Talking to the BeagleBone with OSX 10.7 (Lion) @ waxpraxis.
Recently I became the proud owner of a BeagleBone. In case you’ve never heard of it, a BeagleBone is a 700mHz ARM Cortex computer that can fit in an Altoids tin. It has gobs and gobs of ways to talk to the outside world including USB, Ethernet, and over 60 GPIO pins! It comes complete with a micro SD card loaded with Angstrom Linux and lots of nice software goodies including Node.js and python.
Beagle Bone! New from the fine people who have brought us the Beagle Board, we now have a smaller, lighter, but powerful single board linux computer, Beagle Bone! We like this move to a more compact and integrated SBC. For example, there is onboard Ethernet and USB host, as well as a USB client interface (a FTDI chip for shell access). It even comes preloaded with Angstrom Linux on the 4GB microSD card!
Package includes:
- Fully assembled and tested BeagleBone
- Mini-B USB cable
- 4GB microSD card with preloaded Angstrom Linux
- MicroSD to SD card adapter
We also suggest getting a 5V/2A DC power adapter and our Proto Cape!
At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying multiple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.
- Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″
- Shipped with 4GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
- Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
- Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1″ spacing
- On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
- 256MB of DDR2
- 700-MHz super-scalar ARM Cortex™-A8
- Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.
Check out all the awesome accessories! Such as the essential Proto Cape and Beagle Bone Badge.