
PocketBeagle – A $25 open-source USB-key-fob computer - jarmitage
http://beagleboard.org/pocket
======
welsh
Hey, Erik Welsh from Octavo Systems here. We make the chip in the PocketBeagle
([https://octavosystems.com/octavo_products/osd335x-sm/](https://octavosystems.com/octavo_products/osd335x-sm/)).
Ask me anything.

~~~
thom_nic
Hi Erik - why are the SIPs ~ $30-40 in quantity on DigiKey while the
PocketBeagle is only $25?

We're currently using Olimex's Am3352-SOM module in a product, and the Octavo
SIP makes it simple enough to do a board down instead of a module... if only
the SIPs were cheaper.

~~~
welsh
The pricing shown on Digikey and Mouser is only up to 100 units, i.e. small
volumes. If you would like to discuss pricing for larger quantities, please
contact sales@octavosystems.com

One other thing that I will mention is that the 21mm x 21mm form factor of the
OSD335x-SM enables designs that would not be possible with other SOMs or
discrete components since is 60% smaller than a discrete implementation.

------
rjromero
Can someone please just hook up something like this to a portable monitor and
keyboard, put it in a nice sleek chassis, and add a massive battery? Something
running at a low clock speed with a modern build good enough to run emacs,
ssh, but with the added benefit of being light and having 20+ hours battery.

~~~
Animats
If you want a low-end ARM laptop, buy a low-end ARM laptop.[1]

[1]
[https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707](https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707)

~~~
gandreani
Very neat! Thanks for sharing

~~~
Animats
Looking more closely, is that thing for real? It started as a Kickstarter. The
site says "Note: PINEBOOK next shipment date will be on August 25th, 2017.
Ship from Hong Kong." and "We will fulfill the BTO queue based on first come
first served basis and starting on 28 March 2017. Our sales team will email
when it is your turn in the queue." Not good, considering they announced in
2015. Is there a real product like this, as in "you order it and it shows up
without any nonsense?"

~~~
iancarroll
I ordered a PINE64 and IoT stamp on June 10th and received it on June 24th.
YMMV, but they seem fine.

~~~
Animats
That's just a board. Anybody can get boards made easily. What about the
laptop?

~~~
mkroman
I own the 14" Pinebook. I don't recommend it. Almost all of the distribution
images with support for the device is done by a single guy[1], and the
keyboard is terrible at registering key presses. This is a known issue[2], but
there's no support or warranty on the device so if you buy it before it's
fixed, you're out of luck.

Besides that, the quality and the feel of the device is pretty nice.

I bought it because I figured it'd be a decent netbook to break out when
there's a network issue or that I could use it for IRC or programming while
traveling. Instead it's just collecting dust.

[1] [https://github.com/ayufan-pine64](https://github.com/ayufan-pine64) [2]
[https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4729](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4729)

~~~
prophesi
11.6" Pinebook owner here. This version doesn't have the keyboard issue, but
they've had trouble sourcing the screens, so it can take ages before the
11.6'' is produced and shipped. I was lucky to order it not long after it was
announced.

And yeah, it's mainly Ayufan busting his butt with all of the pinebook
distros, with a little help from two or three others. But he's pretty much
hammered out all the issues that Ubuntu had upon the pinebook's initial
release, and he's active on the Pine64 IRC if you ever run into any issues.

I run xenial ubuntu with i3wm, and it's fine for on-the-go programming. I've
been using it to learn Common Lisp at coffee shops. Don't bother if you're a
React/Angular/Vue etc developer; the build tools will take too long for it to
be productive. I'm not even sure if it can handle ruby sass, for scss scripts.

So yeah, it's great if you want to tinker with a cheap ARM notebook. But not
great as a daily driver, or any complicated dev work.

------
raimue
Yay, another cheap mini computer I could buy to eventually put it in the
drawer to the others!

More seriously, it's amazing to see Linux running on such small devices. I
wonder what its niche is, though. What can you solve with this PocketBeagle
where an Arduino would not suffice, while causing less support overhead later?
Keeping a Linux distribution/installation up-to-date and free of security
holes requires regular maintenance, while a standalone microcontroller program
has the minimal attack surface.

~~~
stuntkite
Arduino is great for artists and hobbyists or just testing out something
simple. It does this by having a great IDE and library collection that
maintains awesome compatibility across the board. They can be a big problem if
you intend to produce a final embedded product though. Nothing you build will
translate.

Something like the Beagle is going to give you a much better toolset to expand
on as you grow. Also with the power in the PocketBeagle situations where you'd
need near real time, like management of audio. Is actually available. Not that
you can't get Arduino compatible systems that can provide the tooling (STM32
or Teensy), you need to really know where you're going to end up and your
level of commitment.

You are 100% right about the drawer thing though. I've got several drawers.
But the thing with embedded is there isn't a magic bullet, so you gotta stock
the drawer if you want to fiddle. Either that or KiCAD/Altium and plan your
bespoke system from the get go.

My tactic with hardware projects is to never pretend like it's going to be a
money maker. It's always play. People loose fortunes on hardware. But man,
I've got crap to build my own shitty LTE cell phone in a drawer right now.
It'll be terrible and a fire hazard but the future we live in is awesome
thanks to the inexpensive dev board proliferation.

------
carussell
> Octavo Systems OSD3358 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8

Hey, that's interesting. Never heard of this chip (or Octavo[1]) before! Is
anyone from Octavo around? If so, are you guys involved with PocketBeagle? Is
it your vehicle to show off the OSD335x? Are you involved with this board at
all? What're the plans? It looks like this is still using the AM335x under the
covers (in-package). How does that work? You're sourcing the unpackaged
silicon from TI and packaging everything up yourselves, or you have a deal
with TI where that's happening at their facilities, or...?

Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662508)

1\.
[https://octavosystems.com/about/octavo/](https://octavosystems.com/about/octavo/)

~~~
welsh
Yes. We are also used in BeagleBone Black Wireless
([https://beagleboard.org/black-wireless](https://beagleboard.org/black-
wireless)) and BeagleBone Blue
([https://beagleboard.org/blue](https://beagleboard.org/blue)). A lot of us
are ex-TIers and have been working with BeagleBoard.org for a long time. This
is one of the vehicles to show of the OSD335x-SM, but we also have our own
development board that we just released
([https://octavosystems.com/octavo_products/osd3358-sm-
red/](https://octavosystems.com/octavo_products/osd3358-sm-red/)).

Our company does "System-In-Package" which means we integrate bare die,
packaged parts and passives on a substrate and then package it up so that it
looks like a single BGA from a design / manufacturing standpoint. We source
wafers from TI and package everything ourselves. Please feel free to visit the
website and look around and let us know if you have any other questions.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I've been doing research on such things for purposes of addressing hardware
subversion in supply chain. What kind of equipment and vendor do you use for
packaging bare dies? And what's the current cost of such equipment? Thanks
ahead of time.

~~~
welsh
Please contact us directly
([https://octavosystems.com/contact/](https://octavosystems.com/contact/)) if
you would like to discuss this more.

------
Xeoncross
> Openness and flexibility tear-down limits on your imagination

I'll take ten.

In all seriousness, how do developers feel about this compared to larger
communities around products like the Raspberry Pi? I've learned to follow the
crowd when I'm using products for the best support.

~~~
reaperducer
I got burned pretty badly (in time, not money since it was ultra cheap) on the
Onion Omega2 fiasco. The thing was released when it was alphaware, and all the
support documentation was for the previous machine.

It's matured a lot in the last few months, but that first half year was very
rough. It took two or three firmware releases to even make it stable, and it's
still a bugfest. (Can the support web site even work on iPhones yet? It used
to be Windows+Chrome only.)

Because of that, my next foray into ultra-low-cost computing will be Raspberry
Pi. At least I know it's an established product and because of that it
probably has a good community and documentation.

~~~
seabird
"Good documentation" might be a bit of an overstatement. The second you get
off the beaten path with a Raspberry Pi, things can get pretty hellish. Try
bare metal C on just the second rendition, and weep before the non-existent
documentation for the SoC they used. The official response to this issue (to
paraphrase) was "it's fairly close to the previous version; you can figure it
out." I don't want to know what sort of suffering you would have to go through
trying to do bare-metal programming on an RPi 3.

~~~
khedoros1
There's at least a forum section dedicated to it, with a few posts containing
collections of resources:
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=72](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=72)

~~~
seabird
That doesn't change the fact that the documentation you need isn't there, and
that they have no plans to provide it. Can you figure it out? Sure. Am I going
to pull my hair out doing trial and error trying to figure out the GPIO pinout
for an SoC that they have no interest in providing documentation for when I
can just buy a product with better documentation? Of course not.

------
Z1515M8147
Can anyone share good sites or resources for a frequent 'technology-watch' of
the latest embedded hardware platforms and platform developers such as this? I
do a quick scan of the various embedded hardware brand websites (RPi, BB,
Gumstix, etc.) every few months but I'd like to be more ahead of the curve.

~~~
jburgess777
Some interesting products appear on CNXSoft:

[https://www.cnx-software.com/](https://www.cnx-software.com/)

------
jtomschroeder
PDF with more info here:
[https://github.com/beagleboard/pocketbeagle/blob/master/docs...](https://github.com/beagleboard/pocketbeagle/blob/master/docs/PocketBeagle_Short_Spec.pdf)

------
digi_owl
Really wish the Beaglebone products had as much attention as the RPi stuff
has.

------
snthpy
Could one use this to make an open-source cryptocurrency hardware wallet?

I haven't looked into the requirements or the specs on either side so I'm just
asking very naively. The $25 price point just seems better than the $100+ for
the typical cryptoasset hardware wallet.

~~~
timsayshey
I asked the same question here when this went up but I haven't heard anything
from anyone. I have a feeling as Bitcoin goes more and more mainstream wallets
will get cheaper. It's pretty ridiculous to expect people to pay $50-100 for a
single wallet that could easily be lost. Especially when hardware is getting
so cheap, there is no excuse for the prices. Either an open source alternative
will bring the price down or competition but right now I think the answer to
our question is unfortunately, no.

~~~
walls
The source and schematics for are available for Trezors.

------
Arubis
Beautiful. Can’t wait to get Nerves running on one (or several)!

~~~
jarmitage
Looks interesting thanks

[http://nerves-project.org/](http://nerves-project.org/)

[https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves](https://github.com/nerves-
project/nerves)

------
VikingCoder
I saw an Android that was like this at one point. It acted like a drive for
the host computer, and had on it VNC software.

So you installed the VNC software on the host computer, and then you ran it,
and you were seeing the Android running in the fob.

I thought that was super clever.

Anyone have any links to devices like that? I'd think a Chromebox or an
Android like this might be very nice.

I suppose Chromebits are pretty dang close.

~~~
jdkticom
Using VNC is a legitimate way to develop for this, but mostly it is done
through web browsers (Cloud9 IDE) and direct ssh.

------
errantspark
I just wish they'd stuck an ESP8266 on there as well. They're dirt cheap and
having built in wifi would be killer.

~~~
Pxtl
Oh god with Wifi this thing would be terrifying for hackers - just add a
wallwart and shove it into an available electrical socket at an office
building and you've got something that can sniff forever.

~~~
joemi
Can't a RPi Zero W already be used like that? And it's cheaper than this.

~~~
jerf
Yes, anyone interested in doing that already has oodles of options today.
Adding one more wouldn't be a meaningful change.

------
snaky
> open source

> 3D accelerator

> SGX

> precompiled libraries providing OpenGL/OpenVG functionality

------
fnj
Does it have an HDMI connector? The description is extremely poor.

~~~
jdkticom
It does not have HDMI. Displays would typically be done with SPI breakout
boards like from Sparkfun and Adafruit. You could also do a display via USB to
VGA/HDMI.

~~~
leggomylibro
Sort of tangential, but why does everyone prefer the SPI interfaces on those
little TFT screens? They support parallel ones with 8 and 16-bit buses.

~~~
tonyarkles
I'd guess pin-count and driver availability. SPI has pretty well-established
kernel drivers with usermode access. Using the parallel busses is either going
to involve driving a ton of GPIOs or trying to map some kind of parallel
peripheral into driving each screen.

~~~
leggomylibro
I guess that's a good point; I've been looking into some small TFTs with hand-
solderable MCUs that fall short of application processors like this, but still
run at ~50-200MHz. Not quite the same ballpark.

Still, on those, it's still only 13 pins for an 8-bit parallel bus (which I
think can still do 16-bit color,) rd/wr/dat-cmd/chip_en/reset, and the
chip_en/reset pins are probably optional. And while they do tend to have a few
hardware SPI peripherals, some of them also have flexible memory controllers
which can rapidly pipeline data over a customizable interface designed for use
with a variety of RAM/storage/etc banks. But I think it will probably work
since TFT interfaces are essentially writing to a framebuffer. And BGA
packages usually have like twice as many 'pins,' but to be fair 'real
computers' do also require a lot more I/O than microcontrollers.

See [pdf]:
[http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/ap...](http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/application_note/85/ad/ef/0f/a3/a6/49/9a/CD00201397.pdf/files/CD00201397.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00201397.pdf)

~~~
tonyarkles
Yeah, when I said that I was thinking of the WEIM in the iMX6 chips, which I'm
pretty sure could be persuaded to talk to a little TFT. The tricky part, once
you've got the electrical bits figured out, is getting the memory peripheral
(WEIM or FSMC or whatever) talking to the screen, and then putting together
whatever glue of a driver to get from userland to the hardware. And then
hoping that it generalizes to another screen, or putting in whatever effort is
necessary to port it to another screen.

It's a pain in the butt compared to just opening /dev/spi0 or whatever and
writing a few bytes to it. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a great
library of cheap OLED screens that could talk to an RPI/BBB in a high refresh
rate way, but for the majority of my own projects I'll just take whatever
cheap SPI screen I can find and use that.

------
nmolo
This reminds me of the USB Armory.
[https://inversepath.com/usbarmory](https://inversepath.com/usbarmory)

~~~
agumonkey
cute one

------
bjt2n3904
Interesting, looks like there's no ethernet pinout on the headers. But there
is a USB connector!

~~~
jdkticom
And USB on the headers, making it easy to build a board with a hub or
whatever, including USB WiFi modules.

~~~
bjt2n3904
Yeah. Through hole is gonna be a bit of a pain still, which makes me sad...
but it would be too difficult to market to smaller players if it was card
edge, for example.

------
Animats
It's nice that it's tiny, but you have to attach it to something else to do
anything. I'd suggest providing the connectors, not just the holes, and
providing mounting holes. Why make the Arduino crowd solder?

------
cozzyd
I don't know if the software distribution on this will be anything like the
beagle bone black , but if it is, be careful plugging into a public network!
Besides the default password, arbitrary programs may be executed via a web
client. At least new versions of the beagle bone software distribution no
longer allow remote root login without password...

------
Fej
What makes this better than an RPi Zero W at $10?

~~~
jdkticom
Faster, newer generation CPU (Zero moved back to ARMv6). Additional
microcontrollers (2x PRU, 1x M3). ADC. More I/O capability. Open hardware with
a (yet to be proven, but I'm very confident) much higher availability for use
in projects, etc.---and also simple to clone/extend if you want to make your
own. Also, better processor documentation.

------
rtpg
This reminds me: I really wish the Pebble Core happened. A computer on a
keychain sounds pretty entertaining to say the least.

------
Retr0spectrum
What's the cheapest way to buy one including UK shipping?

Edit: It looks like Arrow is doing free shipping

------
wiremine
Here's a direct link to the FAQ to save some clicks:

[https://github.com/beagleboard/pocketbeagle/wiki/FAQ](https://github.com/beagleboard/pocketbeagle/wiki/FAQ)

------
timsayshey
New to cryptocurrencies but could this be used a wallet with the right
software? Also, are there any open source wallets that integrate with apps
like Mycellium the same way as Ledger Nano S or Trezor?

------
feelin_googley
Anyone have comments on this one?
[http://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20](http://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20)

Wireless looks to be Linux-only?

------
limpkin
Last time I looked into this AM335X chip and its PRUs, the information
required to use and program them was very scarce. The SOC as a whole is not
exactly developer friendly...

~~~
jarmitage
There's this framework for the PRUs that came out recently but haven't tried
it

[https://github.com/nesl/Cyclops-PRU](https://github.com/nesl/Cyclops-PRU)

~~~
jdkticom
That looks pretty neat and I'll have to try it out.

Personally, this is my bare skeleton for working with the PRU:
[https://gist.github.com/jadonk/2ecf864e1b3f250bad82c0eae12b7...](https://gist.github.com/jadonk/2ecf864e1b3f250bad82c0eae12b7b64).

------
swamp40
It's the same processor as used in the BeagleBone, circa 2011.

Just shrunken down incredibly by Octavo.

6 years is a long time in processor years, though.

The AM335x is becoming middle aged...

~~~
hwillis
The core is 12 years old. The reason it has stuck around so long is that it's
the only really single-core *TI processor left. That means it's dead cheap for
the amount of performance you can pull out of it, not unlike 4-core computer
processors.

It is indeed on its way out but I'm going to miss it.

~~~
zokier
> it's the only really single-core processor left

Huh? What about i.MX 8M Solo processor?

~~~
hwillis
Whoops, meant to specify TI.

------
est
paired with Proxmark3 or ChameleonMini you can make your rfid cards N in 1

------
alexnewman
How much power do you use

------
TazeTSchnitzel
I still want a Java Ring.

------
it_learnses
as a software dev, what kind of stuff can I do with this?

~~~
bjt2n3904
Same things you can do with an RPi and/or BeagleBone black -- though without
HDMI it's focused on more embedded / headless / wireless things. Think IOT.

~~~
it_learnses
pardon my ignorance, but despite their website, specs, and a list of their
projects, I haven't been able to figure out whether this would easily connect
to my laptop via USB, and I could deploy some code on it for starters. Do I
need any additional pluggable hardware?

~~~
m_t
[http://beagleboard.org/Support/BoneScript/updates/](http://beagleboard.org/Support/BoneScript/updates/)

It seems that the easiest way to get started is to use a microSD card.

~~~
jdkticom
Etcher is a bit easier than the old 7-zip + win32diskimager solution:
[https://beagleboard.org/getting-
started#update](https://beagleboard.org/getting-started#update)

