BeagleBoard.org Blogs

diy-VT100 meets BeagleBone Black

fustini — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 17:33:56 GMT

Kuldeep Singh Dhaka has designed a miniature hardware terminal:

diy-VT100

A small VT100 that you can carry in your hands, connect to any hardware that provide serial interface.

Here’s a video of the diy-VT100 meeting the BeagleBone Black:

Laser PCBs with LDGraphy

fustini — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 17:26:09 GMT

Inderpreet Singh writes on the Hackaday blog about Henner Zeller’s latest project:

Laser PCBs with LDGraphy

There are many, many ways to get a PCB design onto a board for etching. Even with practice however, the quality of the result varies with the process and equipment used. With QFN parts becoming the norm, the days of etch-resist transfers and a permanent marker are all but gone. Luckily, new and improved methods of Gerber transfer have be devised in recent years thanks to hackers across the world.

One such hacker, [Henner] is working on a project called LDGraphy in an attempt to bring high-resolution etching to the masses. LDGraphy is a laser lithography device that makes use of a laser and a Beaglebone green to etch the layout onto the board. The best part is that the entire BOM is claimed to cost under a $100 which makes it affordable to people on a budget.

The system is designed around a 500 mW laser and a polygon mirror scanner meant for a laser printer. The board with photoresist is linearly actuated in the X-axis using a stepper motor and the laser beam which is bounced off the rotating hexagonal mirror is responsible for the Y-axis. The time critical code for the Programmable Realtime Unit (PRU) of the AM335X processor is written in assembly for the fast laser switching. The enclosure is, naturally, a laser cut acrylic case and is made at [Henner]’s local hackerspace.

Visit the GitHub repo for more information:

LDgraphy – Laser Direct Lithography

Simple implementation of photo resist exposure using a 405nm laser. Goal is to have this Open Source/Open Hardware system easy to reproduce with commonly available parts.

The BOM is in the order of $100 including the Beaglebone Green:

500mW 405nm laser ($30ish)
Commonly available polygon mirror scanner (from laser printers) ($20ish)
Beaglebone Black/Green to control it all (using the PRU to generate precise timings for motors and laser) ($40ish)
Stepper motor for linear axis (plus end-stop switches) (scrap box)
Photo diode to determine start-of-line (as the polygon mirrors have slightly different long faces and also phase-drift over time) (SFH203P)
Local electronics: fast Laser diode driver and stepmotor driver (few $$)

BeagleBone Blue challenge with FLIR Lepton

fustini — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 19:18:07 GMT

FLIR has launched a design challenge for the FLIR Lepton 3 thermal camera and BeagleBone Blue. Submit your project idea for the FLIR challenge by July 21st. The top 5 ideas will receive a BeagleBone Blue and FLIR Lepton 3:

FLIR BeagleBone Blue challenge

If you’re into robotics then this challenge is for you! The FLIR Lepton 3 is a radiometric-capable LWIR camera solution that is smaller than a dime, can fit inside a smartphone, and is ten times less expensive than a traditional IR camera. Using focal plane arrays of 160 x 120 active pixels, Lepton 3 easily integrates into native mobile-devices and other electronics as an IR sensor or thermal imager.

The Prizes

Five finalists will win a Lepton 3 and a BeagleBone Blue board.
The grand prize package includes a CAT S60 smartphone with integrated thermal imaging from FLIR and an EduMiP robot with BeagleBone® Blue from Beagleboard.org, and promotion of your project by both companies!

How It Works

Submit your project idea between June 19th and July 21st, 2017
Top 5 ideas will become the Finalists and receive a Lepton 3 and a BeagleBone Blue board
Finalist build a prototype and submit their project
The best of the finalists wins the grand prize package!

The Rules

Entries must be submitted online by 11:59PM PDT July 21st.
Enter as many ideas as you like.
Limited to U.S. residents
Finalists will be notified by email by July 28th.
Finalists’ prototypes must be completed and project submission received by August 31st.
Winner & runners up to be announced September 8th.

Music-Loving BeagleBone Blue

fustini — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:30:41 GMT

From Inderpreet Singh on Hackaday:

Music-Loving BeagleBone

Robotic control can get very complicated when multiple actuators need to work in coordination with each other. A simple robotic arm will require each joint to be controlled in sequence to attain a particular position. The BeagleBone Blue comes armed with motor drivers, sensor inputs, and wireless and is built for robotics.

[Andy] has prepared a musical robot called the BeagleBone Blue Electro-Mechanical Glockenspiel using the single board computer. The hardware consists of eight servo motors each with a mallet stick attached to them. The motors themselves are mounted on 3D-printed brackets allowing them to be mounted at the correct height. The servos connect to the main board for position control, however, an external supply had to be used to supply the necessary current to all the motors.

The software side has programs to translate notes into servo positions as well as connect to a web brower via MQTT and websockets. The basic user interface is simple and has buttons to connect to and send the keystrokes.

The source code and OpenSCAD designs are available on GitHub:

Workshopshed/musicController

A music controller to control servos from a web page

Check out the Workshopshed blog for more information on the project:

BeagleBone Blue Music Player

I wanted to do a mini project with the BeagleBone Blue that would utilise all of its servo capabilities. So I came up with the idea of a mechanical glockenspiel.

Introduction videos for Google Summer of Code 2017

fustini — Tue, 30 May 2017 18:59:55 GMT

Watch the introduction videos from our Google Summer of Code 2017 students:

BeagleWire software support by Patryk Mężydło

BeagleBone AVB Stack by indu mathi

BeagleLibs

BeagleBoot by Ravi Kumar Prasad

Sonic Anemometer by NAVEEN SAINI

Beaglebone PRU DMA by Maciej Sobkowski

PocketBone designed in KiCad

fustini — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 09:00:47 GMT

The PocketBone is an Open Source Hardware design by Michael Welling in KiCad for the Octavo OSD3358 SiP (System-in-Package). Brian Benchoff wrote about it recently on Hackaday:

Hackaday: “An Even Smaller BeagleBone”

The BeagleBone famously fits in an Altoids tin. Even though we now have BeagleBone Blacks, Blues, and Greens, the form factor for this curiously strong Linux board has remained unchanged, and able to fit inside a project box available at every cash register on the planet. There is another Altoids tin, though. The Altoid mini…

The KiCad design files are available on GitHub:

mwelling/pocketbone-kicad

Michael writes on hackaday.io that there has been interest expressed in doing a group order of the PocketBone, so he has made a quick survey to get an approximate idea of the demand for the boards:

PocketBone Interest Survey

The 4 layer PocketBone PCB is shared on OSH Park, and Michael will soon be attempting to DIY assembly of the PocketBone with solder paste, stencil and toaster oven:

PocketBone KiCAD (OSHPark Edition)

BeagleMAV 3D-printed Hexacopter

fustini — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 09:47:29 GMT

From the DroneLab at the University of California in San Diego:

BeagleMAV

BeagleMAV is a 3D-printed hexacopter that derives its extremely low weight of 500 grams (1.1 pounds) from its unique monocoque structure that was designed iteratively with modal finite element analysis. The monocoque frame design emphasizes simplicity of assembly and safety of indoor flight.

With the BeagleBone Black and Robotics cape at its heart structurally and electrically, the drone’s flight controller is based on the same software environment used for most DroneLab robotics projects (to maintain interoperability). Since the control system is based on a Linux operating system, it becomes possible to connect the BeagleMAV with a wide range of sensors and network interfaces — with minimal modification.

Additional information has been shared on GitHub:

StrawsonDesign/BeagleMAV

True Color 3D Printing with BeagleBone and MachineKit

fustini — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:58:13 GMT

We were very excited to see that the full color Arcus 3D printer by Daren Schwenke at Midwest RepRap Fest is powered by MachineKit on a BeagleBone Black. Brian Benchoff of Hackaday wrote article about Arcus3D:

MRRF 17: True Color 3D Printing

3D printing has evolved to a point where dual extrusion isn’t really that special anymore. A few years ago, a two-color frog print would have been impressive, but this isn’t the case anymore. The Midwest RepRap Festival is all about the bleeding edge of what 3D printers are capable of, and this year…

Here is a video of the Arcus3D M2 printing full color rainbow vase:

Here’s a photo of the BeagleBone Black and CRAMPS cape inside the Arcus3D:

Midwest RepRap Fest this weekend

fustini — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 07:30:45 GMT

We look forward to seeing everyone at the Midwest RepRap Fest this weekend in Goshen, Indiana:

The 5th annual Midwest RepRap Festival is taking place March 24-26th 2017 in the same location as last year. Nestled in the middle of nowhere Indiana, you’ll find the largest gathering of 3D printers and 3D printing enthusiasts anywhere in the WORLD. With over 1,000 attendees each of the past few years MRRF has become the best 3D printing festival anywhere and we’re excited to do it again!

There is a full lineup of speakers on Saturday including Jason Kridner of BeagleBoard.org:

New BeagleBone Debian images published

fustini — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 07:27:47 GMT

Jason Kridner writes:

Debian 8.7 (Jessie) 2017-03-19 images are now published on https://beagleboard.org/latest-images, but this version isn’t likely to live more than a few weeks before we push yet another. The big update here is eliminating the need to install drivers for any of Windows, Mac or Linux host users when working over USB networking.

via 2017-03-19 BeagleBone Debian images published

2017-03-19 BeagleBone Debian images published

jkridner — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 07:12:53 GMT

Debian 8.7 (Jessie) 2017-03-19 images are now published on https://beagleboard.org/latest-images, but this version isn’t likely to live more than a few weeks before we push yet another. The big update here is eliminating the need to install drivers for any of Windows, Mac or Linux host users when working over USB networking. This was accomplished by updating the default RNDIS interface to use a USB class/subclass/protocol recommended by Microsoft for users of Windows Vista and newer. To support Mac OS X out of the box, we added a second virtual network interface supporting the CDC-ECM mode, rather than RNDIS.

Mac users are no longer recommended to install HoRNDIS, but man do we appreciate all that Joshua Wise did in supporting the BeagleBoard.org community by creating that product and continuing to resolve issues around it on subsequent OS X releases. Mac users should now be able to discover their boards using http://beaglebone.local as Bonjour/Avahi/mDNS is a standard service on OS X, but note that http://192.168.6.2 should be the new magic IP address for this new interface.

One issue I’ve seen on Macs with the latest image is the interface now shows itself as a gateway, encouraging you to drive traffic through this port—and that could mess up your connection to the Internet. Your BeagleBone should proxy the traffic fine if it is connected to the Internet, but the DNS proxy isn’t working the best, meaning you might not be able to look up the names of servers on the Internet. One quick work-around is to apply the Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) to your new network adapter. There are many alternatives to that, but those are ones I know off the top of my head. I think we should be able to address this whole experience issue by asking Joshua how he avoided the issue with HoRNDIS—and that is the next step.

The other big updates here are some fixes to BoneScript (0.6.1) and libroboticscape (0.3.4) for BeagleBone Blue, the new robotics-focused BeagleBone. Many feature gaps and bugs remain, but this fixes some of the immediate show-stoppers for people getting started. Now that the board is out there in 1,000s of users hands, I expect the bug reports to start rolling in and we can use that to drive immediate development to resolve issues.

So, long live 2017-03-19…. but not very long.

2017-03-13-meet-beaglebone-blue

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 13:28:05 GMT

Meet BeagleBone^® Blue. Robots. Fast.

BeagleBone^® Blue is the affordable and complete robotics controller built around the popular BeagleBone^® open hardware computer. Linux-enabled, Blue is community-supported and fully open-source. High-performance, flexible networking capabilities are coupled with a real-time capable Linux system and a compelling set of peripherals for building mobile robots quickly and affordably. By utilizing the pre-configured WiFi access point, starting code development is as simple as connecting a battery and opening a web browser.

Robots.

The electronic components needed for a wide variety of mobile and flying robots are all included. BeagleBone^® Blue has onboard 2 cell (2S) LiPo battery management with charger and battery level LEDs, 8 real-time software controlled PWM/PPM outputs for 6V servo motors or electronic-speed-controllers (ESCs), 4 PWM-enabled DC motor drivers, 4 quadrature encoder inputs, on-board sensors including a 9-axis IMU and barometer, a wide array of GPIO and serial protocol connectors including CAN,4 ADC inputs, a PC USB interface, a USB 2.0 host port, a reset button, a power button, two user configurable buttons and eleven user configurable LED indicators. Built on Octavo Systems System-In-Package that integrates a high-performance TI AM3358 processor, 512MB of DDR3 and power management, customizing the Autodesk EAGLE based design to include any of your specific needs is simple and affordable. BeagleBone^® Blue is ready to be a component of your robot.

Fast.

BeagleBone^® Blue leverages and engages a large community of experienced Linux and robotics developers, providing integrated solutions for numerous robotics challenges. Designed and developed in coordination with the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab, the basis for the hardware and software setup has been utilized by hundreds of students already, before this general public release. Several programming approaches are supported today, including a C API supporting the integrated sensors and drivers, mainline support for the Ardupilot open-source autopilot software for UAVs, multi-rotor-copters and rovers and an evolving integration with Robot Operating System (ROS) allowing for high-level programming in Python or across the network. Additionally, partners have created fully graphical programming options, eliminating barriers even to those brand new to programming. Not yet another microcontroller robotics platform, the high-performance interactive Linux-based BeagleBone^® Blue has test programs ready-to-run and cycles to spare, helping you get your robot moving fast.

Summary of Key Features

Processor: Octavo Systems OSD3358 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8

512MB DDR3 RAM
2×32-bit 200-MHz programmable real-time units (PRUs)
4GB 8-bit on-board flash storage programmed with Debian Linux distribution

Connectivity and Sensors:

Battery: 2-cell LiPo support with balancing, 9-18V charger input
Wireless: 802.11bgn, Bluetooth 4.1 and BLE
Motor control: 8 6V servo out, 4 DC motor out, 4 quadrature encoder in
Sensors: 9 axis IMU, barometer
Connectivity: HighSpeed USB 2.0 client and host
Other easy connect interfaces: GPS, DSM2 radio, UARTs, SPI, I2C, analog, buttons, LEDs

Software Compatibility

Debian, ROS, Ardupilot, ...
Graphical programming, Cloud9 IDE on Node.js
plus much more

BeagleBone Blue is available today from Arrow, Element14 and Mouser. For more details, visit https://beagleboard.org/blue.

About BeagleBoard.org

A small group of enthusiastic engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices are pioneering new ground in open hardware and have worked together on the concept and realization of BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Black Wireless, BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM and BeagleBoard-X15. The resulting open-source hardware platforms bridge desktop and embedded development, allowing developers to design to their specification and collaborate with the open source community on creative new applications. The BeagleBoard.org community has tens of thousands of engaged members and aims to fuel their innovations, whether they are designing projects for work or fun. With publicly hosted open-source software, social media feeds of ongoing development, and an active community mailing list and live chat, developers have easy access to support and exchange of ideas. Visit www.beagleboard.org to get started today.

Beagle Entertainment System Cartridge Console

jkridner — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 14:51:09 GMT

BeagleBoard.org Blog

Fresh off his PhD dissertation, Andrew Henderson decided turn his Beagle Entertainment System (BES) into a tiny SNES cartridge console!

Beagle Entertainment System Cartridge Console

The Beagle Entertainment System (BES) is a suite of emulators with a GUI front-end that makes retrogaming on the BeagleBone Black simple and straightforward. It provides two SNES controller ports that use a BBB programmable realtime unit (PRU) to bitbang the controller protocol using GPIOs. This provides very low-latency controller inputs to the emulators, no matter how busy the main CPU is.

I started with a design using some Adafruit component boards I had sitting around: the ILI9340 320×240 TFT LCD, a four-channel BSS138 FET line-level converter, and a DS1307 RTC breakout board. I spent some time breadboarding the setup, using Fritzing for planning. The plan was to provide a status screen for the console using the LCD, native SNES gamepad…

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2016-10-11-beaglebone-black-wireless-winners

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 02:15:36 GMT

BeagleBone Black Wireless winners from Maker Faire NY giveaway

Congratulations to the winners of the BeagleBone Black Wireless Maker Faire New York Giveaway! Boards are entering production now and should ship in November. Winners should expect to be contacted separately for their shipping address.

Carsten Sewing
Sam Brenner
David Ryskalczyk
Alice Lai
Jenny Lin
Laura Schroeder
William Crean
Dean Notarnicola
Dave Crawford
Jim Carlson
Steve Nordhauser
Betty L Rostkawski
Yosef Maldonado
William Porto
Andrew Bregman
Benjamin Spiegel
NYU Robotis Design Team
Cj Ocasio
Kristi Fok
Robert Demkowicz
Kayla Cimkanski
Jonathan Struebel
Justin Kim
Kari Waye
Martin Elting
David Bahar
Triona Crilly
Andrew Ritchie
Marie Downes
Brittany Wlaker

For those that didn't win, you still have an opportunity to get a board at launch by placing a pre-order now at beagleboard.org/black-wireless. To get future updates, sign up at beagleboard.org/newsletter.

2016-09-26-meet-beaglebone-black-wireless

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 14:13:02 GMT

Meet BeagleBone^™ Black Wireless, the newest board in the BeagleBone^™ family

Replacing the 10/100 Ethernet port with onboard 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi and Bluetooth, the popular open source BeagleBone™ Black computer now comes with built-in wireless networking capability.

Based on the extremely successful open-source BeagleBone™ Black hardware design, BeagleBone™ Black Wireless is a high-expansion, maker-focused, community-supported open hardware computer created by the BeagleBoard.org Foundation. Leveraging a partnership with Octavo Systems, BeagleBone™ Black Wireless is the easiest to use and modify credit-card sized IoT Linux computer.

BeagleBone™ Black Wireless was designed with maximum connectivity in mind, trading in the 10/100 Ethernet port from BeagleBone Black for a high-performance 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi module with Bluetooth. Like BeagleBone Black, Wireless retains HDMI output, serial debug port, PC USB interface, USB 2.0 host, reset and power buttons, and adds two more status LEDs for WiFi and Bluetooth. Also retained is the 4GB of onboard eMMC memory with Debian Linux pre-installed, allowing BeagleBone Black Wireless to boot in around 10 seconds, and have you developing through your web browser in less than 5 minutes using just a single USB cable.

BeagleBone™ Black Wireless introduces the Octavo Systems OSD3358 SiP (system-in-package) which integrates BeagleBone functionality into one easy-to-use BGA package. The board is open source and designed in CadSoft EAGLE. This combination of an easy to use system-in-package and affordable design tools brings an entire new level of access for people wanting to make their own customized variations.

BeagleBone™ Black Wireless is fully software, hardware and mechanically compatible with BeagleBone™ Black, and is even compatible with all existing BeagleBone™ Black capes for hardware expansion, integration, and peripherals.

Key Features

Utilizes Octavo Systems OSD3358 with integrated 1GHz TI AM335x processor, 512MB DDR3 RAM, power management and over 100 supporting passive devices in a single system-in-package device
Open hardware created in CadSoft EAGLE utilizing readily available components for easy and affordable customization
Electrical and mechanical compatibility with BeagleBone™ Black, but with the addition of a TI^® WiLink^™ 8 WL1835MOD 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Smart Module to enable maximum wireless connectivity and BeagleBone™ Black compatibility

Supporting Feature List

Processor (Integrated in the OSD3358):

AM335x 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8:

SGS530 3D graphics accelerator
NEON general-purpose SIMD engine with floating-point acceleration
2x PRU 32-bit 200MHz microcontrollers

Memory:

512MB DDR3 800MHz RAM (Integrated in the OSD3358)
4GB 8-bit eMMC on-board flash storage with Debian pre-installed
microSD card slot

Software compatibility:

Debian pre-configured with Cloud9 IDE on Node.js with BoneScript library
Third-party support of Android, Ubuntu and many more upon open source Linux kernel
Non-operating-system-based peripheral support vi TI StarterWare library

Connectivity:

TI^® WiLink^™ 8 WL1835MOD 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth Smart Module

2x2 MIMO
AP
SmartConfig
Wi-Fi Direct
Mesh over Wi-Fi based on 802.11s
Bluetooth 4.1 with Bluetooth Low-energy

High-speed USB 2.0 client port for serving files, network connections and more to a host PC providing both power and a development interface
High-speed USB 2.0 host port with type-A socket and support for 500mA HS/FS/LS devices
Serial port access for UART0 with populated 6-pin 3.3V TTL header
Audio/video output

HDMI type-D (microHDMI) connector
Stereo/multi-channel audio over HDMI
Parallel LCD interface, I2S digital audio signals and touch screen controller via cape expansion headers

Power management:

TPS65217C power-management IC and system LDO regulator (Integrated in the OSD3358)
Input via microUSB, 5V DC jack or 5V DC via expansion header

Debug support: optional 20-pin cTI JTAG header and serial header
User input/output:

Reset button
Boot button
Power button
4 user configurable LEDs; WiFi and BT enable LEDs; power LED

Expansion header (cape header -- BeagleBone Black compatible):

65 digital I/O with general purpose I/O, SPI, I2C, PWM, CAN, UART, SD, quadrature encoders and more
7 analog inputs
Power in/out

For more details, visit https://beagleboard.org/wireless

All product and company names are trademarks^™ or registered^® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

Hackerboat

jkridner — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:31:00 GMT

BeagleBone Black on an around-the-world voyage…

BeagleBoard.org Blog

Pierce Nichols and the Hackerbot Labs team are building an autonomous boat capable of doing sonar surveys of dive sites:

Hackerboat

An autonomous boat of unusual size

Pierce recently wrote about the latest news from the project:

Hackerboat Progress

Since the last update, we’ve gotten in the water one more time (in late July) and we’ve made some substantial design changes. First off, here’s a video of my talk at Toorcamp that Alex was kind enough to put together

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2008-04-04-source-released-for-beagle-board

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 02:03:39 GMT

Source released for the Beagle Board

Khasim has provided us with the first Linux sources and binaries for the Beagle Board. You can find them on the Beagle Board code.google.com page under BeagleSourceCode. Feel free to stop by the IRC channel (#beagle on irc.freenode.net) or the discussion group to learn more. Happy hacking!

Update 2016-07-26: code.google.com removed a bunch of their hosting and a copy of the wiki and issues got saved to https://github.com/jadonk/beagleboard

2016-07-07-seeedstudio-beaglebone-green-wireless

jkridner.wordpress.com — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 20:35:12 GMT

Introducing SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green
by Christopher Rush and Jason Kridner

The first available WiFi plus BLE board from the BeagleBone community

Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless is a joint effort between BeagleBoard.org and Seeed Studio. It is based on the open-source hardware design of the successful BeagleBone Black development board. It includes two Grove connectors, which allows users to adopt the wide range of sensors and actuators using Grove eco-system, eradicating any requirement for soldering and increasing rapid prototyping and productivity.

The new highlighted features of Seeed Studio BBG Wireless are that it features the TI WiLink 8 2.4GHz wireless module, which not only supports MIMO 802.11 b/g/n WiFi but it also supports Bluetooth 4.1 LE. The wireless module has been specifically designed for a seamless integration with the Sitara AM335X and this allows low power consumption for extending battery life.

This enhanced wireless features make it more suitable for IoT projects reducing the requirement for any additional purchasing of extra hardware. The BBGW is a true IoT device.

Specification

SoC: TI AM335x
CPU: 1GHz ARM Coretex-A8 + 2x 200MHz PRU
GPU: SGX 3D graphics accelerator
Memory: 512MB DDR3
USB Ports: 4
Network: 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1

Software

Straight out of the box it comes with a Seeed Studio custom Debian Linux 4.9 image, which is tailored by the software design team at Seeed. The great advantage of using Debain over other OS is that it is more commonly used amongst other boards allowing porting of projects over to the board and easy process.

Programming the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless is easy with the introduction of the mraa library by Intel. This library was specifically designed for use with low level Linux boards such as the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless. The mraa library provides a simple interface with the GPIO pins where port names and numbering matches the board GPIO pins. This makes it easier for developers to map their Grove modules including sensors and actuators, on top of the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless hardware to allow control using the low level communication protocol in a variety of native programming languages such as Python and JavaScript.

The Wi-Fi features support for both AP+STA mode of communication between devices and other networks on the default OS image. This reduces the unnecessary installation of drivers for wireless devices, as well as providing a more simplified end user experience. Your mobile devices can easily connect to the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless using the AP mode and there you can configure any connection in STA mode to connect to a local Wi-Fi router for internet connectivity, this does not require any additional software or drivers, these features are all built in to the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Wireless board by default.

The Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green also supports the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) for the built-in Bluetooth module. A2DP is a Bluetooth profile which defines how high quality stereo audio can be streamed from the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless board to a Bluetooth audio device such as a speaker or headset. Most Bluetooth devices and module are setup to only transfer data and would require additional installation and configuration to setup A2DP, which can be difficult for most users. This feature adds more depth for creating Bluetooth projects using Bluetooth Audio devices and reiterates the power potential of the Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless development board.

Hardware and Connectivity

Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless gives users the hardware tools to determine a number of ways in which you can connect and interact with your board.

It comes with 802.11 b/g/n MIMO wireless technology based on the TI WiLink^TM 8 chipset. The advanced wireless features such as AP mode and P2P direct connection prepare developers for the future of devices. The wireless module also supports enhanced low power mode (ELP) when connected to devices and when used as an access point it has the ability to enter into a low power state to reduce overall power consumption. MIMO technology allows a greater throughput and extended range providing an overall efficient wireless experience.

It has also adopted the modular Grove eco-system, which is a series of over 150 breakout modules such as actuators and sensors. The Grove modules provide a simple and efficient approach to prototyping your projects eradicating any need for soldering and circuit designing. This Grove modular system is suited for beginners and also software programmers who know little about any electrical hardware. The two Groves connectors on the board provide both UART and I2C connectivity.

It also features the same pinout as the original BeagleBone Black giving user a possible of up to 65 GPIO pins. The BeaglBone Green Wireless has better I/O capabilities with 7 channel 200KHz 12-bit ADC, 8PWM, 4 UART quadrature encoder hardware plus many more. This means that you do not have to buy any additional hardware components to connect up many more sensors and actuators unlike other boards such as the Raspberry Pi.

The pins also allow the expansion for the BegleBone Cape family of expansion boards including the SeedStudio Grove Cape. GPIO headers feature the following:

65x Digital I/O
8x PWM
7x Analog Inputs
UART
I2C
SPI

Applications

It is the perfect platform for developing robotic projects and analyzing sensor data, due to its wide range of I/O capabilities including up to 8 PWM pins for drivers Servos and motors. The enhanced wireless capabilities can give you access to your robotics remotely, monitoring their behavior even updating real-time hardware based on data analysis from sensors alike.

It also has better real-time control with two 200MHz 32-bit RISC programmable real-time units (PRU) that are optimized for single-cycle latency to the I/O pins. This mix of both Linux and a micro-controller on one chip makes the board handle tasks which is not possible on other boards such as the Intel Galileo.

Linux Board Comparison

	BeagleBone Green Wireless	Intel Galileo	Raspberry Pi 3	Arduino Yun
SoC	TI AM3358	Intel Quark X1000	Broadcom BCM2837	Atheros AR9331
CPU	ARM Cortex-A8 + TI PRU	Intel X1000	ARM Cortex-A53	MIPS32 24K + ATmega32U4
Architecture	ARMv7	I586		MIPS + AVR
Speed	1GHz	400MHz	1.2GHz	400Mz
Memory	512MB	256MB	1GB	64MB
FPU	Hardware	Hardware	Hardware	N/A
GPU	PowerVR SGX530	N/A	Broadcom VideoCore IV	N/A
Internal Storage	4GB	8MB	N/A	16MB
External Storage	MicroSD	MicroSD	MicroSD	MicroSD
Networking	802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth LE 4.1	Ethernet 10/100	Ethernet 10/100, 802.11n WiFI + Bluetooth LE 4.1	Ethernet 10/100, 802.11 b/g/n WiFI
Power	5V Micro USB	5V DC Jack	5V MicroUSB	5V Micro USB
Dimensions	86.4x53.3mm	106.7x71.1mm	85.6x56mm	68.6x53.3mm
Weight	40g	50g	45g	41g
MSRP	$45	$80	$42	$75
Digital I/O Pins	65	14	26	20
Pin Logic	3.3V	3.3V or 5V	3.3V	5V
Analog Input	x7 12-bit ADC (0-1.8V)	x6 12-bit ADC (0-5V)	N/A	x12 10-bit ADC (0-5V)
UART	4	1	1	2
SPI	2	1	2	1
I2C	2	1	1	1

You can see from the comparison table that Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless is far superior in terms of inputs and out puts compared to other Linux boards, these GPIO pins also can server as multiple functions such as I2S or CAN bus plus many more. Only the Raspberry Pi is faster in terms of hardware spec however the design is for more of a multimedia computer and as such does not compare to any other development when using I/O pins. The clear lack of analog ability dampens its ability to be part for the Linux development boards. Also the significant internal data storage in the form of a 4GB eMMC module provides excellent data storage for collecting and monitoring sensor data uploading to the server. This shows great capacity and flexibility when designing IoT projects.

Open Source Hardware (OSH)

One of the key factors in choosing a development board is how open source the hardware is. The Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless is fully open-source based on the BeagleBone eco-system, allowing developers to design their own version specifically for industrial or commercial applications, this is something that is not common amongst other boards such as the Raspberry Pi. Not only does OSH release full access to the board but opens up the full potential it was built for. For educational purposes it teaches users the dynamics of how modern development boards are designed and with Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless it sets the standard.

No matter what level your design skills are, all the components manufactured for the BeagleBone Green are ready available for anyone to purchase including the Sitara devices from TI. Just recently Propogate, the Manufacture Dept in Seeed Studio partnered with ValentF(x) who have brought you KiwiSDR, which is a software-defined radio module with GPS. It covers shortwave, longwave and AM broadcast radio bands including a number of utility stations and amateur radio transmissions using a worldwide spectrum. 294 backers pledged $70,757 to help bring this project to life through Kickstarter. This is another great example of utilizing the open-source hardware on the board which cannot be accomplished on other platforms alike.

The Future of Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless

The Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless is going to unleash a very powerful set of tools into the hands of some experienced developers building future IoT projects. We are going to see some exciting projects utilizing the open-source hardware. It has a bright future in the IoT market, inspiring makers alike to learn and be creative with easy-to-use hardware tools.

2016-03-09-sancloud-launches-indiegogo

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 20:36:26 GMT

SanCloud Launches Indiegogo campaign for SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced
by Jason Kridner and Marc Murphy

SanCloud are proud to announce the launch of their crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo for the SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced. Early bird rewards start as low as $52.

The SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced is ready for take-off.....

SanCloud is enhancing the open source hardware BeagleBone Black design you love with more features than you thought possible! It still has a blistering 1GHz processor and just like the BeagleBone Black, has two 46-pin expansion headers, micro HDMI for audio/video output, USB ports, Ethernet and other I/O features. Enhancements include gigabit Ethernet, a gigabyte of RAM, additional USB host ports, several sensors like an accelerometer, gyro, barometer and thermometer and an option for WiFi and Bluetooth. The SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced is an ultra-powered embedded computer that can (still) fit in a mint tin!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sancloud-beaglebone-enhanced/x/12199680#/

Baby Monitor using BeagleBone and MIMO Smart Baby Monitor sensor (part 1)

jkridner — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 21:34:13 GMT

I’m a new dad and consider myself a technology innovator, so it is probably to be expected that I’d look for high-tech ways to monitor my baby, beyond the standard remote cameras. Of course, not all the ways I want to monitor are really easy to reproduce, but the folks at Rest Devices have done something scalable. They created the MIMO Smart Baby Monitor. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy to send data back from the sensor, making it very easy to connect to a BeagleBone Black (or SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green) using a BLE dongle (such as http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Bluetooth-Adapter-Raspberry-Compatible/dp/B009ZIILLI as we did in https://jkridner.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/ibm-tutorial-on-using-ti-sensortag-with-beaglebone-black/).

The most critical reason I chose to do this is because I don’t want to rely on a cloud service to monitor my child. While I appreciate having the phone app and relatively reliable proxy of the Rest Devices provided cloud service, I really wanted to make sure I had reliable monitoring and notifications within the home, not depending on any network other than between my BeagleBone and the sensor itself. With this sort of setup, I am also looking at eventually automating the bottle warmer such that I have a warm bottle available right as he’s starting to stir. Of course, I still want to be able to visualize things on a web page, but this time just one served up in my private network on a BeagleBone.

For this part 1 article, I’m just going to show you how I started to extract the data. I’ll start looking at analyzing real-world data in part 2.

For my setup, I opted to use an inexpensive Chromebook so that I could hack and monitor via a local web interface. Eventually, I’ll plug the BeagleBone in to wall-wart power and wire it via Ethernet to my local LAN.

I started with the ‘bluez’ tools and the ‘hcitool’ in particular. It took me a second to note that scanning for BLE devices mean using the ‘lescan’ argument.

root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9# hcitool lescan LE Scan ... 9C:20:7B:A2:1A:5F (unknown) 9C:20:7B:A2:1A:5F (unknown) 68:D9:3C:91:EA:80 (unknown) 7C:D1:C3:00:DA:1E (unknown) 68:D9:3C:91:EA:80 (unknown) 00:07:80:77:C4:5A (unknown) 00:07:80:77:C4:5A 7C:D1:C3:00:DA:1E (unknown) C1:87:44:21:74:CD (unknown) C1:87:44:21:74:CD fA7

To figure out which of these devices is actually the MIMO sensor, I opted to utilize a Python library called ‘bluepy’. I discovered it had some simple tools for reading BLE endpoints. Installing ‘bluepy’ was done trivially with ‘pip’. Other devices tended to show some identifying information. Some guesswork led me to believe this was the right sensor.

root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9# python /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/bluepy/btle.py 00:07:80:77:C4:5A Connecting to: 00:07:80:77:C4:5A, address type: public Service : Characteristic , supports NOTIFY READ -> '\xaa\xed\x18\x01\x01\x00\x00\x9d\x00R\x86Y'

At this point, I needed to adapt an example for ‘bluepy’ to read this data repeatedly. I called the Python code ‘readturtle.py’:

import binascii import struct import time from bluepy.btle import UUID, Peripheral uuid = UUID("d96a513d-a6d8-4f89-9895-ca131a0935cb") p = Peripheral("00:07:80:77:C4:5A", "public") try: ch = p.getCharacteristics()[0] if (ch.supportsRead()): while 1: val = binascii.b2a_hex(ch.read()) print str(val) + "" time.sleep(1) finally: p.disconnect()

Running ‘python readturtle.py’ gave me some results.

root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9# python readturtle.py aaed1800ab00000000000000000000d8e2ca9258 aaed1800a600000000000000000000d7f9ca9558 aaed1800a1000000000000000000001d380a9558

This looked interesting, but it wasn’t obvious to me what the data meant. I figured I could try to reverse-engineer it by applying various stimulus and looking at the changes, but I’ve also been monitoring the Quantified Self forums off and on for a while; I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask if anyone was trying the same thing. Amazingly, an individual from Rest Devices hopped on and gave me a sufficient break down of the data format (respiration, motion, temperature, etc.) that I should be able to move forward quickly now.

https://forum.quantifiedself.com/t/tapping-into-mimo-smart-baby-monitor/1758

For the on-going work, keep a look out for my next blog post where I actually visualize some respiratory data from my baby. Also, check out my notes and code on my Github gist at:

2015-11-23-musictech-challenge

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 17:54:42 GMT

Last week to join the Music Tech Design Challenge
by Jason Kridner

Everybody loves music, right?! Here's your chance to change the way music is made and win prizes to boot. Fifteen of the best ideas will get a pile of gear to bring their idea to reality. But don't wait, the deadline for applications is November 30, 2015!

To find out more and to join, visit www.element14.com/musictech.

*UPDATE*: Deadline extended to December 7th!

2015-11-23-beaglebone-enhanced

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:46:06 GMT

SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced
by Marc Murphy - SanCloud

SanCloud is joining the BeagleBoard.org logo licensing family and enhancing the open hardware BeagleBone Black design you love with more features than you thought possible! It still has a blistering 1GHz processor and like the BeagleBone Black, two 46-pin headers, micro HDMI for audio/video output, USB ports, Ethernet and other I/O features. The SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced is an ultra-powered embedded computer that can (still) fit in a mint tin.

The Enhanced features are:

1G Byte onboard DDR3 RAM (double the BeagleBone Black)
3 additional USB ports
6 axis MEMS accelerometer/gyro (possibility to fit 9 axis MEMS accelerometer/gyro/compass)
Barometer and temperature sensor
Gigabit Ethernet
SPI flash for bootloader
Additional plug in WiFi/Buetooth card (uses 1 USB port)

The design has been kept as close as possible to the original form factor of the BeagleBone Black to enable you to swap out the capes you already have. We have moved the power connector and serial connector to give an additional onboard USB port and added an expansion header to allow for 2 USB ports to be passed up to a cape.

We are very proud of the way we have squeezed more onto an already impressive platform.

Watch out for the crowdfunding campaign soon.

Technical Details:

Processor: Sitara AM3358BZCZ100 1GHz, 2000 MIPS
Graphics Engine: SGX530 3D, 20M Polygons/S
SDRAM Memory: 1G Byte DDR3L 606MHZ
Onboard Flash: Minimum 4G Byte, 8bit Embedded MMC
Onboard 1M Byte SPI boot flash
MPU6050 Triple Axis Accelerometer and Gyro
LPS331AP MEMS pressure sensor, 260-1260 mbar absolute digital output barometer
PMIC: TPS65217C PMIC regulator and one additional DC to DC.
Debug Support: Optional Onboard 20-pin CTI JTAG, Serial Header
Power Source: miniUSB USB or DC Jack, 5VDC External Via Expansion Header
PCB: 86.44mm x 54.54mm / 3.4 x 2.15 6 layers
Indicators 1-Power, 2-Ethernet, 4-User Controllable LEDs
HiSpeed USB 2.0 Client Port: Access to USB0, Client mode via miniUSB
2 x HiSpeed USB 2.0 Host Port via hub Access to USB1, Type A Socket, 500mA LS/FS/HS
Serial Port UART0 access via 3 pin 3.3V TTL Header. Header is populated
Ethernet 10/100/1000, RJ45
SD/MMC Connector microSD , 3.3V
User Input: Reset Button, Boot Button, Power Button
Video Out: HDMI, 1280x1024 (MAX), 1024x768,1280x720,1440x900 w/EDID Support
Audio Via HDMI Interface, Stereo

Sign up for blog posts to be notified when the crowd funding campaign starts

NDVI cape V2.0

jkridner — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 21:08:22 GMT

I’m very excited about using #BeagleBoneBlack for farming!

Grayson Penzo Projects

Today I send V2.0 of the NDVI cape to the manufacture. This will be the one.

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2015-10-14-beagleboard-x15

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 23:06:42 GMT

Announcing the new, powerful BeagleBoard-X15 open hardware computer for electronics innovators from BeagleBoard.org

Innovate with an open community of developers on the most powerful and flexible open hardware computer development system available

OAKLAND TWP, MI—Oct. 14, 2015—BeagleBoard.org today introduced the BeagleBoard-X15, allowing electronic innovators everywhere to have access to an open community of developers on the most powerful open hardware computer development system available. The BeagleBoard-X15 provides the most flexible processor-based development system with numerous user programmable cores. All of the design materials are released free to the public immediately and manufacturing is gearing up.

A core for any need

Powered by a Sitara™ AM572x processor from Texas Instruments (TI), BeagleBoard-X15 is loaded with fast cores tuned to various programming challenges, providing the most flexible processor-based development system from BeagleBoard.org to date. With dual ARM® Cortex®-A15 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, the BeagleBoard-X15 provides nearly three times the performance per core of a typical ARM Cortex-A9 processor. Accelerated processing of physical world data is made easier than ever with the dual C66x digital signal processors (DSPs) supported by OpenCL.

BeagleBoard-X15’s available ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller core provides the ability to off-load system control tasks. With the quad-core programmable real-time unit (PRU), BeagleBoard-X15 provides the ability to create software-defined peripherals and extreme low-latency response to events such as sensing and responding to wind gusts around a quad-copter. The new board offers designers video decoding/encoding and 2D/3D graphic acceleration cores that enable a complete multimedia experience without taxing responsiveness on the user programmable cores.

Consumer-level connectivity and beyond

The BeagleBoard.org family continues to grow with consumer-level connectivity. Modern interfaces like USB3, PCle, eSATA and dual gigabit Ethernet provide high-bandwidth connectivity to off-the-shelf storage, communications and imaging peripherals. With available simultaneous HDMI and touch-screen LCD displays, the BeagleBoard-X15 provides no compromise user interaction. The BeagleBoard-X15 is ideal for applications such as robotics, media centers, interactive art, machine vision, home security and industrial automation.

Open software experience

The new BeagleBoard-X15 comes with the open software experience that Makers and Linux enthusiasts know and love. With the BeagleBoard-X15 being a new addition to the Beagle family, BeagleBoard.org refreshes its high-end offering, previously the BeagleBoard-xM, to complement its highly popular low-end offering, BeagleBone Black. Seasoned community members can now seek comfort in the common software experience with which they are already familiar. BeagleBoard-X15 is open hardware with an estimated lifespan of over 10 years. Similar to other BeagleBoard.org designs, the BeagleBoard-X15 eliminates all barriers to extension, customization and development of curriculum.

Order yours today

Stay connected with us on:

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About BeagleBoard.org

A small group of enthusiastic engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices are pioneering new ground in open hardware and have worked together on the concept and realization of BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM. The resulting open-source hardware platforms bridge desktop and embedded development, allowing developers to design to their specification and collaborate with the open source community on creative new applications. The BeagleBoard.org community has tens of thousands of engaged members and aims to fuel their innovations, whether they are designing projects for work or fun. With publicly hosted open-source software, social media feeds of ongoing development, and an active community mailing list and live chat, developers have easy access to support and exchange of ideas. Visit www.beagleboard.org to get started today.

2015-09-29-microsoft-azure-certified-for-iot

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 12:03:08 GMT

BeagleBoard.org collaborates with Microsoft to simplify Internet of Things (IoT) development
by Jason Kridner

Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT provides quick-start confidence to BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Black and SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green with pre-tested software and hardware

When developers of Internet-connected device (or IoT) solutions are prototyping and deploying their products, they frequently choose BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Black and the new BeagleBoard-compatible SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green. By adding participation of these two devices in Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT, BeagleBoard.org is now extending the benefits of its proven open hardware and software ecosystem.

Working with the open community around BeagleBoard.org and their partners is an inspiration, said Barb Edson, General Manager for Data Platform and Internet of Things, Microsoft. "Everyone in the community of professionals, students and hobbyists innovating around programmable electronics benefits from this collaboration to accelerate IoT prototypes and extend their creations to the world.

The proven BeagleBoard.org ecosystem is built on a high-performance Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x processor, typically with an open source GNU/Linux Debian distribution, an open hardware design, and with available add-on daughter boards (or capes) and enclosures. Get started learning by joining the on-line discussions and stay in touch by subscribing to the newsletter at beagleboard.org/newsletter.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

2015-09-29-autodesk-ember

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 12:02:53 GMT

Ember opens the way to 3D printing

Interested in 3D printing or materials development? We all know by now that BeagleBone Black has incredibly precise machine control capabilities. Now, Autodesk® just did a bunch of us a big favor when it recently opened up its Ember high-resolution and small footprint stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer. Ember is already being used to produce castings for delicate pieces of jewelry and in photopolymer chemistry research. And now Autodesk has taken the next big step to encourage even more innovation and creative 3D printing applications. All of Embers hardware electronic design and firmware is now downloadable as open source. The mechanical designs and resin formulations had already been made available.

Whats really exciting for the BeagleBoard community is the presentation of a complete solution and the opportunity for experts in the community to build on and improve the design. Embers motherboard is a clone of a BeagleBone Black with the addition of a USB hub and WiFi adapter. Flash memory was beefed up as well and power management tweaked a bit. The system also includes a couple of microcontrollers for motor control, a small UI display and a series of LEDs. An embedded web server in Ember serves as an interface for desktop applications. All of the firmware for Embers Sitara main processor as well as the microcontrollers is now open source. Given all the design commonalities between Ember and BeagleBone Black, experts and hobbyists will be able to continue to simplify, refine and enhance the design using open and afforadable prototyping tools.

Ember Spark Logo time lapse (60FPS) from Ember3DP on Vimeo.

Even if you dont have the inclination to build an Ember for yourself, Autodesk has provided a link to the SD card image that can run on a standard off-the-shelf BeagleBone Black so you can start tinkering right away.

Heres a link about Ember itself: https://ember.autodesk.com

And heres where to get the newly released hardware and firmware sources: http://learn.ember.autodesk.com/blog/ember-open-source-electronics-and-firmware

Happy tinkering!

BeagleBone Green Hands-On: Lower Price, Same Horsepower

jkridner — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 18:06:31 GMT

Hackaday gets its hands on a @beagleboardorg compatible SeeedStudio #BeagleBoneGreen

Hackaday

Although the BeagleBone Green was announced at the Bay Area Maker Faire last May, there hasn’t been much said about it on the usual forums and IRC channels. Now, it’s finally out and I got my hands on one of them. Through a cooperation between the BeagleBoard foundation and Seeed Studios, the best small Linux board for doing real work with small Linux boards is now cheaper, a little more modern, and green.

The BeagleBone Green is an update to the venerable BeagleBone Black, the dev board based on a TI ARM Cortex-A8. It’s an extremely capable machine with a few interesting features that make it the perfect device for embedded applications. With the BeagleBone Green, the BB Black gets a small hardware refresh and a drastic reduction in price. If you want to do real work on a Linux board, this is the one to get. Check out the review…

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Connecting Erle Brain to APM Planner via MiniUSB

jkridner — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 14:37:32 GMT

BeaglePilot 2

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Introductory Video

jkridner — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 19:53:16 GMT

#GSoC project puts autopilot code on underwater vehicle #BeagleBoneBlack @beaglepilot2

BeaglePilot 2

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2015-05-27-BeagleBone-Black-and-Android-Combine-in-Super-Cape-Attachment

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 27 May 2015 18:16:15 GMT

BeagleBone Black and Android Combine in Super Cape Attachment
by Lauren Reed

Makers love customizing their Android devices. And thanks to the BBBAndroid, which puts emphasis on interfacing custom hardware with Android operating systems, users now have a starting point to create their own custom Android-based devices.

During the summer of 2013, I worked as a graduate assistant at Syracuse University. While I was there studying and assisting with classes, I was also experimenting with new ways to prototype Android systems with custom hardware, said Andrew Henderson, creator of the BBBAndroid.

Andrew decided he wanted a system with the ability to easily interface with multiple systems. He also did not want to have to break down commercial phones and tablets in order to implement the custom Android hardware he was testing.

When he started using the BeagleBone Black, it fit the bill perfectly.

The BBB is low cost, which is perfect for this system because Im designing it specifically for students, Andrew said. I wanted them to feel comfortable paying for and interfacing with my platform.

Other aspects that factored into Andrews decision to use BBB were the small physical footprint and open hardware design. The USB cable that comes with BBB can be used to provide an ADB interface to the BBBAndroid system, which makes app development and deployment quick and easy. Basic LCD capes that work with systems such as Angstrom and Debian, will work with the BBBAndroid straight out of their boxes. However, in those cases its up to the individual to write an Android app that is compatible with BBBAndroid.

While working with a port for TIs Sitara AM335x family of processors, I discovered that introducing newer BBB operating system features would require quite a few modifications to a couple of scripts, Andrew said. I tinkered with things quite a bit.

Andrew emphasizes that a complete knowledge of all aspects of the BBB system is very important for developers. Interfacing SPI and I2C devices was easy thanks to the device tree overlay support in the BBBs 3.8 operating system. Plus, BBB is very user-friendly in terms of the number of general purpose input/output pins; it has more available than other boards currently for sale.

Through trial and error, Andrew learned what he could from operating system and device-specific modifications from Rowboat Android JellyBean. Eventually he began pulling Android source code directly from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repositories.

The AOSP build system is pretty complex, but very well documented, Andrew said. This is why he turned to Karim Yaghmours book Embedded Android for help in understanding, building and customizing AOSP for BBBAndroid.

Andrew feels strongly that makers could always use more example Android apps that show off the interfacing capabilities of the BeagleBone Blacks hardware. That is why he plans to mentor a student who is working with the platform this summer during the Google Summer of Code program.

Call for Makers is now Open!

jkridner — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 17:22:06 GMT

Cleveland Mini Maker Faire

Ingenuity and Cleveland Public Library Announce 3^rd Annual Cleveland Mini Maker Faire

Call for Makers Now Open

Cleveland, OH – (February 20, 2015) Ingenuity and the Cleveland Public Library announce the third annual Cleveland Mini Maker Faire (CMMF) to be held on June 6^th from 10am to 6pm at the Library’s downtown branch (325 Superior Ave. E, Cleveland, OH 44114). Admission is free and open to the public.

This event showcases creativity, innovation, and interactivity from all segments of the maker community including crafts, technology, art, hands-on activities, and more. The CMMF will allow people of all ages to learn, discover, create, and play along with makers from the region’s business, non-profit, and scholastic sectors.

A call for participants is currently open. Individuals, groups, or organizations that would like to demonstrate inventions, crafts, innovations, technology, or creations are invited to apply. To apply, please visit www.makerfairecleveland.com.

“We’re…

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2015-03-30-project-spotlight-machinekit-yocto

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:48:17 GMT

Project Spotlight: Emmelia - Yocto powered 3D Printer prototype
by Natalie Nelms

Weve all heard about the trend of 3D printing thats on the rise and breaking into many different industries, from automotive to fashion, Makers have embraced 3D printing on a whole new level and many have presented their creations to the public. At least thats what maker Robert Berger did. He demonstrated his 3D printing project, Emmelia, at the Embedded Linux Conference 2014 at the Yocto booth. Berger began the project after purchasing a 3D printer kit.

The software included open source, which he said was quite stable, and not Linux (8-bit AVR) so he saw room for improvement and Maker innovation. The components Berger used in the device included:

Mechanics, bed, motors, thermistors, power supp.
Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black
CRAMPS
Five A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Black Edition

For software, Berger stated that he ran Machinekit over Yocto and not over Debian, as Machinekit runs out-of-the-box on Debian, but with the default (axis) user interface it tends to run out of memory. This gave him more RAM, which means you can print bigger/more complex designs.

Berger and his colleague Costas created a device which is a robust solid construction, reliable with great repeatability and low-maintenance. This allowed Emmelia to achieve high resolution when printing at high speeds. Furthermore the solid construction allowed the Makers to make use of the device in applications that require greater mechanical strength like PCB milling and drilling which gives the end user the ability to prototype a simple PCB, populate it and print the case.

Berger also explained in detail why he went with BeagleBone Black for his project. I used BeagleBoards from the early days on for my trainings: BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, BeagleBone and most recently, BeagleBone Black. The BeagleBone Black is truly open source and other solutions would most likely not be open or significantly increase the bill of materials.

The final product came with its fair share of challenges, however. Since Machinekit on Debian with the default axis interface consumes a lot of memory, he knew he would start to run out of memory with complex or big prints. This is why he decided to use a web server based solution.

This Maker also has future plans for this project and more. A printed circuit board rapid prototyping add-on is in the making for the 3D printing protype, but his main business is (Embedded) Linux and real-time trainings.

For more information on Emmelia and to stay up-to-date with Bergers latest endeavors or register for training sessions to assemble your own 3D printer, visit: http://vlabsystems.com/.

BeagleBones At MRRF

jkridner — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 23:49:04 GMT

Hackaday

[Jason Kridner] – the BeagleBone guy – headed out to the Midwest RepRap Festival this weekend. There are a lot of single board computers out there, but the BeagleBoard and Bone are perfectly suited for controlling printers, and motion control systems thanks to the real-time PRUs on board. It’s not the board for you if you want to play retro video games or build a media center; it’s the board for building stuff.

Of interest at the BeagleBooth were a few capes specifically designed for CNC and 3D printing work. There was the CRAMPS, a clone of the very popular RAMPS 3D printer electronics board made for the Beagle. If you’re trying to control an old mill that is only controllable through a parallel port, here’s the board for you. There are 3D printer boards with absurd layouts that work well as both printer controller boards and the…

View original post 71 more words

2015-02-05-raspberry-pi-2

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 20:00:44 GMT

How does BeagleBone Black compare to Raspberry Pi 2?
by Jason Kridner

As many of you might have heard, Raspberry Pi launched their next board, the Raspberry Pi 2. There have been noticeable differences in the primary processor performance from the original Pi to Pi 2. This has cause a lot of people to revisit the question of how the BeagleBone Black compares to Raspberry Pi.

The lineage of the two projects tells part of the story. The original BeagleBoard started with a mobile phone processor and the Pi started with a multimedia chip. The Pi 2 still seems to be very multimedia and GUI centric. The BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black (the Bones), however, started with an industrial control and communications chip, the TI Sitara AM335x. These starting points lean to suitability of each being better for certain types of tasks. The Bones are particularly suited to building small connected electronics projects with key advantages in several areas.

The Bones have better I/O capabilities with 7 channel 200kHz 12-bit ADC, 8 PWMs, 4 UARTs, quadrature encoder hardware and much more. This means you don't have to buy additional components to connect up many more sensors and actuators. An actuator could be something like an LED string, an LCD, a switch or a motor. For example, motor drive strength can be controlled using a PWM and the large number of PWM channels on the Bones make them better for driving motors, even if you need to add a circuit to give the drivers extra strength. Adding external PWM drivers would cost additional money and might incur overheads to update. If you care mostly about connecting electronics, then the Bones might be your best choice.

The Bones also have better real-time control with two 200MHz, 32-bit RISC programmable real-time units (PRUs) that are optimized for single-cycle latency to I/O pins, enabling peripheral emulation and predictable ultra-low latency hard real time control. This mix of Linux and a microcontroller on a single chip makes the Bones able to handle tasks you simply can't do with another Linux machine and external microcontroller (MCU). This is primarily due to the shared memory nature of the ARM and PRUs in the Bones. An example is BeagleLogic.net, which uses the PRUs to create a 14-channel 100MHz logic analyzer out of a Bone and is capable of streaming over a GB of samples using the ARM CPU to compress the data ahead of storing it. Another example is LEDscape, which is able to use Python scripts to drive hundreds of thousands of LEDs at costing around 50-to-1 less than what you could drive with a Pi, even with an external MCU. So, not only does adding an external MCU add cost, it just doesn't enable you to reproduce the capability.

The extensive I/O capabilities of the Bones have resulted in over 100 add-on cape boards to add touch displays, sensors including GPS, various network connections including WiFi and 3G, communication busses like CAN, motor control and power/battery management. These enable you to get a quick start on your hardware design and get to developing your software with a head start. While there are many add-on boards for the Pi, there just isn't enough I/O to get many interface tasks accomplished.

What will matter the most to many people is the fact that the Pi is still closed source hardware with limited documentation of the design and no ability to customize or manage the supply chain. This is only part of why many people consider the Bone more suited to higher educational and professional use. Quality manufacturing in the US is also frequently seen as a bonus by a developer community with many professional Linux consultants looking to help create real products. Open hardware derivatives like the Ninja Spheramid and BBP (BeagleBone 3D Printer) are just the start of new Bone-related designs popping up this year. This is possible due to the open hardware nature of the Bones and use of the Sitara devices that are available for nearly anyone to buy.

The Bone has been around since 2011 with approximately 20 books available for texts, reference and projects. The board boots from the mainline Linux kernel and has been used as reference in courses from Linux professionals for years. When BeagleBoard launched in 2008, we started with an ARMv7 core and became the platform most developers used to bring their product to the ARM architecture, which is why Ubuntu, Debian, Android and others have been running for years from the mainline developer repositories and have well-established references.

Getting started with electronics projects quickly is pretty well optimized on the Bones and on BeagleBone Black we introduced an on-board eMMC flash (4GB as of rev C) that is pre-programmed with a Debian Linux distribution, out-of-box tutorial, IDE and everything you need to start your development. Part of our motivation to include this was the existence of forgery SD cards. The on-board eMMC has clear specifications on performance and reliability which are a must for doing any serious work. The higher bandwidth interface gives a nice performance boost. Having the flash pre-programmed saves significant time and money by delivering an immediate out-of-box developer experience without needing to visit the store again and download huge disk images.

The Bone also includes features like USB client and boot from USB/serial direct from the in-chip ROM code. The USB client is a key component to the unique rapid quick-start out-of-box experience shipped with every Bone. Plug it in and the exposed flash drive has all the documentation and drivers needed to work with the board from any computer. The board serves up a web site with a tutorial for learning to do physical I/O and an IDE for doing all of your development, even a command-line, right with your browser. Native tools and libraries ship for Python, JavaScript, C/C++, Ruby, Perl and others, but Java and an endless supply of others are only an 'apt-get' away.

BeagleBoard.org continues to be the innovator and the open partner with BeagleBoard-X15 already in the hands of beta developers, though it hasn't yet been officially "announced". That is a bit of the differences in the way we do things. The device documentation is already public and patches for BeagleBoard-X15 have already been pushed on the Linux mailing lists. When BeagleBoard-X15 does launch, it will have many times the performance and interface possibilities than Pi 2.

The Pi 2 is a pretty cool little affordable desktop computer with a business model that makes it attractive for those who want to use it as-is. For those who want to make cool stuff with electronics that includes an embedded Linux computer, they need to be sure to check out what the Beagles have to offer.

2015-02-09-time-for-gsoc

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 20:16:32 GMT

Time for another Google Summer of Code
by Jason Kridner

Google starts accepting applications for potential mentoring organizations on today, February 9th. BeagleBoard.org is going to send in an application. Your help is needed to make that application as strong as it can be!

Sign up on the mailing list: http://bit.ly/bbgsocml
Join the eLinux wiki and review/update the ideas page: http://bit.ly/bbgsocideas
Prospective mentors: update your info on the ideas page (change something so I know you are alive or I'll remove you)
Prospective students: contact prospective mentors NOW and start looking for simple tasks to prove your ability to handle a project

Need some motivation and inspiration? Check out some of the cool projects that have been executed under BeagleBoard.org's mentorship under the Google Summer of Code in previous years. I've grouped them by some of the typical focus areas where BeagleBoard.org seeks to improve the status of open source software.

Improving initial experience for novice developers
Linux kernel support for embedded devices and interfaces
ARM processor support in open source operating systems and libraries
Heterogeneous co-processor support in open source operating systems and libraries
Linux userspace support of embedded devices and interfaces in high-level languages

We'll be meeting up on http://bit.ly/bbgsocchat (#beagle-gsoc) every Wednesday at noon US Eastern time (http://bit.ly/bbgsocmeet), which is 5PM GMT until March 8th when it switches to 4PM GMT.

Improving initial experience for novice developers

Linux kernel related

ARM related

Co-processor related

High-level language support for Linux interfaces related

2015-01-28-thought-leadership-regarding-internet-things

jkridner.wordpress.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 19:03:15 GMT

Thought Leadership Regarding the Internet of Things
by Jason Kridner

With browsers and rich applications available to us everywhere, desires for information and control are growing astronomically. Entrepreneurial, design and cross-discipline engineering skills are all required to launch a successful connected device. Thankfully, Brian DeLacey with other technology enthusiasts around Cambridge and Boston are exploring what it takes to educate individuals and teams on the required skills in the most expedient ways possible. I was fortunate to be a guest speaker at an IoT event he hosted at MIT and to participate in his week long Independent Activities Period (IAP) class, supporting use of BeagleBone Black.

This class had an amazing mix of people with different talents and interests. Starting on Monday, almost all of the class had no experience with BeagleBone Black and most had no experience with Linux either. Most of the lecture stayed focused on making sure the students had a view of the larger picture as well as typical pitfalls. By the end of the week, however, everyone built their own custom working project that communicated with the Internet and connected to physical sensors and actuators (like lights and motors).

Part of their success has to be attributed to getting grouped up with cross-disciplinary skills. This is something I've learned from other makers and a great reason for you to join a local hackerspace.

Brian's approach in the classroom is just a part of his thought leadership. Leading up to this workshop, he contacted me with interest in getting Google's Dart programming lanugage running on BeagleBone Black. A nice recent version of Dart running on ARM is something that isn't yet provided in Debian's Linux distribution feeds. Robert Nelson of Digi-Key, however, was able to quickly engage the Google developers to resolve any build issues and package it into his own custom feads for Beagle. Now, Dart is only an apt-get away from a BeagleBone Black user running one of Robert's latest builds.

Arriving at the classroom, I hadn't had any experience programming in Dart. One of the first challenges we faced in the classroom was not knowing the web address of each of BeagleBone being used and matching that up to a physical board without plugging into each board directly via USB. Fortunately, the serial numbers were printed on the side of each board, giving them a physically recognizable attribute. Within minutes, I was able to cobble together some Dart code as an example to publish the addresses matched to serial numbers of each board. I used a service called Dweet.io as a common ground to share the messages coming from the boards. I'm definitely going to keep learning about this language and am excited to have at least a bit of it in my toolbox now.

Dart wasn't the only technology Brian got me exploring. He also introduced me to Docker. Docker is "an open platform for distributed applications for developers and sysadmins" and claims to enable you to "Build, Ship and Run Any App, Anywhere". Looking at it a bit, it makes it easy to reproduce an environment on top of an operating system for the execution of your app. While at first glance you can see how this is pretty handy in the server world, it is less obvious how applicable it might be for an embedded system. I mean, it sounds kinda useful for networking apps, but wouldn't it be resource heavy?

Somewhat of an answer to that question came to me the next week when Canonical released Snappy Ubuntu Core targeted at Internet Things. Ubuntu Core includes a new package installation tool that is lighter on resources and somewhat focuses on the ability to run Docker. It is also said to have an additional amount of security around running applications taken from the Ubuntu Phone effort. Apparently, the memory requirement is only 128MB. The release distribution includes a reference image for BeagleBone Black, enabling people to start playing with it on real embedded hardware immediately. It certainly has me thinking these container technologies coule play a major role in the future of connected devices.

Also speaking at the IoT event was Peter Hoddie of Kinoma. We had a great discussion and largely agreed on the pros and cons of doing tops-down development vs. community-oriented development akin to the Cathedral and the Bazaar. The KinomaJS software provides an impressive looking out-of-box experience and was rather motivating for me. In particular, it encouraged me to check up on some of the fun work going on at Tufts University a few miles away. There, Jenn Thomas of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach has been working on a web-based GUI that allows you to quickly probe and manipulate the BeagleBone Black I/O pins. For someone very new to working with hardware, the visual feedback is great to give them a feel for what is happening in the hardware. It seems like this could add some real value to the out-of-box experience.

All together, it was an amazing week where I was learning constantly. I hope Brian knows how thankful I am, not only for allowing me to participate in the class and the event, but in providing some strongly needed thought leadership around how we get all the right information and control with our devices during this connect them to the Internet gold rush. Thanks!

2015-01-28-declaring-the-drought-is-officially-over

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 18:54:14 GMT

Declaring the Drought is Officially Over
by Jason Kridner

It was April last year when I wrote about how we were going to fix the board shortage. Demand and activity have only increased since then, but the additional production capacity has paid off and there is now inventory of both the official BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Black manufactured by CircuitCo and the logo-compliant BeagleBone Black manufactured by Element14 in every major region. In the US, major electronics retailers are stocking BeagleBone Black including a Make-produced getting started kit at Radio Shack and a $39.99 sale at Micro Center for most of this month.

Distributors are now starting to do more promotions with BeagleBone Black, including Element14's daily give-away of 2 BeagleBone Blacks drawn randomly from individuals who sign up on their community site and refer a friend who signs up. MCM is doing a free case give away until February 2nd. I'm sure there are a bunch of other promotions I don't even know about.

Now that boards are out there, we can get back to showing people how to make the most out of their BeagleBone Blacks. One of the biggest gaps I've found in hackathons is a lack of awareness of the expected out-of-box experience. That is, most people never check out http://beagleboard.org/getting-started leading to the tutorial served-up by the on-board web server. From there, most people never discover the Cloud9 IDE with its highly-functional Linux command shell right in the browser. After that, the next biggest struggle is opening up people's minds to what they can create. Blinking an LED is easy, but it isn't hard to find blog posts or even a book on building BeagleBone Black Super Clusters. Fortunately, that isn't the only topic for which there is a BeagleBone book for which you can learn about the amazing things these boards can do.

Current list of BeagleBone Black books: http://bit.ly/bbb-books

2014-12-14-year-of-the-beagle

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 03:18:09 GMT

The Year of the Beagle
by Jason Kridner

2014 has been an amazing year for BeagleBoard.org and BeagleBone Black, the most successful open hardware computer ever invented. I know what you are thinking; “Jason, didn't that board from the UK outsell BeagleBone Black?” Sure, but that board isn't open hardware: there aren't open source layout files or open source editable schematics and the components in the bill of materials aren't readily available. With boards from BeagleBoard.org, anyone can make them, and if they make enough of them, they can be made at a similar or even lower price point. That's only part of the beauty of open hardware.

We started 2014 with a big issue: not enough BeagleBone Blacks were available for everyone that wanted one (or a thousand). All official BeagleBoard.org boards are made cost effectively in Richardson, TX by CircuitCo and they've been working around the clock to make more boards. They have been increasing their output, but they need solid orders and strong lead times to produce enough boards for people dropping them into volume products. Thanks to the open source nature of Beagle, clones have been out there. To improve availability, we tested one from Element14's Embest subsidiary in China and declared it "BeagleBoard Compliant". Now, BeagleBone Black is readily available all over the world, including Element14's version.

BeagleBone Black's success in 2014 was reflected in incredible launches on Kickstarter of Open qPCR, an open hardware DNA diagnostic machine, and Squink, an electronics factory for your desktop. These are some stand-out projects, but what really gave me a sense of BeagleBone Black's success was a walk around some of the Maker Faires. It seemed everybody was using a Bone if they were looking to include a computer in their project – at least if they were building more than one. One of the most popular uses of BeagleBone Black is in lighting controllers, thanks to the high performance and ability for the Programmable Real-time Units (PRUs) ability to create custom interfaces for affordable large-scale LED panels. These could be seen from the most deadly lighting display at the exhibit, the Orbital Rendersphere from Hoboken Hackerspace, to the most active video game playing on the Megascroller from Trammell Hudson and Justin Day (based on his Trammell's previous work on Octoscroller). Showing up in a more surprising place, when I was getting a free cup of coffee in the morning. I introduced myself as being from BeagleBoard.org and the makers of PourSteady, the automated pour-over coffee machine, proceeded to slide the case off and show me the Bone inside responsible for controlling this amazing machine. Checking out the advanced vision capabilities of the Pick 'n Paste circuit assembly machine from Carbide Labs, it is readily apparent why people are choosing BeagleBone Black for machine controls and it won't be too long before Bones start making themselves!

With all of the success seen in 2014, 2015 is where we'll most certainly see the real strength of the Bone's open hardware nature. With the BeagleBone Black design now on a free on-line design tool called Upverter, innovative sourcing, assembly and funding solutions from folks like CircuitHub.com, and a significant flattening of the prices of pin-compatible Sitara processors from Texas Instruments, help prove that 2015 will be the year of the Bone clones. This means there will be more software compatible options with application focused features, such as Truby Zong's 3D-printer controller.

Thank you everyone who has bought, played, utilized, trained, wrote, expanded or contributed this year for making Beagle so successful in 2014. With community, capes, clones and coffee, 2015 is sure to be the year of the Beagle!

2014-12-03-beaglebone-black-project-spotlight-open-qpcr

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 03:15:29 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight: Open qPCR
by Natalie Nelms

If you are what you eat, then it’s important to avoid putting pathogens and viruses into your body, right? Nobody wants to be a germ.

It should come as no surprise that the produce we fill our plates with can host a wide variety of illness-causing bacteria like E. coli or salmonella. While this may be a distressing thought, innovations in technology have presented us with ways to detect harmful microbes to ensure that only the best fruits and veggies enter our bodies.

One such technological development comes in the form of the Open qPCR – a device that effectively performs DNA-based diagnostics to identify dangerous pathogens and viruses not only in food, but also viruses such has HIV, Malaria or Ebola in people, and can also determine the variants of genes that people have (genotyping). Open qPCR does this by identifying the DNA of the pathogen within the food sample. Although the amount of pathogenic DNA is minute compared to the DNA of the food, Open qPCR is able to selectively make copies of only the pathogenic DNA, which is then detected using the device's optics.

“I heard from so many people who had really interesting applications for this technology,” detailed the Open qPCR’s creator, Josh Perfetto, on the origins of this project. “I wanted to produce a more comprehensive, automated solution for the testing process.”

The Open qPCR is powered by a BeagleBone Black and also utilizes the following materials in order to capture the necessary information from a sample’s DNA:

Thermoelectric (peltier) modules
Heat sink and fan
Optical system including LEDs, photodiodes, interference filters and long-pass filters
PCB containing both high-power circuitry to control peltiers and heaters, and sensitive circuitry to read low-level signals from photodiodes using a lock-in amplifier

Perfetto determined that he wanted to include the Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black over other processes because of the extensive circuitry that the projected called for. In addition, the BeagleBone Black offered the most GB to work with in order to integrate all of the parts that exist within the Open qPCR.

In terms of complications experienced during the development process, Perfetto explained how he “needed to detect microvolt signals coming from our photodiodes.” He did so by implementing LED modulation and lock-in amplifier circuits which can detect minute signals amongst greater background noise.

“It was almost magical the first time I saw it work,” Perfetto described.

Looking towards the future, Perfetto is set on empowering non-biologists to perform these DNA diagnostics and will do so by including a key component to the design of the Open qPCR device. “We’ve got the hardware where we want it to be, but using it requires wetware,” Perfetto offered on what else needs to be done to simplify the testing process.

For more information on maker Josh Perfetto and his innovative designs, please visit http://chaibio.com/openqpcr and also check out their Kickstarter page!

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-11-25-project-spotlight-picknpaste

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:11:56 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Pick n Paste

By Natalie Nelms

Not only mans best friend, the Pick n Paste is now a makers best friend!

Carbide Labs, a startup out of Philadelphia, is developing a desktop circuit assembly tool that is enough to melt any makers heart thanks to its capability to cut both the time and cost of a prototyping project. Not only does the Pick n Paste place components on an unpopulated board for you, but it also goes one step further by applying solder paste, which can be used to secure the components through a separate baking step. All you have to do is place your board and components in the work area, input information about the prototypes design, perform a quick calibration and voilà your project is on its way to completion!

The device is targeted towards users doing R&D work, iterative testing/prototyping, hobbyists, hackerspaces, educational users, etc., explained Bob Sherbert, a Carbide team member. Basically anyone who needs to do many unique designs or frequent iterations on a single design when they have a lot of small components involved would benefit from our device. It's built to cut out the high cost and lead times associated with doing mail away or hand assembly at low volumes.

Some of the components that make the Pick 'n Paste possible:
TIs Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black
Linear bearings and precision 8mm shaft
Small stepper motors (NEMA 17 and 11 sizes)
HTD belting for low backlash
Standard CP-6 vacuum tips

We were inspired by homebrew pick-and-place machines using CNC routers and 3D printer frames, which showed that it was possible to do pick and place on a small scale with inexpensive equipment, Sherbert detailed further. We were also excited to utilize the BeagleBone Black thanks to the presence of the PRUs, high I/O count and overall community enthusiasm for motion control capes and supporting software.

Beyond solving the physical manipulation of the components, there were a few other challenges the team had to overcome. First among these was the issue of correcting position errors among the boards and components. To compensate for this, the team added an OpenCV based vision system. The vision system, along with a low-current stepper driver and microstepping implementation allowed for the rotation of parts to align with pads.

For more information on the Pick n Paste and to keep track of what Carbide is up to next, visit: http://pnp.carbidelabs.com!

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-11-12-CircuitHub-launches-group-buys-with-GamingCape

jkridner.wordpress.com — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 04:53:52 GMT

CircuitHub launches group buys with build of GamingCape

by Jason Kridner

TL;DR - $99 BeagleBone Black GamingCape from CircuitHub

In last year's TI intern contest, Max Thrun amazed us with his incredible video of the making of the GamingCape that turned a BeagleBone Black into a handheld-gaming console running on AAA batteries. If you are like me, you immediately wanted one of your own. I ran out and bought a few PCBs from OSHPark, sourced parts from Digi-Key and started assembling some boards. A few months later, as you can see, I still don't have it 100% assembled.

Well, I'm here to ask for your help in fixing this problem! I uploaded Max's open hardware design to CircuitHub and they launched a new tool enabling us to go in together on a board build. This means we can use our combined purchasing power to lower the cost of buying the components and justifying the time it takes to setup machines to do the assembly. While Max's assembly skills are mesmerizing, they aren't going to put many boards in people's hands.

Thanks to CircuitHub's new group buy campaign tool, instead of spending about $1,000 on just a single board assembly, we are each able to buy one for under $100! If more people buy them, the price might even go down further, so encourage your friends to buy one too. So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to the group buy campaign and turn your BeagleBone into a handheld gaming device too!

http://campaign.circuithub.com/beaglebone-gamingcape

Note that this is a group purchase and not an off-the-shelf product. Max has done much of the hard work in designing and testing this board, but it isn't necessarily perfect. I'll be working with CircuitHub over the next few weeks to fix issues that Max has pointed out. Join the Disqus conversation on the page to help us hammer out the details, visit Max's page to review the design materials and join the fun.

Now how about watching that video just one more time...

2014-11-10-project-spotlight-beaglebot

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:44:02 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
BeagleBot

By Natalie Nelms

Its amazing what you can create when you pair a few spare parts lying around and an inventive imagination. In this instance, these ingredients gave birth to BeagleBot a small test robot for localization algorithms!

After seeing demos of SLAM at home brew robotics society meetings, along with people using Kinects as cheap lidars, I was hooked on robot localization, explained BeagleBots creator Nathaniel Lewis on the origins of this project. I wanted to learn everything I could about these algorithms and I needed a test platform. So, I took parts I had laying around the house, along with a replacement Neato Lidar I found online and built BeagleBot.

Lewis constructed his little venture out of the following parts to effectively experiment with the workings of robot localization:
TIs Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black
Robotics Connection Stinger Chassis
  - Simple machined aluminum frame
  - Simple three wheeled design: two gearmotors + encoders and a model aircraft tail wheel for a caster
Custom cape
  - 2x SN75540 motor drivers
  - 5V to 3.3V conversion logic for encoders
  - Driver logic for Neato Lidar (MOSFET and driver attached to PWM line) UWN200 WiFi adapter
Neato XV-11 Lidar
1080p USB Webcam
GP2D12 Infrared Range Finders
5600 mA/h USB battery pack for logic (one of those cell phone charger packs)
2100 mA/h 2 cell LiPo for motors

Lewis also explained in more detail the reasons behind why he chose the BeagleBone Black to serve as the brains for his robot. I chose the BeagleBone because of the I/O capabilities, the form factor, and the price. The plethora of GPIO and PWM meant I didnt need external microcontrollers to control motors or sensors. The small size meant I could shove it just about anywhere, and the price was unbeatable for the features. I still remember shelling out more money for a Parallax Basic Stamp 2 ten years ago, than I did for the BeagleBone Black!

The finished product did not come without a few hiccups, however. Lewis divulged some challenges that he experienced while building his robot including trouble counting encoder pulses, getting Xenomai to work with the BeagleBone Black and accurately timing the input pulse from sonar. Thankfully, these issues were combatted with Lewis creativity and experience, and the BeagleBot became a functioning reality after some trial and error.

The maker also has big plans for the future developing a low-cost motion capture system as an independent research project at University this semester!

For more information on the BeagleBot and to stay up-to-date with Lewis endeavors, visit: http://nathanielrlewis.com/beaglebot.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-08-25-project-spotlight-beaglerov

nelms.natalie — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:40:43 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
BeagleROV

By Natalie Nelms

You dont have to be a child to play with remote-controlled cars. The BeagleROV is an exciting toy that would bring any adult Maker back to the good ole days except this robot packs a bit more punch than the classic Nascar minis. Powered by the TI Sitara AM335x processor-based BeagleBone Black, the BeagleROV has a multitude of capabilities that are all controlled remotely via the robots web application.

In addition to the vehicles remotely controlled technology, the BeagleROV includes the following features:
Wi-Fi access to the web app with an adhoc Wi-Fi network
Real-time video processing with OpenCV
GPIO management to drive MOSFET actuators
Ultrasonic distance sensor reading

This car definitely isnt your granddads model.

When asked why he developed this machine, creator Fabio Balzano explained that he wanted to create a dynamic robot. My company is working in this kind of research and development, and we are especially interested in autonomous UAVs and ROVs, explained Balzano.

The development of this vehicle did not come without complications, however. The HUB USB power wires were cut to prevent USB host port power down, detailed Balzano on the challenges of building his robot. I was able to solve this problem, though, by soldering a custom cape to connect all of the I/O.

The BeagleROVs technology also transcends the confines of the Earths surface and has been utilized in underwater exploration. The marine version of the robot is able to collect imaging and sample data from depths of up to 1,000 meters below the surface, which has sufficiently helped organizations like Marine Applied Research and Exploration gather the information that they need to learn more about the oceanic habitat. The ability of BeagleBone Black to support OpenCV real-time video processing really comes into play here as explorers look to stream live footage of the ever-intriguing mystery that is the sea.

Looking towards the future, Fabio and his team plan to develop a more advanced and improved version of this robot. The BeagleROV has proven to not only serve as a hobbyist project, but has also shown to be beneficial in the exploration of our wondrous planet. It is an exciting time for the BeagleROV team and we are eager to see what future models will be capable of.

For more information on the BeagleROV and for a detailed look at the code that Fabio implemented in the vehicle, you can visit the projects site at: https://bitbucket.org/fabiodive/bsdcan2014. Want to collaborate or need help with your project? Feel free to contact Fabio at: fabio.balzano@elfarolab.com.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-10-28-project-spotlight-MILSTD1553

doug — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:54:22 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Implementing MIL-STD-1553 with three Beagles

By Natalie Nelms

Oh, the places youll go when using three BeagleBone Blacks!

Maker and engineering expert Trefor Delve explored this idea by developing a parallel simulation proof of concept that ran on three Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Blacks in order to implement a MIL-STD-1553 bus system and interface to real and virtual hardware.

There is always a need during a development to be able to scale performance as computational needs increase, Delve explained as he discussed the inspiration behind the project. This raises its own issues in terms of how to provide that capability. Add to that the problem that often real world I/O is required and the problem becomes multi-dimensional: performance issues, problem description and hardware management. A cost effective means to implement a proof of concept was required.

Traditionally, MIL-STD-1553 is identified as a military standard published by the U.S. Department of Defense that defines the mechanical, electrical and functional aspects of a serial data bus. This particular piece of technology has been in existence since 1973, but multiple revisions have been made to it over time and it has become the most predominantly used networking standard for both military and civil avionics.

The fact that this piece of hardware is so dynamic is what enabled Delve to further explore its capabilities and design his proof of concept. The MIL-STD-1553 and BeagleBone Black combo certainly makes for an interesting project with its rich history and durable design.

When asked why Delve integrated three BeagleBone Blacks into this type of bus system as opposed to other platforms, he detailed that, a full development on PC-based hardware can be an expensive proposition especially in a proof of concept environment. The BeagleBone Black contained the basic hardware required: multichannel ADC (analog to digital converter), PWM (pulse width modulated) outputs and SPI outputs. In addition, the ability to download and compile standard tools like MPICH (a high performance message passing interface) and QT (a cross-platform application framework) provided an industrial-strength demonstration platform. The BeagleBone Black represented a cost effective proposition.

Fortunately for the projects process, Delve ran into minimal issues.

He expressed that the only concerns were that the BeagleBone Blacks used were early devices so there were some issues with the ADC operation in terms of when samples were valid. The PWM outputs had some issues where it was difficult to make changes to update rates. There were solutions for each of these problems that worked in my situation some were at the cost of capabilities that other users may have needed.

Delve plans on continuing his work with electrical engineering by applying BeagleBone Black to automotive instrumentation, making use of the ADC and PWM capabilities. Stay tuned for more on that!

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-09-08-project-spotlight-sleeptight

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 15:17:12 GMT

BeagleBoard-xM project spotlight:
Sleep Tight

By Natalie Nelms

Picture this: Youre lying in bed, exhausted from a long day of work; your eyelids are heavy, but youre devoted to finishing the last page of your favorite novel. You conclude the last page, set the book down on your nightstand, get in the perfect sleeping position and then regrettably realize that your bedroom lamp is still on. With a sigh, you get out of your cozy bed and turn off the light, but not after aggressively stubbing your toe on your nightstand on the way back to bed.

Now imagine avoiding this whole scenario by simply telling your lamp or lights to turn off. With voice-controlled technology, Sleep Tight can easily turn off your light from the comfort of your own bed. Users will find themselves in sweet dreams immediately.

Electronic engineer, F.Can Akinci, hatched the idea after recognizing the frustration of book-lovers at bedtime and the need for a convenient solution.

Most people love to read in their beds at night to have a better nights sleep, said Akinici, the embedded electronics enthusiast. When you finish reading and are ready to sleep, you have to leave your warm bed and get up to reach the switch. Thanks to the BeagleBoard-xM-powered Sleep Tight, you wont even need to move your hand to switch off the lamps.

The project components include a microphone with a 3.5 mm jack, DSP capabilities of BeagleBoard and a relay for switching lights. The team opted for the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBoard-xM as the direct board for the device as its DSP unit can handle the voice recognition tasks.

Although now a graduate of Middle East Tech University, Akinici once dreamed of playing professional basketball and came extremely close joining the pros. Now, he uses that athleticism and competitive edge to create! He is currently in the beginning stages of the Sleep Tight project, but hopes to finish in the coming weeks. Once complete, he plans to continue on to his next venture: creating a gesture-controlled system.

Check out F. Can Akincis blog for updates on the ongoing project and to learn more feel free to contact him via Twitter: @wholelottajam.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-08-27-device-tree-overlay-support-lands-upstream

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:46:24 GMT

Device Tree Overlay Support Lands Upstream

Pantelis Antoniou originated device tree overlay support for the purpose of enabling dynamic hardware configuration under Linux on devices like BeagleBone that use device tree for hardware configuration. Device tree was introduced to Linux for the purpose of putting the description of hardware into data structures, rather than building it up programmatically, greatly reducing the amount of code required to be maintained within the Linux kernel sources. Until now, the device tree data structure was only processed at boot time and that simply can't work for devices that might change hardware configurations after boot. While many BeagleBone capes can be probed by the bootloader, a common use-case is hardware that is reconfigurable. The most obvious example is a cape with an FPGA on it.

Pantelis' early code was used in the kernel provided with the launch of BeagleBone Black. This became the standard for how BeagleBone cape hardware is supported with numerous tutorials showing up and probing of the on-board cape EEPROMs by Capemgr. This was all done specifically for BeagleBone kernels and was not part of mainline Linux until today when Linus' accepted Pantelis' patch for device tree transactional support which introduces changesets to device tree support.

Thank you Pantelis for your persistence!

This means that we should soon have Capemgr support in newer kernels and we are trying to get a jump on that now. However, we've also learned a few things over the last year about what the typical cape maker might feel comfortable understanding and debugging. Robert Nelson has been releasing kernel images based on 3.14 stable trees and TI patch sets along with test Debian images. This was announced on the mailing list recently along with instructions on downloading newer images, updating to newer kernels and reporting issues. In this new kernel effort, we are starting with trying to enable every cape and I/O function we can manage without overlays first, then will make use of overlays for any features. The initial direction was to create a separate git tree for this effort, but that idea was dropped and the latest Beagle kernels can all be found at github.com/beagleboard/linux with live Debian-packaged builds at builds.beagleboard.org.

Your help testing and patching this kernel, along with your appreciation of those continuing to advance the state of the mainline Linux kernel, is greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

2014-08-06-project-spotlight-pocket-nc

nelms.natalie — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:45:10 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Pocket NC P5

By Natalie Nelms

Computer numerical control (CNC) milling machines have been around for decades. Most are industrial-sized, and are used create everything from the shaped trim on a house to the mechanical components of a space shuttle. Over the last decade, a large do-it-yourself community has emerged giving a new market to CNC milling machines as personal, rather than solely industrial applications.

Matt, Michelle, Gary, Duane and Bannor from Pocket NC have always been tinkerers and enjoy pursuing projects from their homes. After searching long and hard for a personal desktop mill, Matt and his team turned to the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBone Black to design and build a milling machine for themselves. Thus, the Pocket NC P5 was born!

We saw an amazing opportunity for creativity that could open up if we had the ability to make real parts for projects and prototyping from our house, said Matt, the inventor captain from Pocket NC. Three and a half years ago we embarked on the journey to bring a sophisticated milling machine to the masses.

The Pocket NC P5s subtractive manufacturing process starts with a solid piece of material and carves out the desired part according to computer generated tool paths. Compared to 3D printing, milling offers a much wider variety of possible materials to use (including metals and wood), which produces stronger finished parts.

Pocket NC P5 is driven by the LinuxCNC distribution Machine Kit running on a BeagleBone Black. The 5-axis machine utilizes precision linear and rotary bearings, stepper motors and an NSK spindle with quick change capabilities and brushless servo direct drive.

We chose the BeagleBone Black for its compact size and functionality, Matt said. Its powerful enough to drive all five axes of our machine; and it offers many GPIO pins and fast PRU pins. The features on the board gave us hope that we could bring desktop machining into the 21st century.

Although the teams strengths are predominantly mechanical skills, they found engineers and hobbyists to assist with the project in the electronics and software areas. The Pocket NC P5 project is fully funded by the team, so challenges arose when looking for people to contribute without an immediate payout. Finding the right people who are passionate about the project ruled out the financial hardships that came with the project. Funding the project themselves, the team learned how to be creative in finding ways to prototype their machines.

The team took sixth months to develop the design of a 3-axis mill but quickly realized many people would be more interested in a 5-axis machine. After building and learning from three prototypes, they built a fourth prototype that they took to World Maker Faire New York in 2013. Today, the team is in the process of building and testing five Beta machines before taking the product to market.

We want to continue developing our machine to bring down the cost, while also adding more features to it, Matt said. We will either be working on that, or developing a perpetual motion machine. We have learned a lot through the process and are always thankful for the encouragement and support we receive from the community.

If you'd like to learn more about the Pocket NC P5, feel free to visit www.pocketnc.com or check it out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardorg!

2014-08-12-project-spotlight-squink

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:43:13 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Squink

By Natalie Nelms

Standing in line for coffee, a commercial break, boiling water all things that only take a matter of minutes. What if building circuit boards were that easy and time efficient? At New York startup company BotFactory, devices print and assemble electronic circuit boards from your desktop in a matter of minutes. Creating electronic devices has never been easier.

While attending the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, BotFactory co-founders, Carlos Ospina and Nicolas Vansnick, were presented with the challenge to design, assemble and test a basic EEG system in their bio-electronics class. While the design of the EEG probes on paper and then on a CAD program took a big part of the semester, what was later revealed as the most critical part of the assignment was the circuit fabrication itself. Out of the eight teams, only one managed to finish on time for the end of the semester. The reason why? It took PCB manufacturers nearly ten days to fabricate and ship all the boards. If only one mistake was made in the design, the team had to send their design for fabrication again ensuring a missed deadline.

Realizing they had worked on similar time sensitive projects previously, Carlos and Nicolas turned to NYU-Poly professor Michael Knox to create a 3D printer capable of printing circuit boards. After hours of brainstorming on the concept, the pair found their third co-founder and Squink. Squink is a desktop electronic circuit printer and assembler that allows you to upload your design files and create circuit boards in less than thirty minutes for only five dollars.

An intuitive user interface walks you through a three-step process. First, conductive ink is applied onto a substrate, such as photo-paper or glass. Second, conductive glue dots are dropped where part pins will be placed. Finally, Squink picks up the parts from a tray, rotates them and places them on the glue dots to complete the circuits. The Squink printer is run through a web interface, which means you dont have to download any software.

The printer consists of a Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black, 3D-axis frame, custom made board to drive inkjet and five motors, custom made plastic parts for different heads, a camera to run computer vision algorithms and several different softwares.

We choose the BeagleBone Black because we needed a bigger number of IO's than usually available on other development boards, said Nicolas. The PRU was a very attractive feature to drive our motors efficiently, since we had some problems with our previous development board. We also wanted to use an OS and a multi-platform language, and the price was too hard to beat for the specs it offers!

Can't keep the printer right next to your computer? Not a problem! Squink lets you connect through a USB cable, an Ethernet cable, or a wireless adapter. The choice is yours.

Building a circuit board is never without its challenges. The physical tolerance of parts gave the team trouble during the pick and place process. Additionally, it took them a while to get a reliable printing head. The team credits their third-place win and current success to each individuals perseverance and a desire to prove doubters and non-believers wrong. We would not be where we are now without the support from the hardware and maker community in New York City, said the team. It takes real believers to move mountains.

For more information about Squink or to help support the project, check out their Kickstarter campaign and website. Additionally, you can follow their journey on Facebook and Twitter.

Video credit: BotFactory Squink

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardorg!

2014-05-14-have-no-fear-revc-is-here

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:17:49 GMT

Have no fear; BeagleBone Black Rev C is here!

Easier to use, double the memory, Debian based and ready to go from the box

WHAT: The community asked and we delivered! With BeagleBone Black Rev C, BeagleBoard.org has made the move to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution pulling directly from the upstream Debian repositories. This means users will have an environment more familiar to the majority of desktop Linux users and easy access to a huge library of pre-built packages. From a hardware viewpoint, there is an increase of on-board storage from 2GB to 4GB, giving customers more room for filling up their board with the fun software they crave.

BeagleBoard.org also took this opportunity to enhance the experiences users care most about. BeagleBone Black Rev C has a greatly improved developer experience thanks to our friends at Cloud9 IDE, including a fully functional terminal interface directly in the browser and the ability to run Python, Ruby and INO Sketches directly in the IDE, in addition to JavaScript on Node.JS and in your web browser. Rev C also includes easier WiFi configuration from both the GUI and command-line with support for more USB WiFi dongles out-of-the-box.

WHEN: 10:00 a.m. - 8 p.m. PST on May 17, 2014

10:00 a.m. - 6 p.m. PST on May 18, 2014

For more information, please see: http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2014

WHERE: Maker Faire Bay Area

San Mateo Event Center

1346 Saratoga Dr.

San Mateo, CA 94403

CONNECT: Engage with makers and developers at BeagleBoard.org

Follow BeagleBoard.org on Twitter

Connect with BeagleBoard.org on Google+

SESSIONS: Join Jason Kridner at Maker Faire Bay Area at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 18 on the Maker Electronics Stage as he demonstrates how building mobile robots keeps getting easier. His presentation is a rapid-fire tour of how people are using BeagleBone Black to build robots.

In a panel, Kridner joins Robert Wessels and Adrian Fernandez on the Maker Pro Stage on Saturday, May 17 at 5:00 p.m. They will be discussing rapid prototyping with modular, open source hardware.

BEAGLE ON THE CENTER STAGE:

Dutch based fashiontech designer and innovator Anouk Wipprecht will be on Center Stage at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 17 to share her unique and wildly popular designs featuring BeagleBone Black that move, breath, and react to the environment around them. See more info here.

BEAGLE IN ACTION:

If you are excited to meet other makers and learn about their projects, check out some of these projects that use Beagle that will be at Maker Faire Bay Area.

· BotFactory Inc.: This project makes electronic circuit board printing come a reality in a matter of minutes.

· Got Robots? Who doesnt love robots? These developers sure do!

· Laser Shooting Gallery! Put your skills to the test against autonomous laser turrets with this project.

· OpenROV: A community of DIY ocean explorers that use low-cost underwater robots to do it.

· PersonaLED: Wearable, interactive LED display panels

· Wearable Dog Gear: Looking to take your take your Beagle everywhere you go?

· Texas Instruments: Helping to develop new ideas that change the way we live.

WORKSHOPS:

Still hungry to learn more? There are plenty of Beagle workshops! Here are a few of them:

· Getting Started with BeagleBone Black

· Cylon.js: The JavaScript Evolution Of Open Source Robotics

· Programming the BeagleBone Black in BoneScript

· Web Interfaces to Control Hardware on BeagleBone Black

# # #

About the BeagleBoard.org Foundation

The BeagleBoard.org Foundation is a US-based 501(c) non-profit corporation existing to provide education in and promotion of the design and use of open-source software and hardware in embedded computing. A small group of enthusiastic engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices are pioneering new ground in open hardware. The products of their open collaboration, BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black, bridge desktop and embedded development and allow developers to easily design to their own specifications. The BeagleBoard.org community engages passionate developers and fuels their innovations, whether they are designing projects for work or fun. With publicly hosted open-source software, social media feeds of ongoing development, and an active community mailing list and live chat, developers have easy access to support and exchange of ideas. Visit www.beagleboard.org to get started today.

2008-04-19-lugradio-live-usa-2008

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:08:44 GMT

LUGRadio Live USA 2008

A few people got to play with Beagle at LugRadio Live USA 2008. One attendee even did a small write-up in Chinese on Beagle and what else he saw at LRL. There was quite a bit of interest from many people who have never thought of "embedded/ARM" development before. I was a bit more surprised by how many developers are getting more interested in solutions that allow them to embedded their solutions, Linux and otherwise, into many new places as can only be done with small, low-power devices and boards.

My presentation, "The DSP is Open", is available on-line. Keep your eyes out for video posts to show up on the LugRadio Forums.

2014-05-30-beaglebone-project-spotlight-cryptocape

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:07:54 GMT

BeagleBone project spotlight: CryptoCape

When I think of cryptography, I think of movies like Sneakers, U571 and Pi. However, Josh Datko's new solution will put cryptography in the hands of every developer not only submariners (even though Josh happens to be one) and MENSA-level mathematicians so that everyone from students and garage developers to professional engineers can secure their projects.

Josh and his company Cryptotronix, in collaboration with SparkFun Electronics, are creating the CryptoCape for BeagleBone Black. The CryptoCape is an open-source hardware collection of cryptographic modules that extends the hardware cryptographic abilities of BeagleBone Black. The computer is powered by TI's Sitara AM335x processor, which offers powerful cryptographic accelerators for AES, SHA and MD5 as well as a hardware random number generator. The CryptoCape coupled with BeagleBone Black will be a great solution for devices with increased security demands, such as networked servers, hardware "wallets" and more.

The CryptoCape will include features such as:

- A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that can be used to secure the boot process or store encrypted information on BeagleBone Black.

- Two Atmel authentication devices that provide, SHA-256, HMAC, or ECDSA based authentication and integrity mechanisms.

- A 5ppm I2C Real-Time Clock with a dedicated coin-cell battery backup for accurate timekeeping in an offline environment.

- An Arduino-compatible ATmega328p that can be programmed from the BeagleBone Black to upload your own crypto libraries or to extend the CryptoCape with your own projects.

The CryptoCape will be manufactured by SparkFun Electronics and available on their storefront soon.

For more information about the CryptoCape, visit Josh's CryptoCape page. He provides status updates to the CryptoCape Google Group; and design and source files are hosted at GitHub.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-07-22-beaglebone-black-project-kuyurix-bus-speakers

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:37:34 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight blog post: Kuyurix Bus Speakers

Commuting in a big city is a tough task, especially when public transit and traffic congestion make the process even more difficult. For someone who is blind, finding your way around the city on public transportation in these conditions can seem daunting, or nearly impossible. Marcelo Gutierrez recognized this issue and wanted to do something about it.

Marcelo is a university professor teaching digital signal processing and Linux-embedded courses. He designed and developed the Kuyurix, an audio-based system to assist people who are blind on public bus transportation. It notifies passengers of upcoming main streets and approaching points of interests, such as a hospital, making public transportation much more comfortable for those with any visual impairment.

The voice announcement system provides passenger information by an FM transmitter connected to two speakers that carry the message. Marcelo used the free samples service from Texas Instruments when constructing the first prototype. He integrated TI's TLV320AIC3106 audio codec, TPS73701 linear regulator, LM4871 audio power amplifier and LM22676 switching regulator.

"At the university from which I graduated, there is a library service for blind and partially sighted people," said Marcelo, an electronic engineering alumnus from Universidad Tecnológica Nacional - Facultad Regional Haedo. "So I thought [Kuyurix] might help to make their lives just a little bit easier."

BeagleBone Black was chosen to power the bus speakers. All signals are present on expansion headers, making cape development easy, and it incorporates an ARM® Cortex®-A8 core (within TI's Sitara AM335x processor) that runs with low power consumption. In comparison to similar products, BeagleBone Black provided the best performance for Marcelo's project.

"Two weeks on the bus and BeagleBone Black is solid as a rock," Marcelo says.

Marcelo faced some challenges during the creation of the Kuyurix bus speakers. The main challenge of this project was choosing the proper GPS module. The first GPS receiver integrated a built-in patch antenna, but it didn't have the reliability that Marcelo expected. He then tried another module that uses an active antenna, which significantly improved the performance of the device.

Marcelo is now working on developing a digital TV receiver box. He is doing this by connecting a USB ISBD-T TV stick on a BeagleBone Black. The product will be introduced on public bus transportation in just a few weeks.

If you'd like to learn more about the Kuyurix bus speakers, feel free to contact Marcelo via Twitter (@efectomiller).

Marcelo would like to give special thanks to the Department of Electronic Engineering (UTN/FRH), Ing. Carlos González, and the professor Ing. Fidel Santos, for their assistance and generosity in helping implement the Kuyurix speakers.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-07-16-beaglebone-black-project-spotlight-barbot

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 15:32:40 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight: Barbot

Ringing a bell, throwing some cash, snapping your fingers and maybe even showing a little extra cleavage have all been used to flag down bartenders. But Sean Carney, creator of Barbot, can catch the attention of his bartender with a quick click of the mouse and a remote Internet connection.

The Barbot is an Internet-controlled liquor-dispensing robot that can mix a drink with up to five different ingredients. It offers a web interface that lets you know what ingredients are available, generates a list of potential cocktails that can be made with those ingredients, shows user ratings, and offers links to order a cocktail. Once you order a cocktail, it gets to work and can make you a drink in seconds!

After inputting your drink order, the Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black controls three dual-H Bridge motor drivers, which are connected to peristaltic pumps that dispense the correct liquids into your glass. BeagleBone Black is connected to a USB Wi-Fi adapter so that you can order your drinks wirelessly. The computer runs Ubuntu 13.04 with Apache2, MySQL and PHP, bind and dhcpd installed. Apache2, MySQL and PHP are used to host the web interface, while bind and dhcpd create the Wi-Fi portal. The web server directly controls the pumps by using PHP to write into the GPIO sysfs files. For additional software information, visit the Barbot website.

The front panel of the Barbot hosts a number of switches and buttons, which the user can use to manually override the machine for priming and purging the peristaltic pumps as well as to manually dispense a beverage. Everything in the Barbot is powered by a beefy 5-volt, 10-amp power supply. Take a look at this video demonstration to see exactly how the process works:

Sean first had the idea for Barbot after being inspired by so many other similar projects. He believes that building an alcohol dispensing device may become the new developers' "rite of passage."

"It's an interesting genre of device since many people made one, but each creator brings their own skills, knowledge and personal touch to the project," he said.

As an accountant by trade and education, Sean is completely self-taught when it comes to technology.

"Based on my experience, if anyone sets their mind on completing a project like this, there isn't any reason why they wouldn't be able to," he says. "It's amazing what educational resources are available online these days."

This factor contributed to his selection of BeagleBone Black as his single-board computer. BeagleBone Black is easy to learn and allowed him to focus on the creative aspects of Barbot. It also has the capacity to operate many different I/O connections required for Barbot to function correctly.

For his next project, Sean has his sights set on building "The World's Largest MP3 Player" by deconstructing a retro stereo and fitting it into a modern entertainment center.

For developers like Sean, creativity can solve many of life's small issues. For Sean, the solution was simple: if you want to avoid waiting for a drink, build your own Barbot using BeagleBone Black!

For more information on Barbot, visit Sean's project website: http://www.seancarney.ca/projects/barbot.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-07-02-beaglebone-black-project-spotlight-object-record

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:57:37 GMT

Project Spotlight: Object Record

Did you know that The New York Times writes itself? No, not the newspaper-but objects at The New York Times R&D Lab have "thoughts" of their own that they journal for our reading pleasure.

The New York Times R&D Lab has created Object Record, a device that pairs objects with sensors that perceive environmental conditions around it through touch, motion and more. Object Record prints a constant monologue of its perceptions of and responses to the changing input. The text of this monologue is printed out in ticker form on a mini printer so that visitors can see not only the current "thoughts" of Object Record, but its "memory" as well.

Object Record is part of The New York Times' effort to discover and explore the poetic and narrative potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). "As more of our objects and environments become actuated, connected, and data-enabled, these enchanted objects are developing the capacity to contain their own stories. An object can remember its history, can understand how it's used, [and] can to talk to other objects around it to understand its environment. As these capabilities evolve, objects no longer become inert backdrops to our experiences, but active participants in our world that can share stories about themselves and us," said Alexis Lloyd, Creative Director of the R&D Lab at The New York Times.

The Sitara processor-based BeagleBone Black is the main system controller for Object Record. BeagleBone Black meets the lab's needs because of its low price, large feature set and ability to run the Linux operating system. The large feature set enables prototyping without worrying about network, memory and other constraints, and the ability to run the Linux operating system allows developers to program in the language that works best for them. Object Record code is written in Python, for example, and uses the Adafruit BBIO library to interface with the GPIOs.

BeagleBone Black communicates information from various sensors on Object Record, including a photocell, a TMP102 temperature sensor and a VCNL4000 proximity and ambient light sensor, to a thermal printer via TTL serial, when sensor values cross a threshold or when a certain amount of time elapses without a threshold event. This causes the printer to issue a remark about its environment. Noah Feehan, Maker at The New York Times R&D Lab, said, "The thermal printers presented [a] challenge: between the first exploratory purchase many months ago and the purchases made for this installation, the manufacturer made a few small, undocumented changes that delayed progress for a few days."

Noah added that the BeagleBoard.org community, the Adafruit forums and PyBBIO helped his team emerge unscathed from this and many other challenges they faced while developing Object Record.

Who ever thought we'd be getting our next The New York Times story from a BeagleBone Black computer!? According to the R&D Lab, this is just one cool way we'll be engaging with objects and the world around us in the future. Head to NYT Lab's blog to read more about Object Record and the other cool things they are working on.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-06-30-machinekit-meetup

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 22:19:54 GMT

Machinekit Meetup

I just got back from a meetup of Machinekit developers hosted by Tormach, a maker of professional CNC machines. There I got a glimpse into the future of personal CNC machines and 3D printers. Building on the long successful LinuxCNC project, Machinekit has added support for additional platforms, including BeagleBone Black, and additional real-time Linux strategies, including Xenomai and stepper motor driving using the on-board PRU microcontrollers.

What struck me is that software running on BeagleBone for controlling machines is the same as what CNC companies use in real (read expensive) CNC products... and it runs on some very remarkable (and personally affordable) machines in development I got glimpses of at Maker Faire Bay Area and elsewhere. Building incredible machines out of BeagleBone Black just got a whole lot easier and expect to see a lot more examples in the near future.

These examples include the PocketNC who recently spoke about their testing with BeagleBone Black on their blog. Type A Machines has also mentioned use of BeagleBone Black on their FAQ regarding their 2014 Series 1 3D Printer. And don't forget the Lasersaur open hardware laser cutter.

All of the sessions at the meet-up were recorded on YouTube for those looking to catch up on the development of this project.

2014-05-21-beaglebone-black-image-update

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 21 May 2014 18:54:10 GMT

BeagleBone Black Rev C image update

Just a couple of weeks in, we already have our first image update. It doesn't include any major changes, but it should be noted that the LEDs will now turn OFF at the completion of the execution of the eMMC flasher as the board will be shutdown. This avoids any cruft to build up on the uSD card that might cause subsequent uses of that uSD card to flash other boards to be slowed down as the journaling file system is explored. This isn't likely something you need to think about if it sounds confusing----just realize the LEDs will be OFF instead of ON at the end of the flashing operation.

Release notes are at http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#2014-05-14 and but reports should be made at http://bugs.elinux.org/projects/debian-image-releases .

Continue the conversation on the BeagleBoard Google Group...

2014-05-13-arduino-tre-developer-program

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 14 May 2014 00:13:27 GMT

Arduino announces Tre beta developer program

Arduino Tre is the next-generation Arduino developed in partnership with BeagleBoard.org featuring Arduino ease-of-use and the high-performance, low-power Linux capabilities of BeagleBone. Read their announcement here.

2014-04-23-project_spotlight_soundscape

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 21:08:44 GMT

Turn Up The Volume On Your BeagleBone Black

The SoundsCape adds a codec to the McASP bus for Line In, Line Out, and Headset (microphone in + headphone out). It also adds an HCI Bluetooth 4.0 Module for Bluetooth Audio (A2DP), BT Hands free (HFP), or SPP, with all Bluetooth profiles are supported by the cape.

(Image courtesy of Simple Media Networks)

We interviewed Cory Henderson, Electrical Engineer at Simple Media Networks about the SoundsCape and its features with the BeagleBone Black.

When asked about the inspiration for the SoundsCape, Cory filled us in. "Originally, we developed a Bluetooth add-on card for the BeagleBoard xM based on the Panasonic 1327 module. We moved over to the BeagleBone (and BBB) because of the ease of development it granted us. Since we no longer had the line in/line out that the xM had, we decided to integrate this into our cape as well. Now, you can route audio from the codec to BT through the BB, or use analog only, or BT only."

"We had an existing design for the BeagleBoard xM. The transition to the BeagleBone happened for many reasons. Price, ease of development, community support, active development, and expandability all contributed to the decision."

The SoundsCape also incorporates an Analog Devices ADAU1361 Codec and a Panasonic PAN1323 Bluetooth module (based on TI CC2567). Cory and team worked to maintain compatibility with other capes.

"Of all of the major capes available, I felt that the one most likely to be used with the SoundsCape was the LCD cape. The idea of the LCD combined with analog out will enable quick portable computing options. I hand listed out every connection used by each LCD cape (3", 4", and 7") and steered away from those pins. As a result, the analog section of the SoundsCape is fully compatible with each LCD cape, even the GPIO buttons. Unfortunately, the PAN1323 requires UART with CTS/RTS, and these pins are only accessible from the LCD pins needed by a display. These UART signals are run through a switch that is enabled with another GPIO pin so that they will not interfere with LCD signals."

For more information on the SoundsCape, you can visit the Simple Media Networks website (still under construction), or visit their Kickstarter page for more info. Cory also accepts email at cory@simplemedianetworks.com.

So what's next on the bench for Simple Media Networks?

"We are pretty serious about audio and have developed high-end audio technology for a number of other companies. This Kickstarter campaign is our first effort to go our own direction and develop our own products. You can be sure that we pay close attention to audio performance and that there will be more great ideas to follow!"

Want to join the conversation about this cape? Try us on Twitter @BeagleBoardOrg or try our forums

2014-04-22-google-summer-of-code-2014-projects

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:39:57 GMT

BeagleBoard.org Google Summer of Code 2014 projects

Yesterday, Google announced the project proposals accepted for this year's Summer of Code! 7 of those projects are being mentored by BeagleBoard.org. See the full list of approved projects at https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/projects/list/google/gsoc2014

BeagleLogic - Kumar Abhishek will be working on a logic analzer utilizing the BeagleBone PRUs as a way to learn about embedded interfaces, mentored by Matt Ranostay, Hunyue Yau and Charles Steinkuehler.
Kernel MMC+DMA - Saket Sinha will be working on improving the MMC and DMA drivers in the Linux kernel, mentored by Joel Fernandes, Greg Kroah-Hartman and others.
BeaglePilot - Victor Mayoral Vilches will be working on creating a Linux-based autopilot for flying robots, mentored by Andrew Tridgell, Hunyue Yau, Luis Gustavo Lira and others.
Android remote display - Praveen Kumar Pendyala will be working on using an Android phone as an all-in-one user interface for BeagleBone, mentored by Vladimir Pantelic and Vlad Ungureanu.
BotSpeak - Deepak Karki will be working on an interpreter firmware that runs on the BeagleBone PRUs to simplify programming them, mentored by Pantelis Antoniou, Hunyue Yau, Jason Kridner, Alex Hiam and others.
Bone101 - Diego Turcios will be working on improving the on-board tutorial environment for BeagleBone with live-running interactive examples, mentored by me (Jason Kridner), Steve French, David Scheltema and Jongseuk Lee.
PyBBIO - Rekha Seethamraju will be working on improving the PyBBIO Python library for BeagleBone for additional sensors, mentored by Alex Hiam and Steve French.

Now is the bonding time between students and mentors and tomorrow at noon US Eastern time is the first official meeting between students and mentors. All of our student meetings are held in public and you are welcome to join us and learn more about these exciting projects. We'll be asking the students to create small introductory videos or screencasts introducing their project to the world, making sure they are well aligned with their mentors and understand their project goals. Stay tuned for those videos!

2014-04-13-dude-wheres-my-beaglebone-black

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 05:08:37 GMT

Dude, where's my BeagleBone Black?

I hear that question a LOT. No, we weren't sleeping, but sometimes it takes a minute for a plan to come together. And don't you love it when a plan comes together?

Your BeagleBone Black is on the way and below are the whys and hows.

Buying a BeagleBone Black back around October last year was easy---and then suddenly they were gone. Having a big launch and then slowing down to a more steady pace of production is what is normally expected. Demand was strong, but distributors were showing a small amount of stock and people were getting their boards on demand. Based on the status, distributors had requested CircuitCo (the Richardson, Texas based manufacturer of all official BeagleBoard.org boards) to provide boards at a certain pace, and production dropped from about 6,000 a week at launch to around 3,000 a week.

BeagleBone Black, however, isn't your typical development board and word started to spread about cool projects that could be made. Then came Radio Shack, filling their stores with Make's Getting Started with BeagleBone kit. Then the Christmas rush. Then the Georgia Tech massively open online course on control of mobile robots hosted on Coursera. We had a couple of small production boosts, but haven't been able to make any dent in the demand. Everyone is starting to find out what BeagleBone Black can do, using it in their classes, hobbies, prototypes---and products.

The BeagleBoard.org terms and conditions clearly say we aren't responsible for the quality in end products. Nevertheless, the quality speaks for itself and many people are choosing to simply drop them into things beyond just a few prototype units. In practice, we'll never know unless you try to return a bunch of boards at once for repairs. Our desire is that people using the boards in products work directly with a contract manufacturer or distributor to enable boards builds to be planned out in time and with terms and conditions that won't hurt BeagleBoard.org's ability to supply classrooms, hobbyists and professionals building prototypes.

People building products aren't the only source of the high demand. Some of our distribution partners, most notably Adafruit and Special Computing, put quantity limits of one board per customer to help improve availability for individual makers. Even with the quantity limit in place, I observed boards being sold off Adafruit's website at a rate of about 2-3 PER MINUTE.

This all leads to the obvious conclusion: we need more capacity. To accomplish this, we are taking a multiple prong approach of increasing capacity at CircuitCo as well as bringing on an additional manufacturer. These two prongs are summarized below.

Prong #1 - Ramping up production at CircuitCo

Ramping up production costs money. More test equipment is needed. Orders on various parts must be accelerated. Additional staff must be hired to run additional shifts. CircuitCo has been fantastic at taking the risk for us, but the margins for BeagleBone Black aren't the friendliest for them to take on these additional costs. At initial launch, it is a benefit for them to get exposed to more customers for their core business, complex circuit assembly and engineering services, but shipping more of the exact same board isn't going to give them a lot more exposure.

We're really close to shifting the distribution shipped on our boards from Angstrom Distribution to Debian. Feedback from different people, especially Adafruit, tells us this will improve usability in the largest segments of our community. Angstrom Distribution is much more customizable and is very friendly to professional developers looking to tweak the most out of the system, but for many novices it introduces a barrier to learning. Debian is the basis for Ubuntu, includes ARM Cortex-A8 support in their mainline and is very familiar to a huge population of developers. It also takes a bit more space on the flash storage to provide the best user experience.

To provide the best experience of using Debian on BeagleBone Black, we are connecting the switch-over to an increase in the on-board eMMC flash storage from 2GB to 4GB, leaving more free room in which you can work. The eMMC is faster and more reliable than micro-SD cards, so this is adding a lot of value---and a little bit of cost.

These BeagleBone Blacks with Debian and 4GB eMMC will be called Rev C and they will likely cost a bit more at most distributors. This extra money is helping CircuitCo pay for the additional expense of the eMMC, but also to cover costs for ramping production to higher-than-ever rates.

With the additional capacity CircuitCo is bringing on, we expect to be able to fill all end-user back-orders for the Rev B boards by early May and shift all production to Rev C. With around 150,000 boards on *distributor* back-orders, we'll be working with distributors to quickly accept board shipments such that CircuitCo isn't sitting on any units.

Come mid-May, you should be able to easily get your hands on a Rev C board. Some distributors are already taking back-orders for them now. We'll continue to try to push as many boards as we can through distributors *not* taking back-orders as well to make sure there is a continuity of supply.

Prong #2 - Enabling production of the BeagleBoard Compliant Element14 BeagleBone Black

We've launched a BeagleBoard Compliant logo program. Element14 is currently the exclusive licensee of this logo program and has agreed to pay a small royalty to the BeagleBoard.org Foundation as part of this license. It means that we've verified they can produce quality clones of BeagleBone Black. It will be up to them to maintain the quality. As with everything going on around BeagleBoard.org, we'll be closely monitoring the public BeagleBoard mailing list for any and all feedback.

Element14 is the parent company for Embest, who has been making BeagleBone Black replicas for the China market since the initial launch back in April of last year, so they have some experience already. This move takes them beyond just China and will keep them in more lock-step with software and hardware revisions coming from BeagleBoard.org. To satisfy demand, they initially offered some of the Embest-branded boards in the US market, but you'll see the future BealgeBoard Compliant boards will be branded as "element14 BeagleBone Black".

Element14 has a world-wide reach and a notable production capacity. With all of the growing demand for BeagleBone Black, they will need it. This is a huge win for open hardware! Continue the discussion on the BeagleBoard mailing list .

--Jason

2014-04-07-project_spotlight_shield_io

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 20:51:18 GMT

BeagleBone Black Project Spotlight: Shield I/O

Some unlikely combinations just seem to work: Oreos and peanut butter, Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott and now Arduino and BeagleBone Black!

With the new Shield I/O, you can now use (almost) any Arduino shield with a BeagleBone Black. The Shield I/O, created by Andreas Behrend, adapts Arduino shields to be BeagleBone Black compatible, it doesn't matter if you're using 3.3V or 5V logic or up to 5V analog inputs. Precise resistor arrays divide the analog inputs and make it an option to measure up to 5V.

Shield I/O comes with dedicated level shifters for all 14 digital GPIO pins, PWM, I2C and SPI. Something interesting to note is that part of Shield I/O comes from an Atmel ATTiny that lets the user switch logic levels through software over I2C.

The device uses two TXB0108 level shifters for standard I/O lines and one TXS0102 shifting the I2C bus. Shield I/O also comes in a "Plus" version, which features a MCP23017 that is also accessible over the I2C bus.

Andreas saw a need for Shield I/O while working with microcontrollers that had to be rebooted to switch between different programs or adapt to new settings. He wanted to give developers an option for a ready-made Arduino Shield to use with a powerful embedded device, BeagleBone Black. Shield I/O makes it possible to communicate with Arduino shields without re-flashing or rebooting the whole system.

Andreas chose BeagleBone Black because of its power and compatibility.

"It's the most powerful embedded device out there with enough PWM, SPI, I²C, Timers, analog inputs, which can be muxed to fit the Arduino pin mapping including 2 PRUs to get high speed timing wherever it's needed," Behrend stated.

Andreas is a student currently employed by impressx media, who supports the Shield I/O. Additionally, Andreas has worked as a graphic designer and has run his own business. His next project is in the works and will be used in the healthcare industry - a tracker used by doctors to monitor a patient's overall health.

Just as each developer creates their own projects, the Shield I/O allows its user to employ their own creativity and make their own projects, with Shield I/O as its base.

For more information, or to donate to this project, visit Shield I/O's IndieGoGo site: http://igg.me/at/ShieldIO/x/3353417

2014-03-17-calling-beagleboardorg-gsoc-mentors

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:46:13 GMT

Calling all BeagleBoard.org GSoC Mentors

We are getting great interest from students this year for Google Summer of Code, but we could use a bit of help from our community getting a great feedback on their proposals. I encourage you to engage with them on #beagle-gsoc and the beagleboard-gsoc mailing list even if you don't plan to be a mentor, simply to make the proposals better for the community.

If you do plan to be a mentor, you are required to sign-up on Melange and make a connection to the BeagleBoard.org group. I will be contacting prospective mentors to verify their commitment and history of contributions to the community. Don't be intimidated by that as there are many ways to contribute.

Student applications freeze on March 21, so there is just a bit of time to close with them any ideas you have on making their applications better. Most important to me for approving any proposal will be to have engaged mentors who believe the student's proposal can be executed and adds value to the community. Approved mentors will provide votes for the proposals to help rank the proposals by April 7.

Weekly IRC meetings on #beagle-gsoc will start this Wednesday at 1PM New York time.

The current BeagleBoard.org GSoC mentors are:

Joel Fernandes
Alexander Haim
Andrew Tridgell
Kevin Hester
Greg Kroah-Hartman
Hunyue Yau
Lorenz Meier
Matt Ranostay
Vlad Victor
Vladimir Pantelic
Jason Kridner

Students are anxious to make a connection and execute on *your* project ideas, so I hope you will decide to be an active participant in improving what can be done with open source!

Best Regards,
Jason Kridner
GSoC Administrator for BeagleBoard.org

2014-03-05-debian-beta-released

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 03:29:53 GMT

Debian Beta images have been released

As posted earlier today on the BeagleBoard.org mailing list, the latest BeagleBone Debian beta images are now posted for broader testing at:
http://beagleboard.org/latest-images/

If you've upgraded the firmware on your BeagleBone or BeagleBone Black in the past, the experience will be quite similar, but you might find the eMMC flashing times a bit faster (~15 minutes rather than ~45 minutes) due to less post-installation processing. Using the 2GB uSD card image also flashes a bit faster and can be resized to whatever your uSD card size is using some scripts under /opt/scripts/tools.

Many, many thanks to Robert Nelson, Rob Rittman, Dave Anders, Cody Lacey, the Cloud9 IDE team and so many others in getting us this far.

Please take the time to give a detailed look over this image and report any issues to the bug tracker on elinux.org:
http://bugs.elinux.org/projects/debian-image-releases

While plugged in over USB, you'll see the familiar BEAGLE_BONE drive with START.htm to tell you how to get the drivers configured if you haven't already done so:

Clicking the link or visiting http://192.168.7.2, you'll see the familiar on-board served documentation:

I've introduced a few bugs to the documentation (http://github.com/beaglebone/bone101 and http://beagleboard.github.io/bone101), so expect to find a lot of issues there. Patches are welcome as are notes in the bug tracker to make sure I don't miss dotting any i's or crossing any t's. This is your chance to try to get some documentation into the system you'd like to see. I felt it was pretty safe to save the documentation as an in-beta item because it shouldn't impact functionality.

One of the biggest new features you'll see is when you click on the Cloud9 IDE link:

This is a pre-open-source-beta-only release of version 3 of their IDE. Down at the bottom of the Cloud9 IDE you'll see a new terminal window that runs a full 'tmux' session. You can open up a bunch of these and it makes logging into the board and executing command-line operations *super* simple.

Cloud9 IDE version 3 now includes support for Python and the Adafruit_BBIO library is included in these Debian images. That means you can simply paste in your Python code and hit the "run" button, without any additional download. I checked this out myself by doing a quick LED blink using the Adafruit tutorial (http://learn.adafruit.com/blinking-an-led-with-beaglebone-black/writing-a-program):

You should also note that the /var/lib/cloud9 directory now contains a git clone of that bone101 repo (http://github.com/beagleboard/bone101), so you can start using the Cloud9 IDE to edit the content live. What I recommend is creating your own fork of the repo and sending me pull requests of any changes you'd like to see.

You can also edit C/C++ code in the Cloud9 IDE, but no 'builder' or 'runner' plug-ins are provided. You will, however, find the Userspace-Arduino code in /opt/source/Userspace-Arduino. Here's a quick little exercise you can do to blink LED0:

root@beaglebone# cd /opt/source/Userspace-Arduino/arduino-makefile/examples/Blink
root@beaglebone# perl -i -pe 's/13/14/g' Blink.ino
root@beaglebone# make
root@beaglebone# ./build-userspace/Blink.elf

For more advanced C/C++ developers, future releases should include https://github.com/jackmitch/libsoc.

Those familiar with Linux will also note that the init system is 'systemd', which has been helpful in providing reasonable boot times. If you are looking for the journal, you can explore it using 'systemd-journalctl'.

Drivers and firmware for many common USB WiFi dongles are included, so be sure to report any that you find missing. An issue with the driver for the Logic Supply UWN200 has already been resolved since the release[**]. To test it out myself, I uncommented and edited the wlan0 entry in /etc/network/interfaces (including replacing wlan0 with ra0), shutdown, plugged in the adapter and powered up the board again. I also was able to plug in a TL-WN822N adapter I bought from Amazon and got it working right away.

This is just a quick intro to some of the experience and what we are focused on fine tuning. Please take the time to check it out and let us know about your experience. I hope you enjoy it!

2014-02-25-project-spotlight-fish-on-wheels

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:08:14 GMT

BeagleBoard-xM project spotlight:
Fish on Wheels

By Tara Stratton

Dont drink and drive, unless you are the driver of todays featured Beagle project. That is, unless you are... a fish!

Goldfish can now explore the world beyond the limits of the tank with Fish on Wheels, a robotic car from Studio diip, a design shop in the Netherlands. Fish on Wheels has made a splash (pun intended!) in publications from Discovery and Popular Science to Hackaday and Geek.com, receiving popular acclaim from people who wanted their own goldfish at home to be able to put the pedal to the metal.

Image credit: Studio diip

As the goldfish swims, a Logitech C910 webcam stationed overhead communicates with computer vision software running on a Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBoard-xM computer. Using the contrast of the fish with the bottom of the fish tank, the computer is able to determine which direction the fish is swimming. BeagleBoard-xM then talks to the chassis, powered by a Seed Hercules Robot platform with Arduino, to tell it to drive in the direction that the fish is swimming. Please note, seatbelts are not included, so tell your goldfish to avoid the stairs!

Image credit: Studio diip

We thought of developing Fish on Wheels because we wanted to have something to showcase the possibilities of computer vision technology. We then came to the idea that with computer vision, even animals would be able to control devices. The best way to show this was to enable fish to drive their own aquarium wherever they want to go, said Thomas de Wolf, business manager and co-founder of Studio diip.

While the above video shows Fish on Wheels as a smooth operation, Thomas says that it was not always so. The team faced a challenge in being able to smoothly control the motors of the robot platform so that water wouldnt spill over the edge of the aquarium, leaving Goldie out to dry. They tested various options with the BeagleBoard-xM and were eventually able to fine-tune the device.

Thomas and his teams had several other reasons for choosing BeagleBoard-xM for Fish on Wheels. It offered the flexibility to quickly create a working solution that gets the job done. It can run on a battery for some time so that the whole device can run autonomously, said Thomas. The Studio diip team was also happy that the BeagleBoard-xM can run Linux and is powerful enough for computer vision tasks.

While the Fish on Wheels is a fantastic project, the Studio diip team has bigger fish to fry! They are currently working on enhancing a laser cutter with computer vision to make it possible for anyone to operate the machine by simply sketching their idea. For more information about the upcoming laser cutter, Fish on Wheels, and other intelligent imaging projects from Studio diip, check out www.studiodiip.com or email the team at info@studiodiip.com.

Want to chat with us about this project? Tweet us at @BeagleBoardOrg!

2014-02-25-beagleboardorg-mentoring-google-summer-of-code

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:46:23 GMT

BeagleBoard.org Mentoring Google Summer of Code

BeagleBoard.org has once again been selected as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code! This means it is time for students and potential mentors to check out the information on the program home page to find out about the program in general and discover the other organizations participating in mentorship this year. Once familiar with the program, you should check out the ideas pages for various organizations, including the BeagleBoard.org ideas page.

Once you feel like you have a bit of inspiration, get connected to some mentors who might help you out. You will find several related to BeagleBoard.org hanging out on IRC on channel #beagle-gsoc. You will also need to join the BeagleBoard GSoC Google Group. Student project proposals will be accepted March 10-21 and no late proposals will be accepted. The proposals likely to be accepted will be ones where the student has worked closely with mentors to craft it out in a way there is a mutally agreed liklihood of success as well as value for the community.

Last year, BeagleBoard.org successfully mentored 5 projects including Userspace Arduino that brought sketches to Linux, brought Robot Operating System to new Linux distributions, improved upstream ADC IIO support, brought I2C support to Minix and enabled booting and flashing boards from Android phones. Take just a few minutes to watch the project videos.

2014-02-18-project-spotlight-logi-bone

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:42:40 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
LOGi-Bone

By Tara Stratton

As working professionals, Michael Jones, Jonathan Piat and their team at Valent F(x) know that interfacing with FPGA boards can be a clunky and cumbersome process. With these complexities of electronic design in mind, they strove to devise a more user-friendly, plug-and-play method to, as Michael put it, make even students and hobbyists smile.

As a result, the folks at Valent F(x) developed the LOGi family of FPGA development boards. According to Michael, these boards were created with a dual-use purpose: to limit the sharp learning curve associated with FPGA development and to enable the unification of existing hardware interfaces and open-source development platforms, including our own BeagleBone Black. Valent F(x) claims that they help their customers overcome various challenges by developing open-source hardware that is easy to use, program and interface with various existing hardware peripherals.

Image credit: Valent F(x)

The LOGi-Bone is a LOGi FPGA board that recently met with great success on Kickstarter. The heart of the LOGi-Bonelike all of the other LOGi-boardsis a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. The LOGi-Bone has two rows of connectors on the underside of the FPGA board that allow users to interface with the 2x46 headers on BeagleBone Black, based on TIs Sitara AM335x processor. The board is also compatible with the original BeagleBone.

The main controller is a Mac Mini mounted in a custom arcade console. Every frame of video is rendered on this console and streamed over Wi-Fi to reduce the number of wires needednormal wires dont work for a POV display because they would get tangled up from all of the spinning. Because of this challenge, all of the brains required to run the display are mounted to the spinning part and spin along with the display.

Other LOGi-Bone features include:
● 256 Mb SDRAM
● 2x LEDs
● 2x push buttons
● 2x DIP switches
● 1 high-bandwidth SATA connector expansion port
● 2x Digilent Inc. PMOD expansion ports supporting 59+ plug-and-play hardware modules
● 1x Arduino-compatible headers connected to the FPGA pins (3.3V only); supports more than 200+ Arduino Shield modules
● Optional GPMC, SPI or I2C port access from the BeagleBone Black
● 10x length-tuned LVDS pairs
● Bit-stream-loading interface connected to the host processor; optional bitstream FPGA self-loading from onboard Flash

The LOGi-Bone adds FPGA flexibility and capability to the BeagleBone, allowing it to be easily morphed into endless digital applications, said Michael. In fact, the Valent F(x) team has already created applications for the LOGi-Bone, including a Bitcoin miner, machine vision and autonomous vehicle and robotic controllers. All applications are open source and available on the LOGi repository. You can also find videos of some their current applications on the LOGi YouTube channel.

Valent F(x) says that they are all about user collaboration and hope to create a community infrastructure that allows users to work together to create unique and interesting projects. Generally, users have strengths in one of the many facets involved in electronics, thus making it difficult to create and finish a project that requires a wide range of electronic functionality. Enabling multiples users with varying skills to work together allows multi-faceted projects to be created, with each user adding their respective strengths to the project. Valent F(x) would love to hear from you to know what kind of projects and applications you would like to see created and get involved in.

Now that their Kickstarter is closed, the Valent F(x) team will start manufacturing boards and will start fulfilling orders later this year. Visit Valent F(x)s site for more information on these boards or to order one of your own!

2014-02-11-project-spotlight-ece-christmas-lights

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 17:41:45 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Rose-Hulman ECE Christmas lights

Imagine having the ability to personalize your Christmas tree lights. When the holiday is approaching and its time for your family tradition of picking a tree, baking cookies, and putting on the garland, lights, ornaments, and big star on top, it seems like there is always something wrong with the lights! A few bulbs have gone out, some are missing, and you find yourself scrambling around trying to find replacements to put in to make sure your tree still shines bright next holiday season.

A holiday humbug situation like this is just what Mark Yoder and the students in his electrical and computer engineering (ECE) class at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology were trying to avoid when they turned a string of Adafruit digital RGB LEDs into lights for the department Christmas tree.

Marks students created a kernel driver, Blockly interface, and the necessary programs to control the LED string. With the collaborative work of Mark and his students, the ECE Christmas tree lights were born.

The Adafruit digital RGB LED strings, with the help of the Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black open-source computer, make it possible to set each LED to a color and intensity. The ECE Christmas tree lights are two five-meter Adafruit strings interfaced to the BeagleBone Black computer.

Adafruit LED strings carry 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and allow each LED to be programmed and controlled individually. The strings are weatherproof and easily able to be cut with some wire cutters. The ECE Christmas tree light strings are powered at 3.3V from BeagleBone Black, which is powered with a 5V external supply.

BeagleBone Black was chosen to work with the lights because it is inexpensive and capable of an assortment of tasks at high performance. By putting it with the Adafruit LED strings, fun and unique light displays can be made! You can see these lights in action:

One of my favorite displays starts an LED at the bottom of the string and sequences it up to the top, Mark said. It starts a dim red and as it moves along, it gets brighter and brighter. The LED represents someone sledding and they are getting hotter and hotter as they climb the hill. One of these sledders is started every two seconds and the whole collection is a sledding party. Once they reach the top, they turn around and sled down, getting bluer and bluer and colder as they go.

Even though the tree has been taken down until next Christmas, students have requested to keep the LEDs on display to play with on study breaks and create new light patterns.

Mark has different pattern examples written in C, python, shell scripts, and JavaScript. A challenge he faces is finding enough time to play with the LED string. It doesnt take long to implement a new pattern, but once you get it going you think of other, cooler, things to do.

While the holidays have already passed this season, Yoder is working on implementing a TI SimpleLink Bluetooth low energy CC2541-based SensorTag kit for next Christmas. The SensorTag is able to communicate with the BeagleBone Black, so the lights respond when you move the SensorTag around. He also is working to have the lights respond to audio. The louder the sound, the more LEDs will light up.

Marks next endeavor with the ECE Christmas Tree Lights is to connect them to a TI LaunchPad so he can control the LEDs.

Bring the light back to your Christmas spirit by customizing your own Christmas lights! The course github is available here.

2014-02-03-project-spotlight-robotics-cape

jkridner.wordpress.com — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:08:50 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Robotics Cape by Strawson Design

Inspiration is not an easy thing to come by, and no one can predict when it will strike. The light bulb suddenly flashes on overhead, and the gears inside your brain start to turn. The excitement of the Ah hah! moment is great, but often short lived when the realization of the logistics come into play.

Engineers often find themselves in this situation when a new idea for a robot pops into their head, but then there is the complicated process of crafting the internal hardware and writing the software to actually make it work. James Strawson, PhD student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and founder of Strawson Design, grew tired of having to create new circuits for every new robot that he worked on, so he unified his current and future robotics projects under one hardware and software platform, thus creating the Robotics Cape.

Robotics Cape by Strawson Design; image credit: Strawson Design

The Robotics Cape works with the BeagleBone Black, powered by a TI Sitara processor, to make a mobile robotics platform. It includes 2-cell lithium battery charging, protection and monitoring circuitry to make sure the robot is always charged and ready to play with. The Robotics Cape also provides plug-and-play connectors to easily interface with common components so you can build your robot without soldering or messy wiring. It was obvious for James to choose BeagleBone Black when picking a Linux development board. Strawson said, First and foremost, robotics projects typically require the control board to interface with custom circuitry. BeagleBone Black provides an enormous array of hardware interface pins for functions such as GPIO, PWM, eQEP, I2C, etc., which is exactly what tinkerers and prototypers need. BeagleBone Black is also a fantastically neat and tidy package that is ideal for tiny robots.

When creating the cape, Strawson picked the features he felt would apply to the largest number of applications. The cape offers:

9-axis IMU: Accelerometer, gyro, magnetometer
6 PWM connectors to power servos or brushless ESCs
Power your BeagleBone with 5V 2A switching voltage regulator from 12v input or battery pack
2 user-accessible buttons and 2 LEDs to test GPIO functionality and to test PRU GPIO
2-cell lithium cell balancer and overvoltage protector
H-bridges to drive 6 DC motors (each 1.2A continuous, 3.2A peak)
Plug-and-play connection supported:
o I2C, UART, SPI
o Range/gesture sensors
o Serial GPS module
o Spektrum RC receiver
o Quadrature encoder inputs

Strawson first used the Robotics Cape to teach a senior embedded controls course at UCSD. Each student built their own BeagleMIP balancing robot based on the cape and was taught to design and implement a discrete-time controller to make the robot balance upright and drive. Texas Instruments University Program donated BeagleBone Black computers to UCSD to enable such a wonderful project. We learned a lot about implementing dynamic control systems in a Linux environment. I was pleased to teach fellow mechanical engineers how to dive into the world of embedded programming and circuit design, Strawson said.

BeagleMIP balancing robot; image credit: Strawson Design

Strawson is working on a few refinements on the board layout and connectivity before bringing the Robotics Cape to market. He also looks forward to spending more time developing control systems with BeagleBone Black. He is testing a quadrotor controller based on the BeagleBone Black as well as a Robotics Cape Combination designed to be cheap and easy to repair while offering the networking capability and processing power of BeagleBone Black.

James Strawson demoing the BeagleMIP at CES 2014

The Robotics Cape is still a work in progress but will be available for sale in the coming months. For updated information on the Robotics Cape, visit Strawson Designs website at www.strawsondesign.com.

2014-01-29-project-spotlight-beedome

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:59:10 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
The BeeDome

By Tara Stratton

ForestDew Apiaries, located in Ottawa, Ontario, has been keeping, testing and trying 20 strains of bees from all over the world for 13 years.

They pride themselves on coming up with innovative products and solutions in the bee industry, and their BeeDome is definitely one of these solutions.

The BeeDome is a system to control the environment of indoor nucleus colonies (nucs) where small honey bees are kept indoors over the winter months. The BeeDome extends the bee breading season so ForestDew can offer strong, healthy nucs to beekeepers early in the spring at reasonable prices to replace bees lost over winter. This is especially important in northern climates where winter creeps in early. After more than five years of research and prototyping, ForestDew Aparies is now live trialing the BeeDome. ForestDew Apiaries puts its nucs into the BeeDome in later November for the winter, where they are kept in environmental conditions that ensure minimal food store consumption. ForestDew Apiaries credits the BeeDome for helping it deliver reasonable priced, quality bees to its customers.

Image credit: ForestDew Apiaries

The BeeDome is a computerized system based on the Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black computer as well as a specially designed cape plug-in board. BeagleBone Black is connected to the Internet, and stats are uploaded periodically to a website so that the company can closely monitor the nucs. The BeeDome also integrates GE Telaire T6613/T6615 and MG811 sensors to monitor the CO2 level; DS18B20 sensors to monitor temperature; DH22 sensors to monitor humidity and temperature; and Sharp COM-10636 SSR devices to control 120V devices.

Bee sure to check out ForestDew Apiaries website for more information on this unbeelievable project!

2014-01-21-project-spotlight-petcube

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:58:09 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Petcube

As Alex Neskin slipped out the front door for work, he couldnt help but feel the heartache as he heard the barks and cries from his Chihuahua, Rocky. It was the same routine every day. He would try to sneak out the door attempting to be unnoticed by Rocky, but every time the door would shut, the barking and crying would start. The separation anxiety not only took a toll on him and Rocky, but even the neighbors when they had to deal with the unnerving sound of a barking dog. This separation anxiety is what led Alex to create Petcube.

Petcube is a gadget that lets you watch, talk and play laser games with your pet through a mobile application, anytime, anywhere. Alex came up with the design of a movable webcam combined with a laser so he could see his best friend while he controlled the laser (Rockys favorite toy!) to entertain him.

The aesthetic design of Petcube is a 10x10x10 aluminum and glass cube. Its internal hardware contains a wide angle camera, laser diode, two servo motors to control it, microphone and speakers. The camera allows you to take pictures and videos and share them with friends all while live video streaming to your phone. The microphone lets you hear your pet, and the speakers enable you to call them over.

Petcube uses the BeagleBone Black computer, based on a TI Sitara processor, with a custom cape to control all peripherals. Alex chose the BeagleBone Black computer for the Petcube because of its open schematics that allowed him to create a custom board with a unique shape and design. Everything works pretty much easy and fast out of the box, said Alex.

The live video streaming is the most intriguing attribute of the Petcube. According to Alex, the real-time interaction not only puts pet owners at ease, but also keeps pets entertained and out of trouble. Alex also plans to put a number of Petcubes in animal shelters. Petcube has started partnering with U.S. shelters in order to boost adoption rates. There are an estimated 5 million pets that enter shelters every year, and Petcube hopes to help find homes for these homeless animals. Public streaming will allow people to see and play with homeless dogs and cats. This will not only improve the emotional and physical health of the homeless animals, but could also lead to more adoptions by giving more exposure to the animals.

One thing is clear after talking to Alex: Petcube is committed to improving the lives of pets and their parents with technology. They plan to expand their product line with other high-tech pet accessories. They are planning on integrating Petcube with collars and feeders, allowing pets to have scheduled feeding times with portion control.

2014-01-14-project-spotlight-volumio

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:54:09 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Volumio

What is your go-to activity when you cant sleep? For some its reading a book or counting sheep, but for music and technology enthusiast Michelangelo Guarise, its Volumio.

Volumio is a free and open-source Linux Audiophile music player for embedded computers that, when paired with the Sitara-processor-powered BeagleBone Black, can transform an entire building into a connected audio center. Inspired by his passion for music, Guarise worked tirelessly on Volumio with the help of users worldwide.

What you have here is the result of sleepless coding nights, precious feedback from our users, and a pure, intense, visceral passion for music and technology, Guarise said.

In fact, Guarise cites passion as the only thing users need to have to be able to use Volumio. It can be downloaded for free and comes ready to start playing audio files immediately.

After the initial download, Volumio has to be flashed onto an SD card and connected through a network. Volumio can be downloaded with Windows, Macintosh or Linux systems. From there, users can go to volumio.local/ and use the WebUi to start listening.

Volumio is equipped to play all musicFLAC, MP3, WAV, AAC, ALAC and Musepack files are all compatible, in addition to streaming Internet radio. It can be controlled via WebUi from a smartphone, tablet or computer. BeagleBone Black supports the program well because of its large expandability and affordable price.

Guarise wants Volumio users to be able to sit back, relax and listen to their favorite tunes from anywhere in their house. Multiple BeagleBone Black platforms can be connected, allowing users to select from which device the music will be flowing. Simultaneous playback mode is going to be available soon, giving developers the chance to build an open-source multi-room audio system.

He gives credit to his fellow music and technology gurus who have worked on the open-source code. "This project relies also on tons of good code made by developers all around the world. What we did was just put it all together and make it act as one ecosystem, Guarise said.

Volumio hosts a blog and forum on its website for anyone working on the code and improving the project. It is always being updated to give users the best version.

Even though Guarise is studying psychology, he works endlessly with music. He has a mix of valve and digital amplifiers that he built himself during a few sleepless nights. His passion for music and technology inspires him to work on projects like Volumio and struggle to turn his volume down.

Complete Volumio features list:
- Ready to play: Flash it and youre ready
- Audiophile Quality: Bit-perfect playback
- FLAC, WAV, MP3, AAC, ALAC, PLS support
- Music libraries on Samba, NFS and USB drives
- Webradios support out of the box
- Control it via integrated Webui with PC, smartphone, tablet
- AirPlay capability
- Ramplay support
- DSD native playback
- Multiroom playback via Android App
- Output playback device selection
- Audio out via HDMI, USB, Analog Jack, S/PDIF, I2S
- Compatible with all UAC2 compliant USB DACs
- Wireless Nnetwork configuration
- Various resampling options, up to 32bit/384khrtz

For more information on Volumio or to download it, visit http://volumio.org/.

2014-01-14-beagleboardorg-and-kickstarter-2013

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 19:40:49 GMT

Looking at some BeagleBoard.org-based projects on Kickstarter from 2013

A quick survey of some BeagleBoard.org-based projects on Kickstarter that launched in 2013 provides some interesting lessons that are perhaps more intuitive than decisive. From 3D printers, home automation, robotic controllers, processing elements and accessories, designs using Beagle are starting to show up all over Kickstarter. Most of them are being successful, but not every project idea is a recipe for success. Perhaps the most critical lesson is to fully engage a developer community if you want your project to succeed.

For example, compare a couple of cape daughterboard add-ons for BeagleBone, the Logi-Bone and Io-1. Both had relatively modest funding goals of around $7,000, yet the Logi-Bone exceeded its funding goals 16 times over while the Io-1 wasn't successfully funded at all. What is likely to be noticed first is the professionalism of the presentation, including the web page and video, but examining both of them, is that really enough to make the difference?

Comparing more of the projects, another pattern stands out regarding successful projects and unsuccessful ones: projects executed by organizations instead of individuals. This may seem a bit discouraging at first given the idea that Kickstarter is the great equalizer, enabling individuals to gain funding without needing to sell out to larger institutions. Buried a bit beneath the surface, however, there are still a lot of reasons to be encouraged as an individual entrepreneur. In another video on Kickstarter from OpenROV's David Lang, an idea emerges that self-guided development is most successful when it is less about going it alone and more about going it together.

Do it together!
Tools are out there
Learn just in time

David's experience with successful Kickstarter campaigns began with his BeagleBone-based OpenROV underwater exploration vehicle. In the execution of that project, it is made clear that a large team is not required to pull off a successful project, but rather a small team willing to reach out to a broader community of developers to learn how to best execute their concept. Further, the point at which Kickstarter is engaged is after working within a smaller community that later becomes advocates.

This is especially obvious in the recent Ninja Sphere successful campaign that raised the most money out of these projects, over $700,000. Ninja Blocks started small in 2012 with a successful campaign based around a BeagleBone and has now taken the BeagleBone Black open hardware design to produce their new fully-customized home automation platform derived from BeagleBone. In between the two designs, Ninja Blocks has stayed engaged with the BeagleBoard.org community and continued developing community on their own around their open platform.

The Ninja Sphere isn't the only Kickstarter campaign to spin their own custom hardware based on Beagle designs; the new Rex board is a brain for robots that builds on the lessons of the BeagleBoard-xM. It looks like this project is doing pretty well, it certainly a case where more community outreach could have been done ahead of the fact as I'm only now hearing about the project. Thanks to folks like Hackaday and EE Times, I'm hopeful the word will get out there because the combinations of capability, power consumption, flexibility and size look very difficult to beat.

Just looking at my own personal inbox either from the BeagleBoard mailing list or direct messages, the rate of success has a lot to do with how much outreach you do outside your Kickstarter campaign and how early you engage the developer community. As other projects already active within the BeagleBoard.org community, such as GrowCubes, start to launch their Kickstarter campaigns, I think we'll continue see this trend hold true.

Happy Kickstartering!

2014-01-04-happy-new-year

jkridner.wordpress.com — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 15:32:49 GMT

Happy New Year!

by Jason Kridner

Here we are, 2014. Expect a big year for Beagle! Unfortunately, I have to start out with an apology. LinuxGizmos.com recently hopped on the news that over 100,000 BeagleBone Blacks have now been sold. When they contacted me to confirm, I blundered a bit by repeating and confirming what I thought was a fairly broadly shared rumor---that we are looking to soon shift the Linux distribution that ships in the flash of the boards from Angstrom to Debian. The blunder wasn't the confirming of the news, but rather not doing a good job at communicating to the community about this move better ahead of time. It didn't help that I was taking off for vacation where my Internet access is spotty at best. So, I owe you all a big apology, but I hope you are still excited about the news.

So what's coming?

The big news is a shift to Debian in the on-board flash. You'll still be able to flash Angstrom if you want to use that and myself and others in the community will still be rather happy to help you with Angstrom-related questions, but the feeling is that we'll get a much broader support base if we have new users encounter Debian first on the upcoming boards.

The exact date of the switch-over hasn't been determined. Gerald had most recently given me and everyone involved a deadline of giving him an image by the end of January, but we are currently bottlenecked by the updated version of Cloud9 IDE. I have been playing with a beta of version 3 and I find it to be a huge improvement that will enable us to provide support for C compilation within the IDE using plug-ins. The new version also runs on node 0.10, making it much easier to work with recent Debian builds. Before any switch in production happens, there will be a fairly complete beta image shared broadly for testing.

How similar will the experience be?

If you aren't a heavy Linux user and just do a few things from the command-line and use the Cloud9 IDE, the experience will be pretty similar, but I hope you'll find it somewhat improved. If you are a more seasoned developer, I probably don't need to answer the question, because you are already likely to be somewhat experienced with Debian. All of the key features you expect should be there.

We have a handful of performance goals to try to keep the experience on-par with Angstrom. One is a boot time target of under 10 seconds. Using the typical boot strategy for Debian Wheezy without any significant optimization, Robert Nelson observed that boot time was more like 30 seconds. By switching over to systemd, as is used by typical Angstrom builds, boot time dropped to around 16 seconds. We'll be spending a bit of time trying to improve this between now and the beta image.

Space on the flash will likely be very similar, due to trying to provide similar functionality. The builds are currently quite a bit smaller, but Robert is still adding in items to bring in feature parity.

BoneScript will still be included in the out-of-box experience to help quickly prove out the various hardware interfaces and help people learn about wiring up hardware. I've fixed most of the issues with getting BoneScript onto other distros besides Angstrom and am planning to soon release version 0.2.4 that already has improved support for switching pin modes and reading pin states.

The USB flash drive and USB networking features will still be included, as well as the driver install guide, self-hosted web-based tutorial and the previously mentioned Cloud9 IDE.

Over time, there will be more promotion of the Userspace Arduino project that provides an easy-to-learn C API for rapid prototyping of hardware projects. Of course, the boards will continue to ship with a C/C++ compiler and build tools, libraries, and a number of interpreters, such as Python. I'd love to include the Adafruit BBIO Python library, so I'll be contacting them to see if they'll approve that. I've also been chatting quite a few times with the Erlang folks, so that is something that has a good likelihood of being included.

The kernel is likely to be the same one included currently in Angstrom, the customized 3.8.x kernel. However, if the release slips enough, there is a reasonable chance we'll be switching over to one of either the 3.12 or 3.13-rc kernels. A good amount of attention will be paid to having a good set of drivers and firmware for USB wifi adapters included as this was a pain point for some people in the past.

How to contribute?

The script for building the image is currently hosted at https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder . Hop on the mailing list with questions about running the script and send Github pull requests if you have suggested improvements. Contributing to the kernel continues to be the same at https://github.com/beagleboard/kernel . I am overdue, however, at writing up how to contribute Cape DTS firmware sources that configure Cape hardware automatically using devicetree. The new repository for that is at https://github.com/beagleboard/cape-firmware and it just needs a good README that describes the details of contributing.

Thanks for all of your support and I'm so very thrilled with all the amazing things happening in the Beagleverse for 2014!

2013-12-17-project-spotlight-orbital-rendersphere

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 17:05:17 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Orbital Rendersphere

By Tara Stratton

If you went to Maker Faire New York this year, you could not have missed the Orbital Rendersphere. This Big Giant Spinning Limb Slicer, as the Hoboken MakerBar team affectionately calls it, displays images and videos on a four-foot diameter spherical surface using persistence of vision (POV) spinning at 450 RPM. It had a constant crowd surrounding it and earned five ribbons at the faire: four Editors Choice ribbons and one Educators Choice ribbon.

The Orbital Rendersphere started out as an idea for an entry into the 2013 Red Bull Creation Contest in April 2013. Red Bull sent the crew at Maker Bar a number of LED strips and asked them to build something cool out of it. They developed the idea, and then started building only a few days before the contest deadline. After spending a crazy weekend working like madmen on the project, the Orbital Rendersphere didnt orbit! The team decided that the project was too good to let die, so they set their sights on having the project done by Maker Faire New York. The team also decided to set their sights higher for what they wanted the display to do. They increased the size and resolution of the display and redesigned it to be able to display video at 30 frames per second by spinning four vertical LED strips spaced 90 degrees apart at 450 RPM, or 7.5 rotations per second!

After first experimenting with microcontrollers, the team selected BeagleBone Black, to power the Renderspheres 36 feet of WS80211 LED strips. BeagleBone provided much more memory to accommodate larger image data and was able to update the LED strips extremely quickly through the use of Trammel Hudson's LEDScape code. The LEDScape code uses the programmable real-time units (PRU) on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x processor that powers BeagleBone Black to update multiple LED strips simultaneously with very little burden on the CPU. The team also uses a custom circuit board to buffer and connect GPIO outputs to the LED strips.

The only wires the team required between the spinning and non-spinning part were for the power and ground connections. The team ran these lines from the power supply (3 10-amp 5V power supplies), one to the top and the other to the bottom of the axle where they contacted copper slip rings, and then distributed power to everything on the spinning part.

The Orbital Rendersphere frame presented the team with another challenge. The team needed to create a frame that offers structural stability, provides good visibility to the display and can be quickly assembled/dissembled for transport. The team created a modular frame design that provides unobstructed views of the display from three sides, bolts together quickly, and fits in a single van.

Now that the team had a desired rotation rate for the display and a frame to offer stability, they had to figure out how to actually spin the display. They tried a number of different configurations, but in the end, the simplest idea was the best. They mounted an electric heavy duty hand drill (Harbor Freight) to the top of the frame and used it to spin the axle. This provided a nice solution since hand drills have built-in high-torque axial transmission, which allows the Orbital Rendersphere to spin up gradually from a dead stop without slipping or burning out the motor.

We asked Travis what his team at MakerBar has coming down the pipe. He said that they going to scale up the concept theyve started. We dont want to spoil the surprise, but its going to be BIG! Travis said. He also invited others with a love for electronics and a passion for making cool projects to come down, share your projects or ideas, have a beer with us, and share in our passion for all things electric! Whether you make it to Hoboken or not, hopefully well see more of the Orbital Rendersphere (or the big next generation) at Maker Faire 2014!

For more information about MakerBar, or to help out and support The Orbital Rendersphere project, check out their Facebook page, Twitter feed and blog.

Video credit: Andrew Fustini, element14

2013-12-09-let-beaglebone-black-give-your-old-games-an-extra-life

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 17:54:28 GMT

Let BeagleBone Black Give Your Old Games an Extra Life!

by Jason Kridner

Don't let the fun you had playing childhood video games disappear and decay as forgotten memories give them an extra life! Help make sure that generations to come will still be able to run the same software you run today, including the video games of yesterday. Open source enables us to preserve the information to run those games, passing them on to the next generation. In fact, there's already a huge movement of people saving their old games using "retro-gaming systems," but not all of them are fully open source. Because the BeagleBone Black not only runs open source software, but is also open source hardware, taking the time to bring it your games your games up on BeagleBone Black means you'll be able to bring those games with you into the future.

Why BeagleBone Black?

Why does BeagleBone Black make an awesome choice for building your retro-gaming system? Firstly, it is affordable. If you're on a budget, all you need to add is a gaming controller, a USB charger (one like you already have for your phone) and a microHDMI cable to connect up to your TV. You can use the pre-installed system on BeagleBone Black's on-board 2GB eMMC flash as a basis for compiling and running your game system emulators, such as MAME, which lets you run old arcade games, Stella, which lets you run your old Atari 2600 games and DEmul, which lets you run your old Dreamcast games.

Having a compiler and full set of build tools without needing to download and configure anything can make for a wonderful experience. Nevertheless, if you aren't very familiar with embedded Linux, you might want to switch to a more familiar Linux distribution. For my simplest setup, I chose to flash Debian onto my BeagleBone Black's eMMC. I used a microSD card to put the new operating system on my BeagleBone Black. If I was feeling especially cheap, I could have opted for a tool developed by Vlad Victor Ungureanu, one of the BeagleBoard.org students who participated in the 2013 Google Summer of Code. Vlad has provided a utility that can be used to flash a BeagleBone Black from an Android phone or Linux computer without needing a microSD card ( https://github.com/ungureanuvladvictor/BBBlfs).

Not just affordable, it's also easy

Of course, if all this talk of "compiling" and "Linux distributions" has you feeling uneasy, remember — no need to fear, BeagleSNES is here! Take a virtual stroll over to http://www.beaglesnes.org and you can download an image for a microSD card that's ready to boot 'n roll. This image is built on Ubuntu and a full set of documentation is available to get you started. In the future, it might even get easier as I've been working on a Buildroot based image that will let you boot and run off of a FAT-formatted microSD card, rather than needing to copy over an exact disk image .

It is also really easy to put a case around your new retro-gaming system such that it can sit neatly in the living room without getting chewed up by the dog. Here's a quick look at some of my favorites, including very affordable plastic and laser-cut cases as well as stamped metal cases you could stand on, if somehow the need arose:

Adafruit #1555
($9.95 plastic)

Logic Supply BB100
($14.95 metal)

Hammond 1593HAMDOGBK
($5.40 plastic)

LaserGoodies.com Slim Case
($11.99 acrylic)

Adafruit #699
($19.95 acrylic)

Make it your own

Off the shelf software and cases make it easy, but small, low-power, open software and hardware means that you can customize to your heart's content. For me, that meant putting my BeagleBone Black into a cabinet and attaching a 10" LCD screen. For my first case, I was a bit lazy and started with an off-the-shelf cabinet the iCade. It is a nice case with solid controllers, originally built for an iPad, but I was able to easily mount my LCD panel using a 2-by-4 and some velcro I got at my local hackerspace (i3 Detroit) and connect to the controls using a USB Bluetooth dongle. For the LCD screen, I used the one from Chalkboard Electronics.

For my next upright version, I got some custom components and ideas from the folks at i3 Detroit, including a smaller laser-cut cabinet partially inspired by the iCade and a less-expensive, more-flexible 7" LCD that takes an HDMI input. I ended up buying the LCD off of eBay for less than $50. I'm told LCD system seems to have been designed for backing-up cameras in cars, but I haven't been able to find a more traditional distributor stocking these displays.

This new cabinet looks really promising and there is already one setup at i3 Detroit showing constant weather updates, but the killer case has got to be the laser-cut handheld case with the battery-powered GamingCape by Max Thrun he did as part of the TI 2013 Intern Challenge. Unfortunately, you can't buy the case or cape anywhere, so we set out to build our own at i3 Detroit. I ordered 3 PCBs from OSHPark and purchased most of the components at Digi-Key. All said and done, I'll have ended up paying about $160 each (including BeagleBone Black) for 3 units hand assembled by one of the members of the space (in exchange for getting one of the units) and assembly has begun. It wouldn't take a much larger order to drastically cut the price, but we just want our hands on a couple of these bad boys on our own for now.

It is worth a few minutes to watch Max's amazing video of his assembly.

Final thoughts on retro-gaming, custom-gaming and physical-gaming

In addition to being affordable, easy, supported by off-the-shelf enclosures and highly customizable, you might also simply choose to use BeagleBone Black for a retro-gaming project simply because of its performance and interfacing abilities. The super-scalar ARM Cortex-A8 can execute 2 instructions every cycle and has a vector accelerator called NEON that can perform up to 8 operations per cycle and it runs at 1GHz. This is in addition to having a built-in 3D graphics accelerator and two 200MHz microcontrollers to handle all of the real-time interfacing aspects. You might have already seen how these microcontrollers can be used to drive huge LED displays without consuming any of the primary CPU in projects like Disorient Pyramid.

These performance and interfacing aspects, in addition to providing ways to run game system emulators faster and in more environments with more input and display devices, also open up entirely new types of gaming. One example is the Node.JS-based multiple-room physical-gaming system built by Eric Gradman (https://vimeo.com/60993092, http://www.pehub.com/2010/04/gradman-bushnell-aim-to-create-new-gaming-experience/ ). For those of you concerned about retro-gaming copyright issues (http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp), creating and exploring entirely new games and new gaming experiences might be just the cure for your worries and boredom. Then again, you might simply be looking to bring back old games on your own without emulators and creating new experiences around them, like with Benjamin James' 30-foot Tetris wall.

Retro-gaming or custom-gaming, good times are here for you and your Beagle.

2013-12-10-project-spotlight-lasersaur

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 04:04:28 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
The Lasersaur

By Tara Stratton

Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hachenberger, co-founders of NORDT Labs, have many secret talents. Addie can bake some mean chocolate chip cookies at 15,000+ feet in high winds on a mountain, and she can open a beer bottle with just about anything (like a lighter) thanks to Becky Stern. Stefan, on the other hand, makes the best kiserschmann in Austria, according to Addie. But their most recent projectthe Lasersaurshows their best talent yet.

The Lasersaur is an open source laser cutter. With CAD drawings, circuit schematics, software and a bill of materials available from NORTD Labs, end users can build these laser cutters themselves. The Lasersaur was designed to fill the needs of makers, artists and scientists who want a safe and highly capable machine.

Image credit: NORDT Labs

When Addie and Stefan designed the Lasersaur, they werent interested in building the cheapest machine. They were interested in building a platform that is sourceable worldwide, simple to build, reproduce, duplicate and understand, dependable after hundreds of hours of use, and safe. They want the end users to truly own it and have access to all the designs that went into it.

We had spent thousands of hours on other peoples laser cutters while in graduate school. We depended on the systems, yet they were expensive and frustrating to use, said Addie. The software was often horrible. We would have to run some obscure machine, running CorelDrAW, and transfer everything from our OSX or Ubuntu systems to do it. We felt like it could be done better, and for a lot less than what it would cost to buy ready-made.

As a result of this experience, Addie and Stefan have written the Lasersaurs open-source software and plug-ins from the ground up, and according to Addie, they will do things you have never seen beforeopen-source software or not. It is locally hosted and can run off of any web browser, which means you don't have to install additional software or extensions to get it to cut. It's plug and play.

Addie and Stefan havent fully opened the source for the Lasersaur yet, but hacker spaces in Philadelphia, Dublin and Tokyo; labs at Carnegie Mellon, NYU and the University of São Paulo; and many individuals have already built their own Lasersaur.

The Lasersaur is based on BeagleBone Black, powered by TIs Sitara AM335x processor. Addie and Stefan chose this computer because they were interested in continuing to work with and support Linux. Since Ångström was pre-installed, we were able to continue to use Ubuntu for the Lasersar. We found BeagleBone Black plays well with USB peripherals like Wi-Fi dongles. It was rather painless to get the Lasersaur image configured onto BeagleBone Black, so it felt like a shoo-in. As a bonus, its globally available, stable, easy to pick up, learn and hack, and the price is right! said Addie.

Lasersaurs are built to use 40-200 watt carbon dioxide lasers and to have a bed size of 24 × 48 in (61 × 120 cm). They are comprised of both stationary and dynamic parks. The primary building blocks of both the frame and the ganty are T-slot aluminum extrusions bolted together with M5 bolts and T-slot nuts. The Lasersaur is designed around extrusions with 20, 40 and 80 mm side lengths. All of the mount assemblies are built from angle brackets. A few parts are custom-cut 6 mm acrylic (or more recently, aluminum) pieces. CAD drawings for the acrylic parts are freely available and can be made using a laser cutter - and should they fail, they may be replaced with spare parts made by the Lasersaur itself. Aluminum versions of those parts may be purchased from the NORTD Labs store, or users can have them cut somewhere. No proprietary rails and carriage assemblies are used. The Lasersaur carriages are built from standard-sized ball bearings (with nylon coating), cap screws and custom-cut acrylic or metal pieces.

According to Addie, the biggest issue has been funding. At first we used Kickstarter. At some point far enough into development, we were able to take fellowships and residencies to further fund the project and push it forward. We also put our own money and time into it. At some point, the community support allowed the project to almost become self-sustained. We hope to get the financial and social capital to 100% one day. University builds like that of Carnegie Melon and New York University have been a big help to the exposure of the project.

For more information about Lasersaur, visit Lasersaur.com. Addie and Stefan have completed many other successful projects. To find about more about them, visit the NORTD Labs website. And definitely stay tuned: theyve been toying with an interesting idea for an open-source industrial robotic arm!

2013-12-03-project-spotlight-uss-langley

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 15:54:09 GMT

BeagleBoard-xM project spotlight:
USS Langley Space Server

By Tara Stratton

Youve heard of monkeys and apes being sent to space, but did you know a Beagle is also being launched into the ether? In 2014, Sam Sipe and his team at the U.S. Naval Academy are launching a BeagleBoard-xM into space as part of their Unix space server.

Sam Sipe got the idea for a Linux-based, open-source webserver in space during his sophomore year at the Academy. I was taking EA204, which is our introduction to Astronautical Engineering course, while simultaneously teaching myself web code for an unrelated venture. Eventually I asked my instructor, CDR Blocker, why there werent any TCP/IP-capable satellites in low-earth orbit less than 1,200 miles in altitude. He suggested that I do more research and report back. This, in turn, turned into an independent research project the next semester, said Sam. Sam fully fleshed out the project, deciding to develop a 3U CubeSat that will host a webserver in space. This small satellite server would provide a faster link between clients and hosts without needing to use the terrestrial network. Titled USS Langley after the first aircraft carrier, this space server is now a Capstone Senior Design Project at the Academy.

The USS Langley development team is made up of eight undergraduate students and two professors. The team chose to base USS Langley on a BeagleBoard-xM open-source computer, powered by a TI Sitara processor. We chose the BeagleBoard-xM because of its small form factor, customizability, and low power requirements, said Sam.

The project has not been without its challenges, according to Sam. The biggest problem when designing a satellite with non-space-rated hardware is verifying that it will do what you need it to do in space, with no heat convection, no air, huge swings in temperature, and radiation. This has been overcome with testing and modification flight hardware, said Sam. Another major concern that the team has dealt with regularly is finding continued funding.

The team has secured a spot on a launch set for late 2014, and it will deliver the satellite early in the summer. Keep your eyes on the skies to see USS Langley in action!

While Sam himself may not be going to space, he will be going through flight school after he graduates from the Academy in May. Sam is definitely one to keep an eye on in the future! If you want to find out more about USS Langley or keep tabs on Sams projects, you can visit his personal website at http://samsipe.com/#/research.

2013-11-26-project-spotlight-dirty-dish-detector

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 14:06:09 GMT

BeagleBone project spotlight:
Dirty Dish Detector

By Tara Stratton

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. My family usually runs a turkey trot together, makes and eats great food, and spends the evening playing board games. The one down side of Thanksgiving is all of those dirty dishes! Sometimes I think it takes more time to clean up than we even spend eating turkey dinner. The result? The family falls asleep on the floor (thanks tryptophan!) before all of the dishes are cleaned up, leaving a mess in the kitchen sink.

Lucky for us all, London Hackspace member Tom created the Dirty Dish Detector to help keep the hackspace sink clean. The system alerts users when a dish has been left in the sink for too long, ensuring youll get all of those dishes cleaned up before napping ensues. The Dirty Dish Detector uses a webcam above the sink, hooked to a BeagleBone open-source computer, based on TIs Sitara AM335x processor. The computer runs the HoughCircles function in OpenCV to detect circle-shaped items like plates, classes and bowls. BeagleBone then sends a signal to an Arduino, which deploys different alerts (based on how long the sink has been full) to remind people to clean up their dishes.

Tom has a few upgrades planned that may help us catch more criminals by next years Thanksgiving! Right now, cutlery can escape the gaze of OpenCV since it isnt circular. Next years offenders will be caught red-handed for cutlery misdeeds. Tom plans to add a camera to catch mugshots of these dish delinquents as well.

Want to make your own Dirty Dish Detector? Visit Tom's GitHub site to find the code!

2013-11-19-project-spotlight-opensprinkler

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 20:41:05 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Open Sprinkler Beagle (OSBo)

By Tara Stratton

Planning to buy a sprinkler timer for your loved ones this holiday season? Have no fear, OpenSprinkler is here! Developed by Ray Wang at Rayshobby LLC, OpenSprinkler Beaglenicknamed OSBowas released last week. It is an open-source sprinkler/irrigation extension board for the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBone Black. The board helps you easily develop BeagleBone Black into a low-cost, web-connected smart sprinkler controller. It comes with a full-featured sprinkler scheduling program, uses online weather data to help regulate water time, and enables users to remotely change setting and programs while away from home. It works with the standard 24VAC sprinkler valves commonly found in household watering and irrigation systems and allows for an unlimited number of water zones to be individually controlled. Because its open source, it offers a lot of flexibility in features and functionality. Users are encouraged to hack the hardware and/or software (written in Python, which is easy to learn).

What motivated Ray to create such an innovative and futuristic project? Ray wanted to provide a solution to the limited set of fixed functionality and outdated user interface that come with most commercial sprinkler timers or controllers. Ray even included a relay on OSBo and hopes it can be used for opening/closing garage doors as well at some point in the future!

Ray has made several other versions of OpenSprinkler based on other low-cost computers, but he selected BeagleBone Black for the newest version to add even more features thanks to the large number of GPIO pins, built-in analog pins, eMMC, microSD card, and the high-performance Sitara AM335x processor from TI. The OSBo board contains a 24VAC to 5VDC switching regulator, shift register, triacs, terminal blocks, a zone expansion board connector, a rain sensor terminal, and a mini-relay. It provides 5V power to BeagleBone Black and uses four GPIO pins to interface with the shift register as well as SDA2/SCL2 to interface with the DS1307 RTC. The BeagleBone Black computer is oriented face-down, and it plugs directly into the extra-long male pin headers. The biggest advantage of the face-down design is doesnt necessitate cables, thus there is extra space in the upper-half of the enclosure that makes it possible to add additional modules. To make it easy to reuse the available pins on BeagleBone Black, Ray also mapped out all of the 46 pins on ports P8 and P9 to the pinout area.

Check out the OSBo homepage at http://beagle.opensprinkler.com for more information or to purchase the OSBO v1 open-source sprinkler / irrigation extension board. You can also stay up to date on what Ray is developing on his blog at http://blog.rayshobby.net.

2013-11-12-project-spotlight-openrov

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:24:43 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
OpenROV

By Tara Stratton

Whether you want to explore the seas for science and education, snorkel for fish and coral without getting wet, or hunt for buried treasure in unexplored seas, OpenROV is something you need to check out!

David Lang and Eric Stackpole created OpenROVan underwater robot that can be controlled with a laptopin a garage in Cupertino, Calif. with the goal of exploring an underwater cave. After finding a global community of co-developers on Kickstarter, the project evolved, developing into a global community of DIY ocean explorers who are using and improving the OpenROV design. The community gathers everyone from professional ocean engineers and software developers to hobbyists and students, all who want to learn and explore the oceans and lakes of the world. Adventurous souls can make their own OpenROV from scratch, using design files on OpenROV.com for support. Explorers also can buy an OpenROV kit, which comes with all the hardware needed to assemble your own OpenROV, for only $849.00.

The newest OpenROV robotOpenROV 2.5was introduced in September 2013. It is now powered by the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBone Black (it was formerly powered by the original BeagleBone), enabling lower cost and higher performance robots. Its many other upgrades include a durable polypropylene shell, more efficient propellers, added buoyancy to support more payloads, more robust battery tubes, and laser range and size calculating capability. These submarine-like robots are open-source, enabling anyone to hack them to add new features and functionality. David and Eric say the robot kit can be built in a single weekend, so you can kick off your treasure hunt in no time, even without a degree in engineering!

OpenROV sounds cool, but its even more impressive in action. Check out CNNs video of OpenROV to see how it works:

There are now more than 500 OpenROVs swimming in more than 50 countries around the world. Want to explore your own unchartered waters? Visit OpenROV.com to find out more.

If you want to hear more about David Langs leap into the Maker movement and how he grew to be a successful entrepreneur, check out his new book Zero to Maker: Learn (Just Enough) to Make (Just About) Anything.

2013-11-07-project-spotlight-growcubes

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 18:50:48 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
GrowCubes

By Tara Stratton

Open-source technology is all about getting the power of technology into the hands of everyone. Thats why we at BeagleBoard.org really like the idea of GrowCubes stackable, modular farming environments that use mobile technology and aeroponics to grow delicious, organic produce indoorsusing 90% less water. Developed by a team at NYC Resistor (NYCR), GrowCubes democratize agriculture by placing the power to grow back into the hands of individuals and communities. Its based on the radical idea that food should be healthy, tasty and accessible to all, said Chris Beauvois, founder of GrowCubes. This idea of open-source agriculture has implications not only for culinary culture, but for some of the urgent public health issues facing us today.

According to Chris, developing GrowCubes was very challenging. Aeroponics is a delicate process, and we spent more than a year developing our misting hardware alone. In addition to these aeroponic spray misters, the system also includes a network of sensors and data from the Internet to give the system intel about what each plant needs. With this information, GrowCubes automatically rotate shelves, ensuring plants get the best possible light.

GrowCubes are powered by BeagleBone Black. Chris and his team at NYCR chose BeagleBone Black for its high performance, large GPIO pin count and the added real-time performance of the programmable real-time unit (PRU) within TIs Sitara AM335x processor. BeagleBone Black is the most complete solution of any kind and is especially suited to handling the complexities of our product, said Chris.

Now that the NYCR team has its project complete, it plans to build a large run of GrowCubes to distribute to public schools in New York City.

GrowCubes is currently a contender in Engadgets Insert Coin: New Challengers competition, where readers can vote for the most promising crowd-funding hardware. Online voting starts at 5 p.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 9 and ends at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 10. If you are inspired by what GrowCubes can do for agriculture in our cities (or anywhere else for that matter), consider voting for them here.

Want even more information about GrowCubes? The best place to start at the moment is this YouTube video. You can also check out Chris Beauvois interview with Mike Riggs at The Atlantic Cities blog. And lastly, tune into MSNBC at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 10. Chris will be a featured guest!

2013-11-06-beagleboneblack-3d-printer-intro

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 20:06:56 GMT

Introduction to 3D printing with BeagleBone Black

by Jason Kridner

Over on the TI Tools Insider Blog, Alejandro Erives has been talking about self-replicating machines and Stephanie Pearson day-dreamed about giving a Beagle a 3D printer and the impact on open source hardware. This prompts the question, how do you get started and where can you end up?

Here's the quick overview of what you'll need to produce your very own first prints in 3D plastic, before we dive into any details:

Processor to control your printer such as provided by the TI Sitara AM335x on BeagleBone Black
Electronics to drive your positioning and extruder motors, extruder heating element, heating plate and limit switches such as provided by a BeBoPr-Plus Cape, Pololu #2133 stepper motor drivers using TI DRV8825 devices and an off-the-shelf power supply
Mechanical structure with drive motors, extruder, heating elements, build surface and limit switches such as provided by a RepRap Huxley
Software to run the slice up the 3D models into GCode, an interpreter for the GCode and to send pulse trains to the stepper motor drivers such as is provided by the Machinekit Linux distribution based on Debian, Robert Nelson's image building tools and Charles Steinkuehler's integration work
Models for the components you want to build such as these Mendel plastic components on Thingiverse
Patience give yourself plenty of time when getting started with 3D printing and you'll find it a fun and rewarding endeavor!

Processor

Choosing the processor is the easy part, because the AM335x on BeagleBone Black has all of the most important hardware features you might need, including a fast processor, video display output with 3D graphics rendering capabilities, Ethernet/USB connectivity, ADCs, PWMs, lots of GPIOs and a couple of independent fast microcontrollers optimized for producing interface logic. At BeagleBone Black's rather affordable price point, nothing else is close when examining all of these features. Let's look at how each of those elements comes into necessity.

To read the heat data, the simplest mechanisms are to utilize either an analog temperature sensor or a one-wire temperature sensor. An on-chip ADC sample the analog temperature values directly without additional hardware. The one-wire bus protocol is an alternative that enables multiple sensors to be connected along the same single-wire bus, simplifying the wiring topology and bringing data back to the processor digitally. Linux provides a driver that is capable of turning a GPIO pin into a one-wire bus port and this driver is almost trivial to enable using. Getting an accurate temperature reading has never been easier.

The multitude of GPIOs serve many purposes, in addition to providing ports for one-wire support. Each limit switch provides time-critical information to the electronic controls in the case where a motor's position needs to be calibrated or the print head is otherwise attempted to be moved beyond the range of the printer. Every GPIO on the BeagleBone Black is capable of producing an interrupt to the main processor such that it can get notification quickly. Perhaps more importantly, several of the GPIOs have extremely low-latency connections to the PRU 32-bit 200MHz microcontrollers on-chip. These dedicated controllers are able to update the BeagleBone peripherals in real-time, without being distracted by other tasks running within the Linux environment.

These PRUs are especially useful in talking to the stepper motor drivers that need to be given pulse trains telling them when to step forward or backward. With the real-time tasks off-loaded to the PRUs, it is even possible to use a high-level language like Python to feed the pulse-train data.

Electronics

This selection is a bit more difficult with many makers of competitive electronics constantly providing minor updates to add one minor feature or another. The good news is that you can grab a solution today and reuse the rest of your system as you make incremental electronics improvements moving forward. For now, I've chosen the BeBoPr-Plus because it was easy for me to obtain, but keep an eye out for the Replicape from Hipster Circuits as I expect Thing Printer to be available any day now.

For more information about the BeBoPr, consider visiting the BeBoPr forum.

Next steps

In future posts, we'll look at the Huxley assembly and software running on BeagleBone Black. In the meantime, why not give it a try on your own?

2013-10-08-project-spotlight-the-deck

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:48:02 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
The Deck

By Tara Stratton

Phil Polstra had a problem. He had a vision for a portable penetration testing (pentesting) and forensics device, but he didnt have the technology he would need to do it. One fateful day at Maker Faire Detroit, Polstra found himself right next to Jason Kridner, who was showing off the (then) new BeagleBoard-xM. This was my first introduction to the Beagles. I was very impressed with the xM and thought I might use them in some future project, said Polstra.

That day, The Deck started taking shape.

Polstra began creating a USB forensic device based on BeagleBoard-xM. As he got into his project, he realized that the hardware was very powerful and could handle more than the one simple task he had running on it. He decided to work on creating a full penetrating testing device with the forensic capabilities included. Polstra said, I became so immersed in developing a penetration testing Linux distribution that I almost forgot to implement the forensics piece!

The original version of the Deck ran on a BeagleBoard-xM attached to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or to a touchscreen. Polstra installed a portable version in a Buzz Lightyear lunch box with a wireless presenter keyboard/mouse, USB hub, network switch and wireless adaptor.

The Deck can be used to replace a desktop or laptop system used by an information security professional conducting a penetration test. The Deck can also be used as a drop box system. Thanks to its small size and low power requirements, a device running The Deck is easily planted and can run for days off battery power. Unlike many other drop box options, The Deck provides every tool a penetration tester could possible want.

The true power of The Deck comes when multiple devices are used in coordination. An army of drones running The Deck can perform coordinated attacks with a command console that is up to a mile away. The drones may also be separated from each other with distances up to a mile. Penetration tests can now be performed poolside at the hotel down the street instead of in the back of a suspicious van in the parking lot.

There is even an aerial drone running The Deck available. The drone can be used as a single attack device, as a router for drones, or as a combination. The aircraft can be flown as an airplane and flown around a target for initial reconnaissance. It is also capable of vertical flight, takeoffs and landings. This capability allows the drone to fly in, land on the roof of a target, hack the target and then fly away.

You may have already heard of The Deck. This device has already made the news at 44CON, Black Hat Europe, DEFCON, and GrrCON, where many editors (and even wishful employers!) have taken notice of the project. The Deck has truly taken the industry by storm, inspiring lots of picture-taking, tweeting and texting. Polstra attributes this to the fact that The Deck is flexible as well as a small fraction of the cost of commercial drop boxes. Someone can get started with The Deck running on multiple devices for less than $200, making it attractive to a wide audience of infosec professionals. Another way to look at it is that I can build an army with more than a dozen devices and an aerial drone for less than the cost of a MacBrook Pro.

Polstra also says that The Deck is one of the first projects where small computer boards are being pushed to do something more than just blink a couple of LEDs as well as one of the first involving multiple devices coordinated via wireless. The standard model seems to be one penetration tester sitting at a laptop attacking a network. The ability to deploy multiple devices and remove yourself a comfortable distance from the target really opens up the possibilities of doing penetration tests..

The Deck runs on BeagleBoard-xM, BeagleBone, and now, BeagleBone Black, all based on TI Sitara ARM processors. The portable unit uses the 7 touchscreen from BeagleBoardToys.com. For a keyboard and mouse, he uses the Favi wireless presenter keyboard/mouse/laser pointer units, which can be found online for about $25. For wireless pentesting, he uses the Alfa AWUS036H adapters because they are cheap, reliable and compatible. Drone communication is via the 802.15.4 Xbee/Zigbee modules from Digi .

When BeagleBone Black came out, I was elated. Now I had an even more powerful board with HDMI output at half the price of the original BeagleBone. The total cost for a complete device based on the BBB was actually less than what it would cost to attempt to obtain nearly the same results on similar low-cost boards. The HDMI output was also a big plus as I now had a device that could be used as a drone or a desktop replacement. Getting the same performance from a $45 BeagleBone Black as what I was used to seeing from the $149 BeagleBoard-xM was also pretty sweet, said Polstra. He also credits the BeagleBoard.org community for offering him support while he was creating his own Linux distribution.

Polstra isnt done with The Deck yet. At the moment, he is working on a cape for connecting the Xbee radios as well as a pwnage cape that would do Xbee and have a USB hub and network switch. Also on the list of future innovations is a cape for operating the aerial drone. He also would like to use a BeagleBone Black computer to replace the autopilot board in the Quadshot aircraft he is using to build his aerial drone. In a perfect world, he says he would develop more of a true unmanned aerial vehicle. I would like to use a GPS and set of sensors to allow the drone to automatically fly itself to the target and/or circle it. I would also like to install some sensors that would allow the drone to fly away when someone approaches it.

No doubt, Phil Polstra will be one maker we will continue to follow. You can check out his blog at Polstra.org for more information or updates about The Deck. You can also follow him (@ppolstra) on Twitter. And, stay tuned for his book called Hacking and Pentesting with Low-Power Devices that is due out next summer!

2013-11-05-project-spotlight-grannycam

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:47:41 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
GrannyCam

By Tara Stratton

The holidays are around the corner, and with them come the fun and excitement of big family gatherings. However, a lot of families are spread across the country and not able to get together for the holidays. Thats why Charles Hamilton developed GrannyCam, a safe, durable videophone that his kids can use to stay in touch with their grandparents, not only during the holiday season but throughout the year. In September, the device received great response and an Editors Choice Blue Ribbon from Make Magazine at Maker Faire New York.

GrannyCam is a wireless, portable, one-touch videophone designed to be extremely simple and friendly to operate so seniors and their young grandchildren can video chat anytime. The project grew from observing my mother and two-year-old son, who struggled with the typical toolssmartphones, computers, tablets available for speaking to one another. For my mom, now in her 70s, the tools currently available are an enormous challenge: too feature-laden, too complex. For my son, the tools are also challenging, but for slightly different reasons: too easily broken or disconnected, too expensive to handle unsupervised, too fraught with concerns over privacy, said Charles. GrannyCam enabled Charless little boy to speak to his grandma without help so that they can more easily keep in touch. GrannyCam provides a quick and easy way to share the latest progress in our sons development and provides an opportunity for increased socialization and improvements in our toddlers speech.

GrannyCams external design is friendly for both grandmas and toddlers. The hardware is covered in a soft, crocheted shell. A physical button includes an oversized arcade-style button for both initiating and accepting a chat session. The button also flashes to alert an end user that they have an incoming call.

The current GrannyCam prototype is built around the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBone Black open-source computer, which connects to an LCD screen, a webcam and a sound card. Devices communicate with each other over Wi-Fi (dongled) via open-source VoIP/SIP software. No cellular connection is planned as part of the design roadmap. Power supply is currently AC, though one of Charless next goals is to upgrade to rechargeable DC. Configuration of the devices is done remotely via command line or browser.

Charles says he chose the BeagleBone Black to power GrannyCam because its high performance enables delivery of simultaneous voice and video for chat sessions, and its truly open source design provides significant advantages for the long-term design criteria of the device. After trying out Ångström and Debian distributions, Charles finally settled on Ubuntu 12.04 as it is the most stable in handling the video chat client software. Charles said he is currently also investigating a port of Tizen onto BeagleBone Black with a port of a SIP client package as well. He is hoping these options may lead to a better solution with higher data throughput, viz., smoother video and better audio quality.

Charles was able to rapidly prototype GrannyCam and is now generating user feedback and gauging interest in the device as a potential product. His long-term vision for GrannyCam is to create a product that is scalably manufactured and leverages open-source hardware and software. The product path includes a design for a modular platform that can add sensors to make the device a more integrated part of the home monitoring landscape for seniors.

For more information about GrannyCam, visit http://hudsonwerks.com/current-projects/grannycam/. You can also check out Charless blogs on DIY electronics and hardware products as well as tech trends in health and wellness.

2013-10-29-project-spotlight-bbot

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:18:34 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
BBot robot

By Tara Stratton

Whats your perfect vacation? Mine involves sitting out by the pool under the sun as people deliver me ice-cold drinks. Andy Gikling seems to have a similar dream, and he figured out a way to live the good life every weekendby developing the BBot robot!

The BBot is an open source, remote-controlled drink serving robot. This cooler camel puts a cooler on a mini trailer and delivers drinks to people at the pool. As Andy put it, Why not have a robot go get the drinks? Its 2013 people! And with the ability to haul 30-40 lbs, BBot keeps the drinks flowing. This robot does more than just deliver drinks. It can talk to you, see the world around it and even display drink prices and beer advertisements on the screen. One very unique feature is that when people try to steal drinks, the robot kicks on its absurdly loud alarm system.

Andy used 900 MHz XBee radios to transport remote control data from the Microsoft .NET GUI to BeagleBone Black. XBee connectivity enables very long range control, making it possible to order drinks from miles away. The XBee radios were a treat to finally work with, said Andy. They are so cool and simple to use.

The BeagleBone Black computer is the brain of the device. It parses the data and routes it to the various control systems on the robot. Theres nothing like it with as much computing power, flexibility, and size of active community at the $45 price point, said Andy. I needed the vast number if I/O found on BeagleBone Black for my robot. I love how small it is too! It also provided Andy with a great way to learn more about Linux and C++. Although BeagleBone Black is rather new, there are an amazing number of sources on the Internet that show you how to do common things, said Andy. He specifically credited Derek Molloys videos for helping him go from zero to hero with some of the software development challenges he faced.

Andy stacked a ValentFX FPGA cape on top of BeagleBone Black to provide a robust means of low-level hardware interfacing.

Andy coded the names of the classes and variables to be anthropomorphic. For example, rather than calling the code that runs the robots wheels Motors.cpp or Drives.cpp, he named them things like Voice.cpp and Legs.cpp. Functions might be Walk int speed ); instead of Drive ( int speed );. The GUI follows the same trend, with the main window user controls named things like eye ball, legs, and voice. Each control communicates with one of BBots systems. Another cool feature of the GUI is that the user can connect it to a Leap Motion controller so that the robot can be driven by a simple wave of the hand above the sensor!

Andy says that the robot has a fairly simple mechanical design. The main chasse consists of some simple Plexiglas disks stacked on top of each other with threaded steel rods, nuts and washers. Everything for the mechanical assembly can be purchased at a hardware store.

It seems like BBot already has it all, but Andy has plans to keep adding features to the platform. He would like to add a precision pan/tilt camera system and incorporate a tracking algorithm called TLD so that the robot can follow its user around. He is also contemplating having the main data, video and audio link run through the cell network so he can approach people on the street and offer them a free soda from a friendly and seemingly autonomous robot!

Want your own BBot? (We do too!) Working source code, photos, video and documentation can be found at https://github.com/andygikling/BBot.

2013-10-22-project-spotlight-octoscroller

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:05:49 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
The Octoscroller

By Tara Stratton

New York is one of the brightest places on Earth. Times Square is definitely a large factor, but now a new BeagleBone Black-based projectthe Octoscrolleris adding to the glow.

The Octoscroller, which you may have seen at Maker Faire New York a few weeks ago, is a project created by NYC Resistors Trammel Hudson and Matt Mets. The Octoscroller is a classic message alert polygon featuring eight 16x32 RGB LED matrix panels. It features LEDS at eight to 16 levels of brightness for each color (producing approximately 12-bit color). The userspace application renders images into a shared memory frame buffer or can receive UDP packets containing video images from the Disorient Pyramid transmitter.

The BeagleBone Black open-source computer, based on TI's Sitara AM335x processor, is the brains behind the operation. The LEDscape custom firmware runs on the AM335x processors programmable real-time unit (PRU)two separate real-time microcontrollers built into the die, with full access to the GPIO lines and cache-coherent access to the main memory. The LEDscape custom firmware allows the user application render into a frame buffer, which is then driven to the Octoscrollers panels by the PRU.

Trammel and Matt purchased the 16×32 RGB panels on the Octoscoller from Adafruit Industries. The panels are very inexpensive since they require continuous refresh by an external driver. With LEDscape, BeagleBone Black can drive up to four chains of four panels, each at 0 percent CPU load. The panels are built as six parallel shift registers, each with 32 bits and 12 16-channel constant current LED drivers. The connectors have six data inputs and six control inputs each: F1, G1, B1, R2, G2 and B2; and A, B, C, CLK, LTC and OE. The three address select lines (A, B and C) select which two rows are currently displayed. On each falling edge of the CLK line, a new bit is shifted in on the six data inputs. On the falling edge of the LAT line, the new data is latched and, when OE is held low, displayed. To save on GPIO lines, the PRU shares the control lines between all output chains and only needs the six additional data lines per chain. If the HDMI hardware is disabled, four chains can be driven by a single BeagleBone Black. The panels and BeagleBone Black are powered by a 5V 10A DC supply.

If you missed Trammell and Matts Octoscroller at Maker Faire New York, find out more about it from Trammells recent blog post.

2013-10-15-project-spotlight-disorient-pyramid

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:38:39 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Disorient Pyramid

By Tara Stratton

When you think of Pyramids in the middle of the desert, you think of Egyptnot Nevada. The Disorient Pyramid, which was on display at Burning Man 2013 this year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, is changing all that.

This year at Burning Man, the Disorient Camp hosted a 23-foot tall pyramid with more than half a kilometer of LED strips. Several artists, including Disorient founder Leo Villareal and Fresno Idea Works Jacob Joaquin, designed patterns for the panel. Designs included the double helix of DNA, wiggling snakes and abstract patterns. The pyramid could be seen from almost everywhere on the playa, helping people find the camp and making it a popular place to gather.

A Sitara-based BeagleBone Black open-source computer running LEDscape drove each face of the pyramid, slicing the images into individual panels. BeagleBone Black then sent each piece to four Teensy 3.0 USB development boards, which drove eight LED strips on each panel.

A Toughbook ran the pyramidTransmitter code, which rendered the animation frames to 24-bit bitmaps and sent them to the network via USD.

The pyramids tall panels were powered by 5V 40a power supplies, and the smaller panels were powered by 5V 30A power supplies. The heat and dust caused several of the power supplies to fail, leading the team to do some ad hoc maintenance during Burning Man. Nevertheless, the Disorient Pyramid and its 16,000 LEDs gave quite a show during Burning Man!

NYC Resistor has some great pictures of this project at http://www.nycresistor.com/2013/09/05/disorient-pyramid/. For more information about the Disorient camp, visit http://wiki.disorient.info/

2013-10-05-arduinotre-demonstrated-at-makerfaire-rome

jkridner.wordpress.com — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 22:24:40 GMT

Arduino TRE demonstrated at Maker Faire Rome

#ArduinoTre enables Web-based programming of all your sensors http://bit.ly/18FvhfC

Having fun showing off #ArduinoTRE at #MakerFaireRome at @arduino booth http://t.co/nOdmCxmVJC pic.twitter.com/cZTsWa5Iyd
— Jason Kridner (@Jadon) October 5, 2013

2013-10-03-beagleboardorg-collaborates-with-arduino

jkridner.wordpress.com — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 20:06:46 GMT

BeagleBoard.org collaborates in creation of new Arduino TRE

Two open hardware pioneers have combined forces to bring the famously easy-to-use experience of Arduino to a high-performance ARM^®-based Linux computer and prototyping platform derived from the open hardware designs of BeagleBoard.org and Arduino Leonardo. As an open hardware project, BeagleBoard.org's collaboration with Arduino helps to advance accessible technology for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments everywhere.

Arduino familiarity, freed from the tether of a laptop

For many projects that previously required an external computer, the Arduino TRE will provide all the necessary tools on one small board at an affordable price with low power consumption. Programmable in Arduino's highly accessible C-derived language with open source roots in Processing and Wiring, Arduino TRE enables users to target real-time microcontroller tasks or Linux tasks using open source libraries supporting vision and graphics functionality. Arduino TRE provides a combination of instant familiarity with a monumental jump in performance and available software to extend the experience.

Arduino TRE features the processor that powers BeagleBone Black, a TI Sitara AM335x. It also features a common footprint and electronics as the Arduino Leonardo, enabling compatibility with a huge variety of Arduino shields. Further integration includes a 4-port USB hub for hosting a large number of standard USB peripherals, a 2-port USB hub on the client side for simultaneous access to both integrated processors on-board, a stereo audio codec with standard 1/8th" stereo speaker and line-input jacks, a dedicated XBee connector for wireless communications and a full-sized HDMI connector.

See the pictures below and the post on arduino.cc for additional preview information.

BeagleBoard.org is a community built on openness and a commitment to longevity

For BeagleBoard.org, this alliance is a true honor that we hope will positively shape collaboration in the open hardware world moving forward, growing the abilities of developers using open tools and advancing open hardware platforms optimized for running the largest body of open source software. While this will be an Arduino product, supported through the Arduino forums, the BeagleBoard.org discussion group has consistently been a place for lively discussion of all platforms and pride in BeagleBoard.org workmanship is inescapable.

While Arduino TRE prototype development was initially done with a relatively small group of collaborators, including the BeagleBoard.org Foundation, the plan is to now move quickly into an open development phase where broad community feedback and contributions will play a critical role in the final development of the product. Because of this, we can't say exactly when the final version of the product will ship, but developers can look to be fully informed of ongoing development work in the future so they can make informed decisions on when to become active with their own projects.

We find incredible satisfaction in this collaboration with Arduino and look forward to working with other individuals and groups who can see benefit in advancing open hardware based platforms optimized for running the most open source software and growing the body of developers using open tools, especially including all existing BeagleBoard.org platforms and the new Arduino TRE. We can't wait to find out what you will create!

2013-10-01-project spotlight-facebook-like-counter

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 19:55:24 GMT

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Facebook Like Counter

By Tara Stratton

Heres something we are sure you will Like. While at Maker Faire Bay Area this year, we gave away a few BeagleBone Black open-source computers to some lucky faire attendees. We heard back from one of the winners, Christopher Berg, about a creative but functional project hes created on the board over the past few months that would make Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg quite proud.

Christopher made a Facebook Like Counter for his wifean author who was in the middle of writing her first romance novel and was interested in tracking the number of Likes on her Facebook page. His device gives his wife a readout of Facebook Likes that is easily readable and constantly updating. According to Christopher, many of his projects are inspired by his familyhis kids have been the beneficiaries of many of his projects. (Cool side notecheck out the Quorra from Tron costume he made his daughter for Halloween!)]

The Facebook Like Counter uses the JSON interface provided by Facebook to count the number of Likes for a page. Once it reads the value, the counter updates the display using a simple bit-bang SPI interface.

Its currently a really simple setup, but Im planning on expanding it to provide more metrics, including books sold, Twitter followers, etc., said Christopher.

The part count for the project is really low. Christopher used the BeagleBone Black open-source computer (of course) as well as some jumper wires and a four-digit, seven-segment display that he found on eBay through some friends at 43oh.com. The display uses a PT6961 driver from Oasis. Christopher noted the display is dead-easy to control and has a low pin-count. A few simple SPI commands and youre good to go.

But why BeagleBone Black? Christopher said he had his eye on BeagleBone for a while.

When the new version came out, including a price drop I had to have one, he said.

After years of experience developing projects such as an electronic etch-a-sketch, a Bluetooth®-controlled RC car and even a retro VFD tube clock on several of TIs development boards, including his favorite MSP430 Value Line LaunchPad as well as the Tiva C Series LaunchPad and MSP430FR5739 FRAM Experimenter Board, he felt comfortable picking up the TI Sitara AM335x processor-based BeagleBone Black computer. In addition, the Ethernet on BeagleBone Black came in handy for this project.

When you need a network-enabled board, theres really no easier way to go, Christopher said.

With several years of experience developing on TIs microcontroller- based LaunchPads, Christopher admitted that he faced a challenge with this project since he knew almost nothing about Linux. However, he said that the Ångström distribution that comes loaded on BeagleBone Black helped him get the project going without having too much to learn. He used the Cloud9 IDE that comes pre-installed and was able to use JavaScriptsomething hes already familiar with since he is a Web developer. Once he started working with the on- board software, he was able to get the project up and running fairly quickly.

I have absolutely no electronics training, but Im a great example that with the right tools, almost anyone can create these types of projects, said Christopher.

Whats next on Christophers list of DIY projects? He said hes always wanted to create a Hexapod using a BeagleBone Black and a 3D printer. Based on his track record, we can assume it will be awesome!

More details about Christophers Facebook Like Counter are available at http://forum.beaglefu.com/topic/124-facebook-like-counter-7-segment-display-and-cloud9/.

2013-08-21-embedded-computing-top-innovators

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:16:20 GMT

BeagleBone Black wins 2013 Top Embedded Innovator award

Embedded Computing Design magazine recently announced its 2013 Top Embedded Innovator awards. BeagleBone Black was announced as a winner in the Top Products Silicon category. Hardly surprising, given the waves BeagleBoard.org has been making in the embedded industry for the last five years.

The August 2013 issue, in addition to announcing the award winners, includes an article called DIY pushes open hardware from kindergarten to Kickstarter. This article looks a bit at some of the thoughts and platforms that BeagleBoard.org has spawned. What an article like this can't easily describe is the experience a designer has in prototyping their concept and then bringing it to market. That story is most easily told by projects like OpenROV and Ninja Blocks, both of which used BeagleBone to transform prototypes into products.

2013-09-24-quick-list-of-makerfaire-projects

jkridner.wordpress.com — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 19:48:36 GMT

Quick list of BeagleBone projects I saw at World Maker Faire in New York

There wasn't enough time to really discover all of the BeagleBone Black projects at World Maker Faire in New York. I did post some quick pictures on Google+, but I barely had time to breathe at the Faire!

OpenROV - Open hardware underwater robot
Hoboken MakerBar Orbital Rendersphere - Spinning persistence of vision globe
GrannyCam - Video chat for Grandma/Grandkids
Matt Mets' Crystal Gateway - Sculpture covered in LEDs
Tempo Automation Electronics Factory - Desktop electronics manufacturing robot
TinyG - Motion control board adds web interface through BeagleBone Black
BBot - BeagleBone + FPGA remote control robot
Logi-family - FPGA development cape for BeagleBone Black
RAMPS adapter cape - Connect a CNC or RAMPS controller to BeagleBone Black
Jolly Roger Labs Rosetta Shield
Type A Machines also showed of a BeagleBone Black based 3D printer

There were also at least 10 talks that had some coverage of BeagleBone Black! Makers are discovering what out-of-box software, a higher-performance processor running Linux, a great set of low-level hardware interfaces supported by high-levle software and on-board dedicated-to-real-time microcontrollers can do for them!

2013-07-30-Boris-birthday-weekend

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:22:02 GMT

Weekend at Boris'

It has been a busy week for BeagleBoard.org, which has now been around for five years! Drew Fustini of Element14 was nice enough to bring cake to the Southeast Michigan Friends of Boris (the Beagle) meet-up. A notable point of discussion was the fact that BeagleBoard.org got its name from Gerald's dog Jake, but yet the cartoon mascot for BeagleBoard.org was named 'Boris' by Philip who paid to get the logo created. Seems like it is the little things that give character to a community.

Drew was hanging around to record some tutorials from the hands-on workshops on BeagleBone Black at Maker Faire Detroit. We estimate about 100 people went through the self-paced tutorials with help from Drew and volunteers from the local i3 Detroit hackerspace. The videos for the tutorials will eventually be posted at http://beagleboard.org/makerfairedetroit2013 .

A couple of BeagleBone-based projects won some awards at the show. Dr. Phil Polstra of the University of Dubuque Iowa was mentioned by Dale Dougherty as demonstrating one of the top 10 signs of hope for Detroit presented at the Faire with his Beagle in a Buzz Lightyear lunch box. I met Phil at Maker Faire a couple of years back and he's been doing some amazing things to teach people about computer security. As Dale mentions, Phil is a great example of what can be done when the open source software world meets the world of affordable open source hardware.

Another award winning project of note was Jeff McAlvay's open hardware pick-and-place machine that runs Node.JS on BeagleBone to process design files into GCode, providing for independent network-based operation. A pick-and-place machine will help you manufacture electronics by taking the tiny components and positioning them on the board for you. The machine in development is seeking to do a lot more than just place the components, including cutting out the routes on the board and adding the solder to it as well.

This week is also time for midterm evaluations for Google Summer of Code projects where students are paid by Google to work on open source software projects for the Summer, including 6 projects being mentored by BeagleBoard.org. All of the students have now provided some running code, including for running Arduino sketches on BeagleBone Black, booting BeagleBone from an Android phone, improved ADC driver support, adding I2C support to Minix (including EDID support), Robot Operating System (ROS) on Angstrom, and building soft peripherals with the PRU microcontrollers on BeagleBone Black.

Pre-release Angstrom images are already being impacted by these projects, including integration of ROS dependencies and ADC patches to provide for continuous sampling and triggers. Improvements are also occuring on the HDMI support, additional firmware for USB wifi devices, SD/MMC support, BeBoPr 3D printer cape support and even support to turn digital I/O pins controlled by the PRU into PWMs.

It is also now that projects by interns in the Texas Instruments Intern Design Challenge are being voted upon. Several of these projectes included BeagleBone Black this summer, including the BeagleBone Gaming Cape that turns a BeagleBone Black into a handheld gaming system capable of emulating other systems.

It's a very busy time and I can't wait until my next update with so much going on! In the meantime, I did to a bit of a blog post looking back through the eyes of Hack-a-Day.

2013-07-29-Five-years-of-DIY-hacks

jkridner.wordpress.com — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:20:53 GMT

BeagleBoard.org celebrates 5 years of enabling Linux DIY hacks

BeagleBoard.org launched with support of Digi-Key in 2008 and DIYers quickly adopted BeagleBoard for migrating XBMC to ARM, building GPS accurate down to the centimeter, eight-legged robots and creating controller hacks. In 2010, Google Summer of Code students contributed numerous projects to help other open source developers, including sniffing USB traffic and XBMC performance optimizations. GSoC students are back at it again in 2013, providing solutions for booting BeagleBone from aNexus phone, running Arduino sketches and even building new peripherals out of an on-chip microcontroller.

With the introduction of BeagleBoard-xM in 2010, projects accelerated with homemade tablet computers, open graphing calculators, cluster computing in abriefcase,repurposed laptop LCDs, remote presence and versatile RC robots, space cameras, USB killswitches and wearable LED matrices. BeagleBoard-based wearables back in 2010 even provided a strikingly similarity to today's Google Glass.

BeagleBone launched in 2011 to the cheers of robot makers everywhere, even robot makers looking to replace guide dogs and soothe the everyday angry bird, butinventiveness wasn't limited to awesome, futuristic robots. The tiny, low-power processing solution enabled tidy home power usage monitors, off-the-grid wireless outposts,QR code controlled door locks, networked LED marquees, portable 3D cameras and even cameras that would print scene descriptions in words. BeagleBone's portable performance was utilized for countless goals, including cracking passwords, manufacturing money and helping to save the world from pollution.

BeagleBone seemed to find a surprising home in retro computing, mimicking PDP11 blinkenlights and saving dot-matrix printers from the dust bin. This seemed to be an inspiration for inventive minds seeking to teach others about the more subtle capabilities the board is packing. The two, small 200MHz 32-bit microcontrollers on-board were used to mimic external peripherals to a discrete 6502 processor, enabling more people to understand the capabilities of these independent units previously demonstrated performing independent generation of VGA signals using a simple resistor ladder.

The tutorials continued with everything from twiddling an LED and running Ubuntu with a full GUI, to extracting video signals and wiring up your own LIDD displays, evenbuilding your own dedicated Pandora radio. This is all before BeagleBone Black launched, boosting performance to 1GHz, adding on-board eMMC and HDMI and dropping the price down to $45.

BeagleBone Black is just getting its legs underneath it in its initial production run of 125,000 units with around half of those shipped so far. Early adopters were able to share some of their creations at Maker Faire, including LED strips being used to display live video. Beyond the obvious and popular lighting solutions, BeagleBone Black has found an early home in manufacturing solutions, especially with makers like Elias Bakken, who created the contest-winning Replicape 3D printer-enabling add-on board and a tiny HDMI display for use with BeagleBone Black, and Charles Steinkuehler, who has created the MachineKit software image containing LinuxCNC and Xenomi real-time Linux kernel. Both Elias and Charles have been steady contributors to the project of late and have helped enable several of the improvements making BeagleBone Black a complete and easy to use solution for all sorts of makers.

As of the recent June 20th software release for BeagleBone Black, significant improvements have been made since launch. Monitor support is greatly improved with better automated resolution setting and a documented process for setting specific resolutions over the command-line or at boot-up, including resolutions up to 1920x1080 at 24fps. The node.js-based BoneScript library, used in such fun things as multi-room physically interactive video games, has several bug fixes and a growing body of interactive wiring examples that work within Chrome and Firefox browsers. Support for the on-board 32-bit microcontrollers called PRUs has been improved with an updated assembler and documentation supporting previously undocumented instructions, including multipliers, and hints have been made at a C compiler being developed, including Pantelis Antoniou's example of using the PRU C compiler to add 32 additional channels of pulse-width modulation (PWM). The value of aggressively chasing the mainline kernel is also being shown with simple command-line statements for enabling UARTs, SPI, I2C, CAN and more peripherals, including improved cape add-on board support.

With an amazing community, stand-out performance and capability, a true open hardware approach that is sustainably profitable but not greedy, continuous demonstrated improvements and a focus on educating aspiring engineers and hobbyists alike, BeagleBoard.org has proven to be a DIY force with which to reckon and an inspiration for makers everywhere. Happy Birthday Boris!

2013-07-16-beagleboardorg-gsoc-2013-update

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:37:14 GMT

BeagleBoard.org GSoC 2013 update

In the last blog post, the students and mentors were introduced and links were given to the projects. The Minix I2C project shared a video for the last post and has progressed as far as pushing initial I2C support into the Minix mainline. A couple of the other students have now provided some videos describing their projects.

First, the Beagle-ROS project...

...and now a bit on the project to add IIO support to the Linux mainline for the BeagleBone Black ADC...

The Userspace Arduino project has also made some excellent progress, demonstrating running Arduino sketches on BeagleBone Black...

The BeagleBoard Android Boot project has also produced successful bootloading from a Nexus phone.

2013-06-14-beagleboardorg-google-summer-of-code

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:33:48 GMT

BeagleBoard.org Google Summer of Code 2013 -- coding starts this Monday, June 17

BeagleBoard.org is just about to kick-off coding on our second time as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. This is an amazing program that pays students for writing open source software over Summer. Seven (7) students will be participating in projects that advance the state of open source software for Beagle users and will earn them each US$5,000 if they are successful. Twenty-three (23) qualified mentors from the BeagleBoard.org community have volunteered to help the students reach their goals.

Each project has a page on BeagleBoard.org giving a bit of a description of the project linked in the table below. Each of those pages in turn links to blogs where the students will update the BeagleBoard.org community on their progress. Most of the daily collaboration will be happening on the #beagle-gsoc IRC channel, including weekly status meetings, which are all being logged. The nicknames of each student and mentor are included in square brackets in the table below, so you can contact them with any feedback you might have. You might also choose to join the BeagleBoard-GSoC Google Group for related announcements and additional technical discussion on the projects.

Each of the projects is rather interesting and you'll be able to read more about them here in the weeks to come. Scroll past the table below for a video describing one of the projects, the development of I2C drivers for the Minix operating system.

Project	Student	Mentors (* = primary)
Minix I2C drivers for the BeagleBone Black	Thomas Cort (Heritage College in Canada) [tcort]	Kees Jongenburger* [keesj], Ben Gras [beng-nl], Frans Meulenbroeks [effem]
Arduino for userspace Linux	Anuj Deshpande (Pune Institute of Computer Technology in India) [hatguy_] and Parav Nagarsheth (Nirma University in India) [anujdeshpande]	David Anders* [prpplague], Matt Porter [mdp], Andrew Bradford [bradfa], Luis Gustavo Lira [lglira]
Android-based boot system	Vlad Victor Ungureanu (Jacobs University Bremen in Germany) [vvu]	Vladimir Pantelic* [av500], Tom King [ka6sox], Kees Jongenburger [keesj]
Software Defined Peripherals: JTAG/Debug via PRU	Jon Bailey (University of Waterloo in Canada) [jj2baile]	Tom King* [ka6sox], Andrew Bradford [bradfa], Pantelis Antoniou [panto], Hunyue Yau [ds2], Matt Ranostay [mranostay]
IIO, ADC, PMIC, LCD debug/patchwork	Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel (University of Leeds in UK) [ZubairLK]	Greg Kroah-Hartman* [gregkh], Koen Kooi [koen], Vladimir Pantelic [av500], Tom Rini [Tartarus], Laine Walker-Avina [Ceriand]
Beagle-ROS	Víctor Mayoral Vilches (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain) [vmayoral]	Koen Kooi* [koen], Khem Raj [khem]

One of the students has already posted a video describing their project and all of the students will eventually provide video presentations of their projects, so stay tuned if you want to be video-spoon-fed.

Thanks to Thomas for providing that video. Of course, there are several other individuals involved in supporting this year's Summer of Code, including, but certainly not limited to:
Our mentors-at-large: Derek Molloy (general BeagleBone) [molloyd], Mans Rullgard (ARM) [mru], Karim Yaghmour (Android), Russ Dill [Russ], Jason Kridner (BeagleBoard.org GSoC administrator) [jkridner] and
Our backup administrator (and all around amazing person): Cathy Wicks [cwicks].

Thanks to everyone for their participation and support. Looking forward to an amazing Summer!
--Jason

2013-05-21-beaglebone-black-was-huge-hit-at-maker

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:30:47 GMT

BeagleBone Black was a huge hit at Maker Faire!

I'm on my way home from Maker Faire and I am still in awe that Beagles where everywhere! Clearly, BeagleBone Black is quickly becoming the embedded computer of choice for makers of all types. To start, BeagleBone is on the cover of Make Magazine and the huge banners of the magazine cover at the show. Within the enclosure of the OpenROV open hardware underwater remotely operated vehicle kit and ocean exploring project, you can just make out the outline of an included BeagleBone!

Above on the left is the cover of Make Magazine and on the right is Eric Stackpole sharing
with a young explorer at the show what the OpenROV community has made.

Back on land, one of the physically largest, or at least tallest, exhibits at the show is also driven by BeagleBone. Benjamin James of coolneon.com about his BeagleBone based LED wall. The wall consists of over 1,000 LEDs fed by an SPI serial port from BeagleBone. BeagleBone is also performing animations and he even has a massive scale Tetris implementation written by Christopher De Vries where kids share the controls and need to cooperate to succeed. He's also got a mode that uses another computer connected to a Kinect camera to feed information to the BeagleBone such that the LED wall can be "conducted" as if in a concert. Benjamin is a huge BeagleBone fan looking to bundle up his LEDs and BeagleBone-based controller so that anybody can make some incredible light displays.

Above on the left is a picture of the BeagleBone-based LED exhibit to the left of a full concert stage. On the right is an interview I did with the maker, Benjamin James.

Benjamin wasn't the only one showing off LED lighting solutions using BeagleBone and sharing source. Paul Stoffregen of DorkbotPDX out of Portland, Oregon has a BeagleBone Black based LED display solution fed by stomp pads connected to his affordable Teensy microcontroller modules, a webcam and his open source software. Openness and performance were huge factors for Paul as he tried using another popular low cost computer and found it was dropping frames. That non-Beagle computer simply didn't have the performance he needed and he found it dropping frames---all problems that went away using BeagleBone. Another factor for his choice is the consistent build quality he's found using boards from Circuitco and BeagleBoard.org. He did much of his development on his laptop computer and was able to move his code over to Beagle without any hassles in about half-a-day. He also notes that BeagleBone Black ships with the video-4-linux (V4L) drivers that enabled easy use of a webcam to drive his LED array. You can read more about his experience on his dorkbotpdx blog post about getting ready for this event.

Above is a quick interview I did with Paul Stoffregen about his BeagleBone Black based LED display.

I was able to grab a couple of other quick interviews with BeagleBone Black users at Maker Faire, including Marcus Schappi of Ninja Blocks and Edouard Lafargue who built a model train exhibit. Both of these users are running Ubuntu, perhaps the most popular desktop Linux distribution, on BeagleBone Black (as opposed to the Angstrom Distribution image shipped with the boards). Because BeagleBone Black runs armv7 instructions, it can run the latest Ubuntu builds for ARM. Both of these projects are focused on connecting sensors and controls to a web interface. There are great community write-ups on getting Ubuntu installed on BeagleBone Black.

On the left is an introduction to Ninja Blocks. In the middle is a quick interview I did with Marcus Schappi of Ninja Blocks at Maker Faire. On the right, Edouard Lafargue shows off his BeagleBone Black based web controlled train.

In addition to the ability to run Ubuntu, Edouard chose to use BeagleBone Black thanks to the project's true open nature including an open hardware design where he can get all of the design materials and documentation, and not need to use any closed binary blobs to boot his hardware. Porting his application from his Mac to his BeagleBone Black was simply taking only about half a day.

I spent much of my time at Maker Faire running around with my BeagleStache moustache camera running OpenCV. Below is a quick stache tweet I captured of Brian Jepson in the Maker Shed. While I was there, I also checked out the stock of BeagleBone Black. They didn't put out the BeagleBone Black boards until Sunday, but that didn't keep them from selling out before I managed to get back again. They also had a kit I haven't seen on-line yet that was $65 and included a pre-release preview of Matt Richardson's book "Getting Started with BeagleBone: Linux-Powered Electronic Projects With Python and JavaScript" and several other goodies including multiple breadboards and LEDs. The kits sold out as well.

At #makerfaire? Give @jadon your card for the chance to win @beagleboardorg #beagleboneblack or #badtothebone! twitter.com/BeagleStache/s…
— Boris Houndleroy (@BeagleStache) May 18, 2013

I had many great discussions with other people showing me their BeagleBoard.org related projects including stuff they had now and stuff they were creating. A tremendous thanks to Hunyue Yau for doing so much to educate people about BeagleBoard.org with his BeagleBone-based ProtoBone Android tablet prototype. Hunyue focused his booth on BeagleBoard.org activities and answered question after question after question about BeagleBoard.org and BeagleBone. He was also kind enough to share his space with a couple of volunteers from Ansync Automation, Sam Miller and Tom, who partnered up with Uncanny Vision to demonstrate a BeagleBone-based robot using Ansync's motor controllers and Uncanny Vision's UncannyCV. They created a really cool and powerful color tracking robot that gave dozens of aspiring young makers joy in following them around on the expo floor and making its R2-D2 sound effects.

Above on the left is Hunyue Yau's ProtoBone BeagleBone-based Android tablet prototype. On the right is a video of Tom describing the Ansync BeagleBot.

Another huge thanks goes to Drew Fustini, who frequently played host to Jessica and I, introducing us to many of the great makers that he knows and bringing the whole Texas Instruments crew out to Jeri Ellsworth's Bring-a-hack event. Drew brought a hack he got from the BeagleBoard.org community: an RF spectrum analyzer running on BeagleBone Black with a USB connected $25 receiver.

Above on the left is Drew Fustini. In the middle is a picture he took of the TIers going to Jeri's Bring-a-hack event. On the right is the RF spectrum analyzer Drew demonstrated at the event.

The whole experience was once in a lifetime and I never want to miss another Maker Faire. If you've ever thought about making something, anything, I really, really encourage you to register your idea on beagleboard.org/project, tell people about it on Google+ and the BeagleBoard.org Google Group getting their collaboration as needed, then propose it to one or more of the upcoming US Maker Faires or even the inaugural Maker Faire Europe in Rome still accepting applications until June 2nd. Happy Beagling!

2013-02-25-beagleboardorg-at-elc-and-scale

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:28:47 GMT

BeagleBoard.org at ELC and SCaLE

It has been a big week for BeagleBoard.org. The next generation BeagleBone has been teased with a page open for registering interest. Matt Richardson created a teaser video and I showed off the board at ELC connected to an Motorola Lapdock to act as a monitor, keyboard, mouse and power supply. Victor Meyerson was also letting people know about the next-generation BeagleBone and provided BeagleWall, Motorola Lapdock and other demonstrations at SCaLE 11x where he was selected as the "Most passionate .org booth!"

Here's Matt's video about the upcoming BeagleBone:

Here are some pictures that Victor took at SCaLE showing the BeagleBoard.org booth with BeagleWall and Motorola Lapdock demos. The second picture shows a USB touchscreen connected to a BeagleBone using upstream kernel drivers for both the display (displaylink) and touch (e2i) portions as well as Xorg drivers provided by xf86-video-fbdev. Thanks again Victor (calculus on #beagle)!

Now is a great time for BeagleBoard.org and a great time to get involved. I am looking for more contributors to:

the mainline kernel effort with patches being staged at http://github.com/beagleboard/kernel,
support for the mainline kernel for doing physical computing in JavaScript at http://github.com/jadonk/bonescript,
improvements to the distro used to make the boards useful out-of-the-box at http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/building-angstrom and
support in any of Linux distribution or other operating systems.

Join us at http://beagleboard.org/discuss and get involved today! I'll be posting requests for contributions to our Google Summer of Code ideas page soon.

Update: I corrected the blog post to say "most passionate" not "favorite" and added the link provided by Russ Dill.

2012-11-13-beaglebone-and-linux-seeking-cure-to

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:27:01 GMT

BeagleBone and Linux seeking cure to hardware black magic

Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC-E) 2012 wrapped up last week in Barcelona. By far, the most popular embedded platform of choice for demonstrations was BeagleBone. Here are four examples that include links to the slides taken from the eLinux wiki ELC-E presentation page. Videos of the presentations should be available from Free Electrons soon.

Matt Ranostay opened up the presentations with "Beaglebone: The Perfect Telemetry Platform?" where he explored various telemetry applications such as weather stations, radiation monitors, earthquake detection mesh networks, home security systems and entropy pool generation. He discussed sharing data with tools like COSM and the hardware and software he developed for his own Geiger Cape plug-in board.

Alan Ott of Signal 11 Software followed up with an excellent overview of "Wireless Networking with IEEE 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN". Alan discussed the power consumption of various wireless communications technologies, security and much more, including what is supported in Linux. Alan wrapped up with a demo using BeagleBone and an ultrasonic range finder. Dave Anders snapped a picture of the Altoids-tin encased demo.

Matt Porter of Texas Instruments stepped away from sensors and controls bringing back the Commodore 64 demoscene with "What's Old Is New: A 6502-based Remote Processor". While this might seem like a bit of a throw-back, many modern issues and solutions were explored to give us this taste of the past, including the Linux remoteproc/virtio interfaces to remote processors, the AM335x PRUSS processor that is extremely adept at bit-banging and the Fritzing design tool. Matt has also shared a picture of his wiring handy-work.

Finally, Koen Kooi of CircuitCo presented on one of the fundamental BeagleBone challenges, "Supporting 200 Different Expansionboards: The Broken Promise of Devicetree". If you frequent #beagle, you probably already know that Koen isn't easy to please and so the title shouldn't be much of a surprise. You might then be surprised to note on the first slide where "broken" has been scratched out! We certainly aren't there yet, but the device tree maintainers and AM335x kernel developers are starting to address the unique opportunities around BeagleBone cape expansion boards in the mainline Linux kernel, making a reality out of the dream of supporting hundreds of boards with a single kernel distributed ahead of the add-ons!

The continued enthusiasm of the embedded Linux community is just one element of what makes BeagleBoard.org successful, but it probably makes me happier than any other. With many of these developers moving the state of the Linux kernel ahead and even looking at sharing their hardware ideas in the BeagleBone Cape Plug-in Board Design Contest, I see a bright future where the largest collaborative software project of all time fully embraces the hardware and maker communities such that we can build a world where individuals and even children can reproduce electronics and computers down to the circuit level, not simply build on black magic.

2012-03-31-problems-with-google-groups

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:25:05 GMT

Problems with Google (Groups)

What is up with Google? We have hundreds of messages waiting moderation on the BeagleBoard Google Group, but the tool no longer enables message moderation---and absolutely no communications from Google. Have they simply bitten off more than they can chew? Are they trying to take too much control? Either way, I'm shopping for a new mailing list solution for BeagleBoard.org and, sorry, 99% of your suggestions aren't useful. We need low-setup costs, low/free hosting, long-term archival, excellent search tools and results in various engines, quality spam controls, easy-to-use moderation tools, forum-like thread organization and "top-pinning", digest and individual e-mails with threading and many more features for which Google Groups has barely been passable at this point.

Any thoughts on why this has happened and if Google will be a valid partner in the future?

2011-09-06-beagleboard-on-amp-hour-and-at-esc

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:23:30 GMT

BeagleBoard on The Amp Hour and at ESC Boston

This week, I went on the Amp Hour with Chris, Dave and Jeff. We spoke about a lot of things BeagleBoard related, including the upcoming next revision of the BeagleBoard.

Also, I wanted to remind everyone that there will be new hands-on training at ESC Boston this month and full-conference attendees will get a free BeagleBoard-xM, TinCanTools Beacon Board and TI MSP430 Chronos watch.

Lastly, I'm still on the look-out for a new primary host for the BeagleCast podcast. I will be recording another episode next week with Khasim Syed Mohammed regarding the Android Rowboat project (hopefully), but I'm looking for someone who can volunteer to organize and record/publish the shows on a regular basis. The audio recording must be of higher quality than we've done in the past.

2011-07-29-beagleboard-turns-30

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:17:47 GMT

BeagleBoard turns 3.0!

Three years ago this week, Digi-Key announced the BeagleBoard. Since then, BeagleBoard-xM was launched and numerous other distributors have also signed up to deliver the BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM all around the world.

Linux is turning 20 years old this year and Linus has released version 3.0. You can try 3.0 out on the BeagleBoard or BeagleBoard-xM prior to rev C and it should work for you pretty well. Support for xM rev C was merged after the 3.0 release for inclusion in 3.1. If you'd like to pull a patch set that gives you power management, 1GHz support and some other features not yet placed into the mainline yet, you can check out the patch set in the meta-texasinstruments OE repository. Koen also has also released a set of pre-build binaries and modules using these kernel patches if you want to try out a fairly full-featured 3.0 kernel build for the BeagleBoard/BeagleBoard-xM.

I haven't tried it out yet, but the Linaro 11.06 Android evaluation build also includes a 3.0 kernel for your BeagleBoard-xM.

Happy Beagle 3.0!!!!

2011-05-10-beaglecast-2011-05-06-talking-arm-with

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:16:23 GMT

BeagleCast 2011-05-06: Talking ARM with Greg K-H

Today we interview Greg Kroah-Hartman and your hosts are Jason Kridner and Jeffery Osier-Mixon. Gerald will be back in two weeks.

To provide questions or suggestions:

Call +1-713-234-0535 or
visit the BeagleCast suggestions form

Links to the recordings

Links to show topics

Upcoming events

The Greg K-H interview is roughly the last 15 minutes.

2011-03-30-indiana-linuxfest-and-catcan-quadpod

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:15:13 GMT

Indiana Linuxfest and the CATCAN quadpod

I was at Indiana Linuxfest this weekend. A couple of BeagleBoard-xMs were raffled off in support of the conference and it seemed a lot of people were interested. I gave a brief talk about the BeagleBoard project, Mark Yoder from Rose-Hulman and his students gave hands-on training to those interested in the Hackerspace Village and we had a BeagleBoard.org table for part of Saturday.

On Friday before I left for the show, I got a package from CATCAN in Taiwan containing two BeagleBoard-based robots and not much else; certainly nothing else I understood. I left the hexpod at home to make sure it wasn't damaged and took the quadpod with me. Sitting at the table, a group gathered and we figured out what we thought was the right way to connect the battery. The first thing we noticed was this ominous shrill after applying power. As we sat nervously wondering what was going to happen when we applied power, one person sitting at the Linux in the Ham Shack table noted a resemblance of the bot to the evil metal spiders in Dr. Who.

We decided that the shrill was likely the fans in the servo motors. You can block it out after a while, but it is loud and frightening. There was some concern that this meant that the servos were under strain, especially given that the motors were all moving themselves in addition to the legs, but I'm pretty sure we ruled that out and it really is the fans.

Knowing from the CATCAN and BeagleBoard.tw websites that this bot was running Android, a random group of us sitting around the table decided to hook up a serial port and tried to figure out what made the bot move. Being Android without any additional GNU utilities in the file system, the shell can be a bit frustrating. We couldn't hit backspace or perform tab completion. However, obvious commands, like 'ls', 'cd' and 'cat' are there so we could go about our exploring.

One of the first files we found was a log in /data/dontpanic. We found that quite reassuring. Eventually we found /system/etc/init.hexapod.sh and the fact that it pointed to executing /data/test-long-time-hexapod. Sure enough, running that executable sent our bot back through its motions. Running it from the shell gave us a printout of 13 different numerical values--the same number of motors on the bot. Eventually, I'll need to figure out how to recharge this bot--unless I have somehow underestimated its capabilities. I'm still a bit away from figuring out how to give it my own directions, but I think I have a start now--thanks to the attendees of Indiana Linuxfest!

It wasn't all games on the show floor, I also enjoyed a few of the talks. I especially enjoyed the presentation on Open Hardware by Joshua Burton. I am anxious to figure out what I can do with a Bug or BeagleBoard and the realtime sensor data aggregator Panchube. Joshua also introduced me to the work of Rodney Brooks who, among other interesting things, contributes to Edge.

I also picked up a bit I didn't realize in the Ubuntu for ARM presentation by David Mandella. One thing that surprised me is that the 10.04 release for ARM isn't considered "LTS" or long term supported. David predicts that the 12.04 is likely to be the first LTS release for ARM. With the Linaro work on the device tree and lots of OMAP/BeagleBoard patches being accepted into the mainline Linux kernel, I expect that to be a stellar release for the BeagleBoard users out there.

The presentations were recorded, so hopefully I'll be able to provide an update with the recorded presentations.

Update (3/30/2011): Sog Yang gave me this link to find a charger: http://www.rc-airplanes-simplified.com/rc-battery-chargers.html

2011-03-28-beaglecast-2011-03-25-super-jumbo

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:13:43 GMT

BeagleCast 2011-03-25: Super Jumbo

The theme of today's show is "Super Jumbo" and your hosts are Jason Kridner, Gerald Coley and Jeffery Osier-Mixon.

To provide questions or suggestions:

Call +1-713-234-0535 or
visit the BeagleCast suggestions form

Links to the recordings

Headline news

Windows Compact 7
Two new Distributors in China -- ChipSee -- CATCAN

From the RSS feed

FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Clojure on The Beagleboard -- What is a closure vs. what is Clojure?
The 2.6.38 kernel is out
What Is CLFS? - File System - Check!
OpenEmbedded at CeBIT 2011 -- Should we still be excited about CES and CeBIT?
Face chasing BeagleBoard-based robot using a Kinect
How to build QT Framework 4.7.2 and OpenCV 2.2 for Beagleboard-xM -- How to build sample program for capturing image from camera (OpenCV and Qt)
SPI with Trainer-xM
Running CyanogenMod on BeagleBoard -- What is CyanogenMod? -- What is Rowboat?
NEWS IGEPv2 goes Open Hardware
Open Hardware Summit date announced for 2011? -- Looking for votes on a logo
Beagleboard: Power usage (current draw) for certain scenarios

Upcoming events

Community activity

GSoC Update -- BeagleBoard.org not a mentoring organization this year -- Still looking for mentors to volunteer to mentor in other projects -- Considering a smaller scale BeagleBoard Summer of Code
Always Innovating Announcement...Super Jumbo Beagle Buffet!

Upcoming

Khasim Syed Mohammed will be on next week to discuss the Android Rowboat project

2011-03-15-beaglecast-2011-03-14-beagleboard-xm

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:12:00 GMT

BeagleCast 2011-03-14: BeagleBoard-xM rev C

Today's hosts are Jason Kridner, Gerald Coley and Jeffery Osier-Mixon. Below are the show note links.

Links to the recordings

To provide questions or suggestions:

Call +1-713-234-0535 or
visit the BeagleCast suggestions form

From the RSS feed

Running a BeagleBoard off of Batteries
BeagleBoard cases with a MakerBot on Thingiverse
New SGX Graphics Driver Release 4.03.00.02 for Linux now available!
DVI-D to VGA converter for BeagleBoard-xM and issue to be fixed with the current BeagleBoardToys VGA adapter when using a BeagleBoard-xM
Kinect + BeagleBoard-xM (now need GLES)
Leverett and Wasson Win Texas Instruments Beagle Board Design Challenge
Toolchain, Check! Kernel, Check! - Cross Linux From Scratch

Twitter badge on the blog page

Upcoming events

Tweet @Jadon for free BeagleBoard hands-on training on March 26th at Indiana Linuxfest going on March 25-27
Linux Collaboration Summit on April 6-8
Embedded Linux Conference on April 11-13
Maker Faire Bay Area on May 21-22

BeagleBoard-xM Rev C HW and SW Update

New release candidate from Angstrom
FAT vs. ext2
boot.scr vs uEnv.txt change is not welcomed by all
Why won't old MLO and u-boot work with xM rev C?

Hot Topics on the BeagleBoard Google Group

Future topics and guests

The theme music for BeagleCast was created and provided by Alasdair Drake.

2011-03-08-beaglecast-2011-03-07-inaugural-podcast

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:10:30 GMT

BeagleCast 2011-03-07: The inaugural podcast

Today's hosts are Jason Kridner, Gerald Coley and Jeffery Osier-Mixon. Below are the show note links.

Links to the recordings

To provide questions or suggestions:

Call +1-713-234-0535 or
visit the BeagleCast suggestions form

Jeff and Yocto

SD card discussion

BeagleBoard and electronics hobbyists of all ages

News from the BeagleBoard.org RSS feed and elsewhere

The theme music for BeagleCast was created and provided by Alasdair Drake.

2011-02-28-using-perl-to-read-linux-events

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:08:21 GMT

Using Perl to read Linux events

For a simple demo that played a movie on a BeagleBoard, I wanted to add a simple mechanism to start the movie over again if the USER button was pressed.

To read a Linux input event, it is as simple as just performing a read. The only trick to this for me, however, is that I wanted the read to timeout. This was resolved by using the Perl alarm() function can catching the signal within an eval().

I've uploaded a gist of my example play_movie.pl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$ENV{'DISPLAY'} = ":0.0";
system("xhost +");
#system("totem --quit");
#system("nice -n -5 totem --fullscreen /home/root/playlist.xml &");
$cmdline_start = "nice -n -5 mplayer /home/root/*.mov &";
system($cmdline_start);

open(FILE, "/dev/input/event0");
binmode(FILE);
while(1)
{
eval
{
local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die("Alarm!\n") };
alarm(60*28); # 28 minutes
read(FILE, $buf, 16);
alarm(0);
};
if($@)
{
printf("Restarting due to timeout\n");
#system("totem --next");
system("killall -15 mplayer");
sleep(1);
system("killall -9 mplayer");
sleep(1);
system($cmdline_start);
}
else
{
($time1, $time2, $type, $code, $value) = unpack("iissi", $buf);
printf("%f %05d %05d 0x%08x\n", $time1+$time2/1000000, $type, $code, $value);
if($code == 276 && $value == 1) # USER button pressed
{
printf("Restarting due to USER button press\n");
#system("totem --next");
system("killall -15 mplayer");
sleep(1);
system("killall -9 mplayer");
sleep(1);
system($cmdline_start);
}
}
}

2011-01-27-vote-for-winner-in-tiut-beagleboard

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:51:04 GMT

Vote for the winner in the TI/UT BeagleBoard Design Challenge

BeagleBoard UT Design Challenge!


TI and UT Austin students step up to the challenge
What is the most inventive thing that can be done on the BeagleBoard today? Students from the University of Texas at Austin have stepped up to the challenge to find new and unique ways to push the envelope, inspired by the BeagleBoard to break barriers of innovation. Which BeagleBoard-based design would you like to own? Vote for your favorite today! Voting takes place between January 27th – February 10th. To cast your vote, please view projects at ti.com/beagleboardchallenge.
Think you can do better? Visit beagleboard.org to begin your own development.

2010-12-18-looking-for-college-intern-for-this

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:50:03 GMT

Looking for a college intern for this summer

In the past, for job postings and other commercial solicitations around the BeagleBoard I've recommended utilizing the BeagleBoard LinkedIn group because I never went deeper than the page that said that the job board was free. As I tried to list my own opening, I found that it was going to cost me almost $200. Given that, I welcome anyone contacting me with information on cheaper ways to do job listings and other commercial solicitations related to BeagleBoard activities.

What I'm inquiring about here is to fill an ARM microprocessor community development team internship position at Texas Instruments for summer 2011. You can find other job opportunities at TI with TI's CareerBuilder site (try keyword "Linux") or at http://careers.ti.com.

Job Description
Serve the needs of open source software developers utilizing TI ARM-based microprocessors by advocating within TI, consolidating and communicating valuable information internally and externally, and solving technical and organizational challenges including patches to fix open source software bugs or functional gaps in software like u-boot, Linux, applications within GNU/Linux distributions and tools to build software systems. Producing written, recorded and interactive presentation materials to train technical and semi-technical audiences on utilization and extension of open hardware platforms, such as the BeagleBoard, is required. A public reputation in open source software development is highly desirable. Some travel required. On-line communication skills are a must. This position is potentially very flexible in hours and location as long as mastery of communications with the core team can be demonstrated. Other potential benefits include flexibility in software projects and resources of perhaps the largest volume ARM microprocessor supplier in the industry.

Minimal Skills Required

On-line communications
Conflict resolution
C and C++ programming
Shell scripting
Demonstrated knowledge in Linux, operating system and build system concepts
Software revision control management
Oral and written communications in English (additional languages are desirable, especially Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Hindi)

Company Description
Texas Instruments (TI) is a global analog and digital semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company. In addition to analog technologies, digital signal processing (DSP) and microcontroller (MCU) semiconductors, TI designs and manufactures semiconductor solutions for analog and digital embedded and application processing.

Where to send your information
Please send all TI ARM microprocessor community development job related queries to me with "JOB" in the subject heading and to my jkridner account on beagleboard.org.

2010-09-09-byoes-at-esc-boston

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:48:29 GMT

BYOES at ESC Boston

Last chance to Register for BeagleBoard Workshop, Sept 20-21 at ESC Boston

The two-day embedding training at ESC Boston, with BeagleBoard.org and Microsoft, is rapidly approaching. Don’t miss your chance to learn how to develop with Windows Embedded Compact 7 on the BeagleBoard-xM, a community-driven single-board computer.

Register Now

September 20-21 at ESC Boston

Sessions are FREE to all paid conference attendees. BeagleBoards can be purchased for $150 during registration.

Participants will have access to BeagleBoard-xM and an SD card that contains the distributions for the classes as well as demos, tools and more.

To learn more about BeagleBoard-XM please visit us online.

Buy a BeagleBoard-xM Kit for only $150*

*Supply is limited.

2010-05-24-announcement-from-ti-of-beagleboard-xm

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:47:16 GMT

Announcement from TI of BeagleBoard-xM hands-on training at ESC Chicago

Get hands-on training with the new BeagleBoard-xM, June 7-8 at ESC Chicago

Attend ESC Chicago, June 7 & 8, and get hands-on interactive training with the new BeagleBoard-xM and talk with industry experts as they give you all of the hardware, boot, and kernel basics required to start development immediately. Attendees will learn how to engage with the BeagleBoard developer community, as well as how to obtain and utilize the source code projects most fundamental to the boards functionality.

For those actively developing there will be targeted classes available addressing:

Streaming media
Graphical user interfaces
Embedded Linux
Android development for non-handset designs

Register Now for ESC Chicago

Sessions and kits are FREE to registered BeagleBoard workshop attendees. Arrive early, as space and board availability is limited.

Come and experiment with the BeagleBoard-xM to see what new ideas it sparks in you.

For more information or to order a BeagleBoard, please visit www.beagleboard.org
Click here to register for BeagleBoard classes at ESC Chicago.

SHARE THIS EMAIL

The platform bar is a trademark of Texas Instruments. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

2010-05-12-six-beagleboardorg-gsoc-projects

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:45:37 GMT

Six BeagleBoard.org GSoC projects launching

BeagleBoard.org was approved to mentor six (6) students during this year's Google as they execute their projects. The students, projects, and mentors are:

Christopher Friedt's project is NEON Support for FFTW. He is being mentored by Mans Rullgard. I'm proposing Philip Balister as a co-mentor. Christopher attends C.A.U. Kiel, Germany. You can follow his work at http://perpetual-notion.blogspot.com/.
Tobias Arrskog's project is Optimizing rendering of XBMC and aiding the port to ARM. He is being mentored by Mike Zucchi. I'm proposing Mans Rullgard and Søren Steen Christensen to assist as co-mentors. Tobias attends Lunds University, LTH. Sweden.
Yaman Umuroglu's project is RPC-like POSIX wrappers for DSPEasy. Yaman is mentored by Katie Roberts-Hoffman. I'm proposing Laine Walker-Avina and Frank Walzer to assist as co-mentors. Yaman attends Middle East Technical University in Turkey.
Varun Jewalikar's project is a High level interface to exploit the Pulse Width Modulation abilities of the BeagleBoard. Varun is being mentored by Søren Steen Christensen. I'm proposing Cristina Murillo to assist as a co-mentor, but I'll be looking to see if we can add a co-mentor in India. Varun attends Delhi College of Engineering in India.
Nicolas Boichat's project is a USB sniffer on Beagle Board. Nicolas is being mentored by Hunyue Yau. I'm proposing Laine Walker-Avina and Frans Meulenbroeks to assist as co-mentors. Nicolas is finishing his Masters at EPFL (Switzerland).
Pramod Poudel's project is OpenCV DSP Acceleration. Pramod is being mentored by Leonardo Estevez. I'm proposing Katie Roberts-Hoffman and Luis Gustavo Lira to assist as co-mentors. Pramod attends University of Texas at Tyler, Texas, USA.

Thanks all for each of the roughly 60 proposals submitted to BeagleBoard.org!! I hope that you'll continue to participate and will consider submitting a proposal again next year. There's been a bit of a lag in the weekly sponsored projects. Boards should be in the GSoC students' hands this week, so I hope that you register your project there to still have the opportunity to get a board and execute your idea.

From the GSoC timeline, we are currently in the Community Bonding Period and very close to launching our projects:

Community Bonding Period:	Students get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects.

May 24:	Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.

Every student should be in contact with his/her mentor and co-mentors on a regular basis. This Monday, May 17th will be an all-hands meeting on #beagle at 14:00 UTC / 10AM EDT.

P.S. Mentors registered with GSoC, please contact me if I don't have the roles defined adequately--I don't mind adding additional co-mentors.

2010-04-07-ubuntu-image-writer-simplifies-getting

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:44:19 GMT

Ubuntu image writer simplifies getting start using the BeagleBoard

If you happen to have a 2GB SD card and you are thinking about trying the Angstrom demo that Koen has created but are scared of all the partitioning, formatting, and copying instructions you are finding on the web, then I hope I'm about to share some joy with you.

Ubuntu now distributes a tool for writing images onto USB sticks and SD cards for the purpose of evaluating Ubuntu. For those of us who use Linux on a daily basis, it serves largely the same purpose as the 'dd' command, but it runs in Windows and Mac OS X as well and has a GUI to help prompt you along the way. You can get the tool from:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles

Additionally, Koen, a maintainer for the Angstrom Distribution, has produced an image under his demo directory at:

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beagleboard/sd-images/2gb/

You'll still need a tool to uncompress the image (which is Bzip2 compressed), but the rest should be mostly self-explanatory. Hopefully other distributions will follow and more SD images will be available soon!

2010-03-18-beagleboardorg-in-google-summer-of-code

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:41:58 GMT

BeagleBoard.org in Google Summer of Code!

BeagleBoard.org has been listed as one of the accepted mentoring organizations for the Google Summer of Code 2010!!!

Over 365 organizations applied and we are among the 150 lucky Free and Open Source projects that were accepted. About 1,000 students are expected to have their project proposals accepted and Google will be providing US$5,000 to every student and US$500 to the mentoring organization for every successfully completed project. Texas Instruments will be providing BeagleBoard hardware through the BeagleBoard.org Sponsored Projects Program. TinCanTools has offered to provide Zippy boards to students using those in their projects.

Now is the time for mentors (people who would like to assist the students), to sign up on the GSoC2010 site and to update the ideas list. It is also the time for students to get familiar with the BeagleBoard.org project and community before applications begin being accepted on March 29, so be sure to hang out on the #gsoc and #beagle channels on irc.freenode.net.

Spread the good news and bring on the projects!!!

2009-12-14-several-omapbeagle-patches-land

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:39:07 GMT

Several OMAP/Beagle patches land upstream for Linux 2.6.33

I'm feeling pretty happy and excited today looking at the patches Linus Torvalds has recently merged into the Linux kernel mainline, such as a huge patch set from Tony Lindgren[1]. I'm particularly happy to see that DSS2 is there[2], so there shouldn't be any more confusion about what display driver to use on OMAP. The USB EHCI (host port) driver also finally got merged[5]. I also see a large number of power management patches being included.

Baseline support for several OMAP3 systems has also been included, including the Always Innovating Touch Book[3], AM3517 EVM[6], IGEPv2[7], CM-T35[8], OMAP3630 Zoom-3[9] and some updates for the OpenPandora[4]. Many of the OMAP3 development boards[10] and open development platforms are still not listed or easy to find in the Kconfig descriptions or board instance files.

A large number of bug fixes are also included.

It typically takes Linus 2-3 weeks to put together the first release candidate. After that, it typically takes 2-3 months to hammer out the bugs enough to make the the release. I'm looking forward to seeing great testing and contributions from the OMAP and BeagleBoard communities following the release of Linux 2.6.33-rc1!!

[1] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=9c3936cb694ffd559c80dc3eb75b61f769a39259
[2] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/arm/OMAP/DSS
[3] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=7a079cab4632265fc87ee483daf57879d5dd87f2
[4] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=8d88f7f70cca3fa6aabac287fccd40cebacb92d1
[5] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=54ab2b02ef6a454b4cca969f546d0dd43fec7308
[6] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=c625327e2f5a506a89563e14ed837c82fa61548f
[7] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=58e111621d402d41cb0cabae7c532d6194b7d943
[8] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=2886d128d8ff83af88b9cbe6dbf7f0d2bbee8d76
[9] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=5f35fbe8b8a05743fb9686e33194a126cd4273f6
[10] http://wiki.omap.com/index.php?title=OMAP3_Boards

2009-11-13-videos-of-intro-to-nov-17th-community

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:37:35 GMT

Videos of intro to Nov 17th community lightning talks and all the Aug 27th talks

See the full list of movies in the YouTube playlist. They include OMAP3-based open platforms like the Always Innovating Touch Book and the Oregon State ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) OSWALD, software frameworks running on OMAP3 like Gnome, Ubuntu, GStreamer, and QNX Neutrino, projects for open software defined radio (SDR), hardware projects to expand Beagle with LCDs and Ethernet, the DM355-based open camera project LeopardBoard.org, and new applications like the PicoFlamingo presentation system.

To see the slides or join the Nov 17th event, visit the wiki page. Enjoy!

2009-10-20-neon-training

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:34:09 GMT

NEON training

One of the most important aspects of the BeagleBoard.org community is that I'm mostly irrelevant. This means that I'm not a bottleneck to the important things that happen in the community. Unfortunately, it also means that I'm also not always in-the-loop on great events coming up that utilize the BeagleBoard and getting the word out to everyone on-time. Even so, I imagine a lot of you are going to the ARM Techcon3 and can make use of this nice litte bit of hands-on training using the BeagleBoard that I learned about from Ken Havens:

Turning the NEON Light On (Hands-on Workshop)
Wednesday, Oct 21 3:00pm - 4:30pm
TechMart: San Jose room

Friday, Oct 23 10:00am - 11:30am
TechMart: San Jose room

This seminar will be a hands-on introduction to NEON (the SIMD extension on Cortex-A processors) using Beagleboards running Ubuntu Linux. Attendees should be software engineers with some prior experience of armcc or gcc with an interest in low-level software optimizations.

2009-10-11-beagleboard-in-india-costs-3500-rupees

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:33:03 GMT

Beagleboard in India costs 3500 Rupees less ...

It is great to know that IDA systems will be shipping beagleboards in India for just Rs 8999 http://www.idasystems.net/beagle_board

In the past beagleboards were available for 12500 Rs, thanks for Gerald Coley, CircuitCo and IDA to work together in getting the cost down for India.

IDA systems is also announced as official distributor for Beagleboards http://beagleboard.org/buy. So any one in India can get local support for beagleboards and shipping should be fast with no lead times like before.

Good Luck to IDA and beagle board India users.

Regards,
Khasim

http://hawkboard.wordpress.com/
http://hawkboard.org/

2009-09-08-beagle-clinic-india-august-event-update

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:57:04 GMT

Beagle Clinic India : August Event - an update

Beagle Clinic India was held at Texas Instruments campus on 29th Aug 2009. More details about participants and the technology discussed please click the link below,
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/bangalore_user_meet#Beagle_Clinic_India
Few action items that were taken during the meet with probable solutions are given below :
- USB HOST hangs when multiple devices are connected – OE kernel
need to post this query to linux-omap-vger kernel mailing list and get the support
- SGX training online – NON angstrom distribution
Girish is helping on generating this training content should be available by early next week.
- LCD board for Beagle
No support yet.
- Operating frequency for 600Mhz
This is possible with PM brach, echo 5 > /sys/power/vdd1_lock
- Arrange one hands on Gstreamer and SGX sessions
In next beagle clinic we can take up one of these.
- A wiki page for QT to get it working on beagleboard
Need to find a voluteer for this.
I have taken other inputs on cleaning up the code.google.com/p/beagleboard, sorry due to multiple things was not able to do this, it should be done by end of next week.
Other topics discussed were
Leopard: to support mmc boot support in u-boot, will have to check this out.
Devkit (with answers) :
- USB Host not working : will be resolved by embest in next two months.
- Audio and board hang : embest will test can get back
- WinCE images not working: Give more details to embest
- Support : embest is considering supporting the team on beagle mailing list
- Camera module: Not available for customers
I will be in Pune for trainings on OMAP L , DM355 leopard and beagleboard on Sept 24th and Sept 25th, I am not sure if I can co-ordinate the beagle clinic this month also we long weekend holidays coming up next month, please suggest an alternat date for the same.
Next event :
- Hands on training with SGX modules
- Show case OMAP L 138 platform (ia)
- Get some one on call to discuss USB issues.
- If possible get gstreamer hands on training.
Kindly note this event is mainly meant to fix and solve issues we are facing with beagleboard, leopard board and other community platforms.

Thanks to attendees, lets keep this going to make things easier with beagle board.

Khasim
khasim@beagleboard.org

2009-09-03-beagle-board-at-esc-boston

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:55:59 GMT

Beagle Board at ESC Boston

The Beagle Board is back at ESC Boston! There will be a user's group meeting following the training sessions. There is a two-hour hands-on introduction and 3 hands-on classes featuring Android, DSP-accelerated audio/video, and use of the 3D graphics accelerator. Classes are free for ESC attendees with a $99 setup fee to get access to a lab station if you bring your own Beagle Board and $299 to get a new Beagle Board with the class.

For more information, visit http://beagleboard.org/esc.

2009-08-18-on-line-community-lightning-talks-and

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:55:02 GMT

On-line Community Lightning Talks and Hands-on Training

To complement its $99 world-wide Tech Days 2009 program, TI is putting on a new free, on-line event called eTech Days (http://www.ti.com/etechdays). It is a full day of interactivity and problem-solving on Thursday, August 27 2009.

As just one part of this event, open source community developers are invited to present on their on-going activities and drive discussion on the #beagle IRC channel on Freenode. For more information or to register a talking slot, visit the wiki information page at: http://wiki.omap.com/index.php/ETechDays_Community_Lightning_Talks.

Also, if you haven't already heard, the Beagle Board is back at ESC Boston! Sign up for hands-on training today at: http://esc-boston.techinsightsevents.com/ti_beagleboard.

2009-08-05-picoflamingo-wins-zoom-ii-for-work-in

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:53:02 GMT

PicoFlamingo wins a Zoom-II for work in the BeagleBoard.org Sponsored Projects Program

Futuristic and innovative ideas pay off in the form of a sweet device! Congrats to the PicoFlamingo team for thinking outside of the box with their BeagleBoard-based portable presentation system and winning a monthly prize in the Sponsored Projects Program for their excellent progress. They have been awarded the OMAP 3 based Zoom II Mobile Development Platform to help pioneer more of their inventions and can’t wait to see what they do to improve their Pink Egg.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to win a BeagleBoard and/or one of the monthly prizes – visit beagleboard.org/contest to learn how to submit ideas and keep the mailing list and your RSS feed up-to-date with your progress.

2009-06-11-successful-beagle-clinic-program-in

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:51:34 GMT

A successful Beagle Clinic program in India -May 2009

Hello all,

I am really sorry to update this after a while, was totally lost in my new lost cost board that is coming up with OMAP L 13x (ARM9 and Floating point DSP).

Beagle Clinic: A monthly Beagleboard consultation forum, an open event organized last Saturday of every month.

I was very happy to receive a very good set of beagle users across south India and a good set of faculty members from MSRAS.

Though I wanted to start on the problems and fix the same, it took us a while to train the new beagle board joinees, we concluded the session with beagle board bring up, rev c validation, OMAP3 TRM understanding and action plans.

I took a log of action items that we have to address,

Give info on DVI-Touch module with drivers - this looks expensive to go for in India.
Start workout sessions - take a problem and fix it
No another user group mailing list for India, mail to beagle discussion list with subject [BeagleClinic]
Discuss topics for the training on mailing list
Android specific training
Android event / training will be a paid event for future investment on boards and trainings.
Work with Cranes to enable - Buy board on the spot and accessories in next event.
Identify some distributors for beagle clones and buddies

Status of action items:

1 to 4 :- will be taken care.

5:- I want to schedule google android event in July as June will be difficult to manage, I think July 18th 2009 will be good.

6:- We have to fix a price for this event.

7:- Cranes is still short of boards, will still work with them, atleast they will be able to get accessories for the spot.

8:- I found embest boards bit useful and more complete for India market, http://www.armkits.com/Product/devkit8000.asp, I had initial talks with our China counterparts, I am also looking for Distributors in India who can purchase these boards in volume to reduce the shipping cost. We also have option to manufacture beagle boards in India, but again need to find a investor and distributor. If you happen to know one then let me know.

Frangline Jose and Abhishek Jacob have volunteered to train us on DSP Link, CE and Codec integration, I will have to schedule this activity, will happen in July 2nd or 3rd week.

The attendees and other details of the event are below. Thanks for all your support. Let's ensure that we fix problems and move forward with beagleboard.org.

There are lot of free board programs, I request students and hobbyists in India to leverage the
http://beagleboard.org/contest

Event details:

Details for May event
Date : May 30, 2009 (Saturday)
Time : 10.00 AM – 4.00 PM
Venue: MS Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies,
Gnanagangothri Campus, New B.E.L. Road, M.S.R. Nagar
Bangalore- 560 054

Attendees
Radha Krishna. S.
Raghavendran. N.
Prasad Rao
Vishal Bhoj [attended]
Amit Pundir [attended]
Subbu (irc: kozak)[attended]
Bharath S V
Madan Y C
Manjunath K R
Manjunath R V
Anand Shankar Kahaly [attended]
HarishKumar.V
Arun C.Giriyapur
Chandrakant N. Shet
Jomcy Pappachen
Rajan B
Sriram.N
Arindam Ghosh
S R Santhosh
R.Lakshmikanth
Vasanth Kumar B
Prasanth Unnikrishnan

Volunteers
Syed Mohammed Khasim (khasim@beagleboard.org, Viral Sachde ( viral at sachde dot com irc: virals ) , Jayaramudu, GirishBisto, Abhishek Jacob

In picture below, Yogesh Marathe - explaining DSP link usage to audience.

Thanks.

Khasim.

2009-04-09-beagleboard-design-contest-india

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:50:17 GMT

Beagleboard Design Contest INDIA Edition

Here is an exciting opportunity for students and professionals in India to showcase there talent on creating innovating applications with beagleboard.

ARM, Texas Instruments and Cranes have jointly come forward with this initiative called beagle board design contest with exciting prizes and recognitions like certificates, speaker slots, presentations, etc.

More information on this contest can be found here

http://www.cranessoftware.com/services/training/beagledesigncontest.html

Feel free to mail khasim@beagleboard.org for any queries or clarifications for this contest.

For any discussions please use beagle IRC and discussion list.

Good Luck

Khasim

2009-03-31-pair-of-edn-innovation-winners

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:48:45 GMT

A pair of EDN Innovation winners

The "OMAP35x Application Processor" and the "Beagle Board Embedded Linux Development Board" were both winners of tonight's EDN Innovation 2008 awards for their respective categories of "Microprocessors" and "Software/Embedded Tools". It was a great evening, with several great products recognized and it was nice to have our products among those. It was a great way to follow up a successful day of hands-on classes at the Embedded Systems Conference on the BeagleBoard. Too bad Boris wasn't there to accept the honors himself. :)

2009-03-26-rev-c-available-for-silicon-valley

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:47:38 GMT

Rev C available for Silicon Valley BeagleBoard User's Group meeting

Rev C2 is available now! Same part number at Digi-Key and the same price!

Twice the RAM (256MB, instead of 128MB)
High-speed-only dedicated-host USB port with standard A-type connector
LCD expansion header

All of the Rev B units sold out, so all new orders will be filled with Rev C units which are already in stock. The timing worked out perfectly with the last Rev B units being sold the day after the Rev C units arrived.

All of this is just-in-time for our Silicon Valley BeagleBoard Users' Group meeting being held immediately following the Embedded Systems Conference. We'll be enjoying a few beers and discussing the BeagleBoard.org sponsored project program. The meeting will be held in room B1 in the convention center right after the show closes at 4 PM, Thursday, April 2nd. Join us in the ESC Theater an hour earlier for a chance to win a BeagleBoard and a Tektronix scope. Hope to see you there!

2009-03-21-esc-build-your-own-embedded-system

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:46:16 GMT

ESC Build Your Own Embedded System online registration deadline 3/25

IMG_1038.CR2
Originally uploaded by jadonk

ESC BYOES online registration closes on 3/25. Register & get a new Rev C for the Beagle Board labs covering Android, 3D UIs, DSP-accelerated GStreamer, adding Bluetooth, and more. Only $199 to add the BYOES sessions to your ESC registration or just $595 for a special Beagle Board Days Pass.

See http://esc-sv09.techinsightsevents.com/byoes for details and to register.

2009-02-13-software-design-contest-2-in-3d

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:45:16 GMT

Software design contest #2 (in 3D)

Congratulations again to Antti Seppanen for his BeagleBot and Diego Dompe for his support of usbtty in the Beagle u-boot on winning Beagle Board Rev C boards in the last software design contest.

We were a bit slow setting the dates for this contest with the hope of getting some entries with 3D graphics enabled. Koen, a frequent contributor to BeagleBoard.org and maintainer of the Angstrom Distribution that includes Beagle Board support, has given us a demo to show that this is now possible for community members. In his demonstration, he's running OGRE3D, an open source graphics engine, with Wiimote control and projection on his ceiling with the TI Pico Projector development kit.

As one of the contest judges, Koen isn't eligible for the contest, but you can build upon his work by utilizing the information provided on the Beagle mailing list for configuring the 3.00.00.06 SGX drivers that are now available from TI for download.

The contest details are at http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/contest. To try to keep us on track of a contest per month, submissions must be complete, with all instructions and software, by Friday, February 27th. Good luck!

2008-12-23-software-design-contest-1

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:44:01 GMT

Software design contest #1

Shall we wrap-up the year with a BeagleBoard software design contest? The prize will be a Rev C1 BeagleBoard with a working USB EHCI port a couple months before they are broadly available.

Please don't be shy. I know there are a lot of interesting projects going on and you need to enter the contest to win!

More information can be found via the announcement on the mailing list. Reply if you have any questions. We are looking forward to your entries!

Enter soon. The first give-away will be the first week in January!

Blue ribbon acquired from WikiMedia.

2008-11-04-crossing-1000-mailing-list-subscribers

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:42:20 GMT

Crossing 1,000 mailing list subscribers

Last week was a very busy one for Beagle Boarders.

We had hundreds of people sign up for the 4 days of Beagle Board training at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. Class attendance for several sessions were at capacity and many of the classes were hands-on, including hands-on classes on 3D user interface creation and . Those attendees are now able to refer to the course materials for the hands-on classes on-line and all the people who signed up walked away from the event with Beagle Boards in hand. Many thanks to MontaVista, RidgeRun, Bill Gatliff, Special Computing, HY Research, Angstrom Distribution developers, and all of the others involved. It was an amazing event.

We also had great demos on the show floor, including BSquare's wireless demo running on the OMAP35x EVM, CalSoft's Flash demo running on the Beagle Board, and the Gumstix Overo running Angstrom. I also got my first chance to play with a DLP Pico Projector, which drew a nice crowd at the booth.

Additionally, those of you who have been waiting on documentation for the power management device, the technical reference manual (TRM) for the TPS65950 is now available on-line. This is a drop-in functionally equivalent replacement for the TWL4030 with some analog performance improvements, including to the on-chip USB PHY.

Almost forgot to mention that I got an article published regarding use of open source software in consumer electronics. Beyond using open source software in consumer electronics, I really believe there is a future for products like the Neuros OSD as people want more control and ownership over what their products can do.

Lastly, at the time of this writing, we are now only 10 people away from having 1,000 mailing list subscribers. Interest is overwhelming and continuing to grow. Thanks for making the Beagle Board such a success so far and helping to set the course of where it goes from here!

2008-09-11-beagle-at-ibc

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:40:57 GMT

Beagle at IBC

Lot's of activity going on around Beagle, but I've been lax on generating blog posts. In addition to the activity going on in preparation for ESC Boston, such as getting Sugar running, giving free trainings in India, and getting a new intern to watch the IRC logs, we also have our very own Roger Monk and Koen Kooi at IBC today. Stop by (IPTV zone IP322) if you want to take a look at the Beagle in action or simply hop on IRC and chat with them today while they are at the booth and logged into IRC using the Beagle board using nickname "beagle|ibc".

2008-07-22-lugradio-live-2008

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:39:13 GMT

LugRadio Live UK 2008

Lugradio live 2008
Originally uploaded by koenkooi

The BeagleBoard.org community last weekend (July 19/20) showcased the latest beagle developments and capabilities at the LugRadio Live 08 Event in the UK. Koen Kooi (Open Embedded) and Måns Rullgård (FFmpeg) teamed up to deliver some stunning NEON accelerated High Definition video demonstrations and the latest ARM Cortex-A8 OE built Angstrom Distribution. Other demos included High Definition 3D graphics acceleration leveraging Beagle's Imagination SGX core and some C64x+ DSP accelerated audio and video codecs. Lots of great interest at the show in the capabilities of a such a 'small but powerful platform', especially when enabled by such a creative and dynamic community.

Koen also provided a handful of nice pictures from the event.

Edit (2008-07-29)--Linux Outlaws did an interview:

2008-07-15-one-more-minor-apperance

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:37:48 GMT

One more minor apperance...

Beagle will also be making an afternoon appearance at BarCampHouston3.

2008-07-11-trade-show-news

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:35:41 GMT

Trade Show News

The Beagle Board will making a number of appearances over the next few weeks. Our very own Khasim Syed Mohammed will be at OSScamp July 19th in Bengaluru, India. In the UK, Koen Kooi and Måns Rullgård are looking to show off FFmpeg and Ångström at LugRadio Live on July 19-20.

A BeagleBoard fan group has shown up on Facebook. Currently, only the upcoming LinuxWorld Expo event in San Francisco August 4-7 is listed, but it is possible to RSVP to express interest in the BeagleBoard meet-up. I'm expecting for details on the meet-up to be provided shortly. I look forward to meeting you there!

2008-06-26-linuxtag-2008-winners

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:27:01 GMT

LinuxTag 2008 winners

And the winners are...

Sebastian Reschke
Harald Krippel
Ramiro Polla
Kate Alhola
Kees Jongenburger
Eugen Dischke
Davor Ocelic
Robert Bohme
Holger Wirtz
Jan Luebbe
Robert Schuster
Florian Boor

Each of the winners has now been contacted and we're in the process of shipping the boards. My apologies for each of you who applied and were not selected in the drawing. Perhaps, you can possibly take another shot at LugRadio Live UK 2008 July 19-20 or at the soon-to-be-planned big BeagleBoard.org meet-up at LinuxWorld Expo 2008 August 4-7 in San Francisco.

And, for those of you who attended our first meet-up at TIDC 2008 back in February, when we first started this mission, we haven't forgotten you! Feel free to express your desire for an early adopter board at 'revb-request' at beagleboard.org and that will let us know you aren't interested in waiting for the platform to mature any longer.

2008-05-30-little-things

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:25:10 GMT

The little things

It is the little things that make me happy sometimes, like Koen adding support for the Linux LED driver.

Several triggers are possible, such as accessing the NAND, MMC/SD, or just a regular heartbeat, as Koen has demonstrated. To list off the possible triggers for the LED driver:

root@beagleboard:~# cat /sys/class/leds/beagleboard\:\:led0/trigger
none nand-disk [mmc0] heartbeat timer

The above shows the MMC/SD access trigger enabled. Koen selected that by issuing the following command:

root@beagleboard:/sys/class/leds/beagleboard::led0# echo mmc0 > trigger

Get started adding your own drivers today by starting with the existing code and the kernel git tree. See http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard#Code (Thanks Dirk!) for references. The patch was discussed on the IRC channel here: http://www.beagleboard.org/irclogs/index.php?date=2008-05-30#T12:04:27.

Meanwhile, Sakoman and Khasim are continuing to to push ahead with the full NAND flash support. All these "little" activities really make me happy. :)

2008-05-29-beagle-board-at-linuxtag

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:22:11 GMT

Beagle Board at LinuxTag!

Texas Instruments is hosting the BeagleBoard.org booth at LinuxTag 2008 on May 28-31. You will see Beagle board live demos and discuss open source topics at the booth - Hall 7.2a Stand 122. On Friday, May 30th, there is a two hour workshop about the open source project in workshop room 2 at noon. More information on the event can be found at http://www.linuxtag.org/2008/en/home/welcome.html.

2008-05-14-lugradio-live-usa-2008-continued

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:20:21 GMT

LUGRadio Live USA 2008 (continued)

Continuing from last LUGRadio Live USA 2008 report, the recorded video, "The DSP is Open", is now online and the links are shared on the LUGRadio Live forums. I'm caught speaking about DSP, Open Source + TI devices, and the Beagle Board. The slides are on-line here, as they are a bit difficult to read on the video.

2008-05-09-distros-for-beagle

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:17:55 GMT

Distros for Beagle

Some may think of the Beagle Board as just another embedded eval board, but its capabilities lie much closer to those of a computer. And as a computer, Beagle needs an OS. Though we are already running Linux, and it’s fine, there’s still something missing. Beagle needs a distro.

On your PC you might use Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, or another distro out there, and Beagle needs one as well. Currently, Beagle is already running Angstrom (OE) (thanks Koen!), but why not get involved early and help Beagle run Ubuntu ARM (Mojo), Fedora ARM, Gentoo ARM, or even ARMedslack?

2008-05-07-beagle-patches-integrated-in-upstream

doug — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:15:36 GMT

Beagle patches integrated in upstream OMAP community Linux kernel

Thanks to Khasim Syed Mohammed, the recent OMAP community Linux kernel now contains basic patches for the Beagle board! For initial boot of Linux on Beagle you don't have to apply any additional patches, just download the community OMAP Linux kernel using git, do "make omap3_beagle_defconfig", and enjoy booting your new kernel on Beagle.

Khasim is just getting us started. Expect to see other community members contributing patches to provide additional functionality on the Beagle board soon.

BeagleBoard.org Blogs

diy-VT100 meets BeagleBone Black

Laser PCBs with LDGraphy

BeagleBone Blue challenge with FLIR Lepton

FLIR BeagleBone Blue challenge​

The Prizes

How It Works

The Rules

Music-Loving BeagleBone Blue

Introduction videos for Google Summer of Code 2017

BeagleWire software support by Patryk Mężydło

BeagleBone AVB Stack by indu mathi

BeagleBoot by Ravi Kumar Prasad

Sonic Anemometer by NAVEEN SAINI

Beaglebone PRU DMA by Maciej Sobkowski

PocketBone designed in KiCad

BeagleMAV 3D-printed Hexacopter

True Color 3D Printing with BeagleBone and MachineKit

Midwest RepRap Fest this weekend

New BeagleBone Debian images published

2017-03-19 BeagleBone Debian images published

2017-03-13-meet-beaglebone-blue

Meet BeagleBone® Blue. Robots. Fast.

Beagle Entertainment System Cartridge Console

2016-10-11-beaglebone-black-wireless-winners

BeagleBone Black Wireless winners from Maker Faire NY giveaway

2016-09-26-meet-beaglebone-black-wireless

Meet BeagleBone™ Black Wireless, the newest board in the BeagleBone™ family

Hackerboat

2008-04-04-source-released-for-beagle-board

Source released for the Beagle Board

2016-07-07-seeedstudio-beaglebone-green-wireless

Introducing SeeedStudio BeagleBone Greenby Christopher Rush and Jason Kridner

2016-03-09-sancloud-launches-indiegogo

SanCloud Launches Indiegogo campaign for SanCloud BeagleBone Enhancedby Jason Kridner and Marc Murphy

The SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced is ready for take-off.....

Baby Monitor using BeagleBone and MIMO Smart Baby Monitor sensor (part 1)

2015-11-23-musictech-challenge

Last week to join the Music Tech Design Challengeby Jason Kridner

2015-11-23-beaglebone-enhanced

SanCloud BeagleBone Enhancedby Marc Murphy - SanCloud

The Enhanced features are:

Technical Details:

Sign up for blog posts to be notified when the crowd funding campaign starts

NDVI cape V2.0

2015-10-14-beagleboard-x15

Announcing the new, powerful BeagleBoard-X15 open hardware computer for electronics innovators from BeagleBoard.org

2015-09-29-microsoft-azure-certified-for-iot

BeagleBoard.org collaborates with Microsoft to simplify Internet of Things (IoT) developmentby Jason Kridner

Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT provides quick-start confidence to BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Black and SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green with pre-tested software and hardware

2015-09-29-autodesk-ember

Ember opens the way to 3D printing

BeagleBone Green Hands-On: Lower Price, Same Horsepower

Connecting Erle Brain to APM Planner via MiniUSB

Introductory Video

2015-05-27-BeagleBone-Black-and-Android-Combine-in-Super-Cape-Attachment

BeagleBone Black and Android Combine in Super Cape Attachmentby Lauren Reed

Call for Makers is now Open!

2015-03-30-project-spotlight-machinekit-yocto

Project Spotlight: Emmelia - Yocto powered 3D Printer prototypeby Natalie Nelms

BeagleBones At MRRF

2015-02-05-raspberry-pi-2

How does BeagleBone Black compare to Raspberry Pi 2?by Jason Kridner

2015-02-09-time-for-gsoc

Time for another Google Summer of Codeby Jason Kridner

Improving initial experience for novice developers

Linux kernel related

ARM related

Co-processor related

High-level language support for Linux interfaces related

2015-01-28-thought-leadership-regarding-internet-things

Thought Leadership Regarding the Internet of Thingsby Jason Kridner

2015-01-28-declaring-the-drought-is-officially-over

Declaring the Drought is Officially Overby Jason Kridner

2014-12-14-year-of-the-beagle

The Year of the Beagleby Jason Kridner

2014-12-03-beaglebone-black-project-spotlight-open-qpcr

BeagleBone Black project spotlight: Open qPCRby Natalie Nelms

2014-11-25-project-spotlight-picknpaste

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:Pick n Paste

FLIR BeagleBone Blue challenge

Meet BeagleBone^® Blue. Robots. Fast.

Meet BeagleBone^™ Black Wireless, the newest board in the BeagleBone^™ family

Introducing SeeedStudio BeagleBone Green
by Christopher Rush and Jason Kridner

SanCloud Launches Indiegogo campaign for SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced
by Jason Kridner and Marc Murphy

Last week to join the Music Tech Design Challenge
by Jason Kridner

SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced
by Marc Murphy - SanCloud

The Enhanced features are:

BeagleBoard.org collaborates with Microsoft to simplify Internet of Things (IoT) development
by Jason Kridner

BeagleBone Black and Android Combine in Super Cape Attachment
by Lauren Reed

Project Spotlight: Emmelia - Yocto powered 3D Printer prototype
by Natalie Nelms

How does BeagleBone Black compare to Raspberry Pi 2?
by Jason Kridner

Time for another Google Summer of Code
by Jason Kridner

Thought Leadership Regarding the Internet of Things
by Jason Kridner

Declaring the Drought is Officially Over
by Jason Kridner

The Year of the Beagle
by Jason Kridner

BeagleBone Black project spotlight: Open qPCR
by Natalie Nelms

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Pick n Paste

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
BeagleBot

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
BeagleROV

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Implementing MIL-STD-1553 with three Beagles

BeagleBoard-xM project spotlight:
Sleep Tight

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Pocket NC P5

BeagleBone Black project spotlight:
Squink

BeagleBoard-xM project spotlight:
Fish on Wheels