacking,
learning and having a good time!

~~~
wiredfool
I missed pycon, but got a Pi anyway.

Mine is currently a part time camera host for the (hot, young) chick cam, and
rapidly getting the electronics and control programming to run the door on the
coop. My long term plan is to have a few webcams in the coop and do some
computer vision for chicken detection.

Pulling in the Shenzhen thread -- I wish I had the lab I had in HS 20 years
back to do this: a bench full of scopes and power supplies, meters, and a
parts room that was open for use. No paying retail + $10 shipping and waiting
a week for parts.

~~~
jonstjohn
Cool! I wanted to add a control for the door, as well, and experiment with
computer vision.

~~~
wiredfool
The current code is on github: <https://github.com/wiredfool/coop-door> . I'm
going to be adding schematics and other non code bits there soon.

I've finally got the last few parts to move it from breadboard to soldered pc
board, so I'm hoping to get that done this weekend.

------
msoad
I got Cubieboard. It's pretty much same specs and it has SATA.

[https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/produ...](https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/cubieboard-1gb)

~~~
lhl
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.

------
jboynyc
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>

~~~
kbar13
archlinux arm is so baller

------
mcescalante
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!

------
mrmagooey
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?

------
ww520
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
Can you please provide a link?

I have been playing w/ an MK802 stick and it has a few issues.

~~~
ww520
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...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00ALSZNLW/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new)

PicUntu <http://ubuntu.g8.net/> seems to got Ubuntu booted and running on the
device.

~~~
chopsueyar
Have you personally been able to get XBMC working and decoding 1080p?

------
Intermernet
"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
The schematics, bill of materials, and PCB layout files are freely available
here:
[http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack...](http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files)

What more do you want?

~~~
joezydeco
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.

------
kwantam
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>

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

~~~
outside1234
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_
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
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
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_
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
I have a 1 TB USB HDD plugged in at all times (separately powered though),
which acts as my NAS.

------
postscapes1
Great piece of kit. For some reference we just put together a listing of 30+
prototyping platforms: <http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware>
that people have been using for "Internet of Things" DIY projects.

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

------
Splendor
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?

~~~
JonnieCache
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-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-
mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/)

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.

------
marcocampos
Similar to this: pcDuino [1]

[1] <http://www.pcduino.com/>

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

~~~
fridgehead
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-
detecto...](http://imakethin.gs/blog/the-great-opencv-washing-up-detector)

~~~
datarake
nice work :)

