Year of the Beagle

http://beagleboard.org/blog/2014-12-14-year-of-the-beagle/

by ChuckMcM • 12 years ago

69 48 12 years ago

ChuckMcM3• 12 years ago

I've got several Beaglebone Black boards and find them a wonderful way to drop a computer into something. My next challenge is to build a custom board with their design.

Fuzzwah• 12 years ago

The way outbound links are handled on that page is really strange....

technomancy• 12 years ago

I've been hugely impressed with what the BeagleBone offers; it's really a shame it frequently gets overshadowed by "that other board from the UK". Apart from just having a vastly superior array of I/O options (including analog in, which is really important for sensor arrays) the fact that the design is fully OSS is really encouraging. I hope the community around it continues to grow.

TD-Linux2• 12 years ago

However, the GPU on the beaglebone is much more closed and undocumented than the one on the Broadcom chip.

jszymborski• 12 years ago

It's really expensive though :( If they offered a slower version at a price comparable to "that other board from the UK" (starting to sound like Voldemort) then the community base might grow similarly

mrsteveman12• 12 years ago

I agree, I only have a Pi because it was free, I have a Beaglebone because I badly wanted one before they were even released for sale :D

Aside from all the I/O pin options, that USB client port is particularly valuable paired with the Linux USB Gadget drivers.

proee8• 12 years ago

"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"

This is talking about Arduino of course, and I do wish they would stop using the word "open-source" if they don't bother to document the hardware they "open."

Throwing a half-documented Eagle file over the wall doesn't count.

If they really want to open-source the design of the arduino, they'd publish an official Bill-of-Materials for the project.

Edit: They'd also include official gerber files

sswezey• 12 years ago

They're referring to the Raspberry Pi. The Broadcom chip on it is not open or documented.

The Arduino is from Italy.

proee8• 12 years ago

Ok, you're right. I've never had a problem with the Pi because they've never claimed to be "open source"

Narishma• 12 years ago

The GPU on the other hand (which is part of the chip) is much more documented on the Raspberry Pi than the Beagle Bone.

learc83• 12 years ago

They're talking about the Raspberry Pi not Arduino. Raspberry Pi has always said publicly that the whole thing was never likely to be open source.

proee8• 12 years ago

You're correct. I jumped the gun and pointed to the Arduino - which is claiming to be open source. I've never had an issue with the Pi because they've never claimed to be open source.

hugs• 12 years ago

I have a crazy theory: There is no such thing as open source hardware. It's a myth. If a project has any electronics, there's a closed bit in there somewhere. Even if there are published layout files, the chip is still closed. Can anyone fab their own chip? Same goes for BeagleBone, which drives demand for (closed) TI-based ARM chips.

proee8• 12 years ago

This is true, but given the Arduino does not publish Official gerber and BOM, there's zero chance to recreate the hardware without guessing/reverse engineering. The specs are not version controlled for public consumption.

So the arduino "platform" is not open in that you/I do not have an offical specification to work from.

delecti• 12 years ago

A person can't print out 3d models without a 3d printer. The models could still be said to be open source.

Or taken even further, a person without access to a hammer would have a very difficult time following blueprints for a house.

Open source is really just "given tools and knowledge not specific to this particular case, you can replicate everything we've done". For any sufficiently niche application, "tools and knowledge not specific to this particular case" starts to become an increasingly large hurdle, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as to call open source a myth with regards to hardware.

nly• 12 years ago

This is why software is great. If someone screws you on the hardware, you port to another platform.

jotux2• 12 years ago

Throwing a half-documented Eagle file over the wall doesn't count.

The eagle sch/brd files are the source.

If they really want to open-source the design of the arduino, they'd publish an official Bill-of-Materials for the project.

You can export the bom from the sch file in eagle with the bom.ulp script.

They'd also include official gerber files

And you can generate the gerbers from the brd files...

These arguments are ridiculous and are akin to saying, "this software project isn't open source because all they provide is a the source code and build scripts!"

proee8• 12 years ago

With all due respect, have you tried generating a BOM out of the "source" files? You can't because a huge portion of the parts don't contain the mfg. part numbers.

If they had provided all this info in the eagle files, then yes - it would be a valid file.

They conveniently left it out. I guarantee somewhere in the company they have a complete BOM for the arduino, but they certainly don't publish it on their website.

The only BOMs I've found have been through reverse engineer community efforts.

delinka• 12 years ago

Off-topic browser usability rant:

Web developers & designers: Please STOP messing around with how my browser works. In this case, I want to open a link in a new tab, so I Cmd-Click[0] only to have my request ignored with the new page in the current tab ... but then I do get a new tab with the original article loaded into it. This might be fine for your experimentation, but it's not fine to force your incompatible UX onto my browser.

Other things that I've seen lately that are detestable:

- prevent me from zooming on mobile

- similarly, covering your actual content with an ever-present menu or heading (and I can't zoom to get around it)

- change the operation of the "back" keyboard shortcut to navigate articles on your site rather than the actual history in my browser

There are other things that are annoying, too, but they all boil down to some web site developer deciding to repurpose my browser's UI to their site. Please stop.

[0] Google Chrome 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit) on OS X 10.10.1

TD-Linux2• 12 years ago

That's what's going on? I thought it was just a bug in Firefox Nightly or something.

BTW a normal click also does the thing of opening the new link in the current tab and spawning a new tab with the original page.

delluminatus• 12 years ago

It's for Google Analytics tracking of links. The links in the page use Javascript:

  <a onclick="goTracked(&quot;link-external&quot;, &quot;http://octopart.com/bb-bblk-000-circuitco+electronics-26478322&quot;);" class="external" href="#http://octopart.com/bb-bblk-000-circuitco+electronics-26478322" target="_blank">BeagleBone Black is readily available all over the world</a>

then the Javascript function in question:

  function goTracked(action, link) {
    ga('send', 'event', 'exit', action, link);
    setTimeout('document.location = "' + link + '"', 100);
  }

So, if you try to Cmd-Click a link to open it in a new tab (or middle-click, which is my preferred method), the target of the link is opened in a new tab. But the link's "href" target is just a fragment, so it opens the article in the new tab. 100 ms later, the current tab is redirected to the "actual" link target.

cpswan• 12 years ago

It would be even more successful if it was possible to actually buy the boards.

I got one early on, and I would have more, but every time I've looked since they've been out of stock. A big part of the RPi success story is that they figured out early on that supply chain would be a problem and got the right partners involved to deal with that.

ChuckMcM3• 12 years ago

So are you outside the US? I have bought all of mine from Digikey, they currently have 787 in stock (http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/BB-BBLK-000/BB-BBLK...) so presumably if I ordered today I'd have it in 3 days (priority mail)(Mouser has over 1200, Element 14/Farnell has eight thousand)

[1] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/CircuitCo/BB-BBLK-000/?q... [2] http://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/si...

mng2• 12 years ago

They were definitely out of stock this summer, when I was looking at updating my BB project to BBB.

HeyLaughingBoy• 12 years ago

Availability is much improved over just 6 months ago.

My beef is now that I've actually got one in hand, it's like pulling teeth to find documentation on addressing/using the GPIO ports. I can easily use them with the Node libraries, but where's the docs on setup/use of GPIO with the C runtime if I don't want to use Node?

tmuir• 12 years ago

I am confused by this article. I had always been under the impression that Beaglebones were not approved for use in commercial products. I'm almost positive that I've read that in their documentation. But here is the creator of the project happily pointing to companies using what I assume are off the shelf boards in their products.

What gives?

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

What sort of approval would you need to use COTS in a commercial product?

Do you mean this:

We do not encourage the use of the board that we manufacture under the BeagleBoard.org logo in commercial products. We are not able to schedule parts and arrange for production for orders that we cannot see. Meeting demand is difficult as a result.

mkramlich• 12 years ago

I once chose the BeagleBoard for a startup's product prototype. It had just the right hardware features, ran Linux, part price ok (esp since only needed 1-3 at most, on near term horizon), plus the "not tested/blessed for commercial public embedded projects" was not a showstopper for a demo prototype. If I had a similar need today I'd prob choose the RaspPi, due to combo of lower price and bigger community. But RaspPi had not been out back then.

sriram_sun2• 12 years ago

Working under pressure to build a prototype for a device, I ran into the BeagleBone around Dec. 2012. I was really impressed with the fact that they open sourced all details related to the board. TI has provided extensive documentation for the AM335x processors.

Sweet spot - I think TI hit the tinkerer sweet spot with the BeagleBone, which was smaller and less powerful than its predecessor, the Beagle Board. The open nature of the board itself adds considerable value as it can be used as a reference design.

Ease of modification - For my project, we just replaced the HDMI and audio connectors with an extra Ethernet and a few micro-USB connectors and rolled out our own custom board... all in the span of a few months.

Ease of use - They need some work here for the average tinkerer who might not be familiar with the Armstrong Linux distribution. However, that just worked perfectly for me. For anyone interested, the Open Embedded Core or the Yocto project would be better resources to look at. Debian and Arch have Beaglebone focused distributions too. I would recommend against developing code on the Beaglebone itself.

So for someone looking to create a customized "device" of any kind, this would be a great choice. Also, I sell myself out by the hour doing this kind of stuff :). I would be happy to help/consult with anyone if interested.

codehero• 12 years ago

USB is still problematic on Linux. In particular the musb is completely unstable when "babble" is detected. You have to use the right kind of USB hub (or modify the cable) to keep power from backfeeding into the BBB. It seems your experience is different from mine.

rstoner• 12 years ago

We've had the same experience on BBBs re: powering USB devices. Using a powered dlink hub helps to resolve it (of the 10+ brands we've tried).

sriram_sun2• 12 years ago

Initially we did have some problems. Most of it was due to not being able to source enough current. We haven't seen any issues so far. Thanks for reminding me. I'll keep an eye out for that.

kidgorgeous• 12 years ago

why couldn't the guy just mention Raspberry Pi in the article? Why did he have to refer to it as "that other board". Comments like this disturb me when I hear them coming from the hacker community, which is supposed to have a foundation of openness and selfless sacrifice. If something is considered a valuable asset to the community, give props where props are due. Don't say "that other board" just because you don't want to give Raspberry Pi any more market share. Market share and competition should have no place for discussion in the open source community.

Scramblejams• 12 years ago

I don't think he was seriously trying to conceal the competition -- everybody knows what he means (and has already bought an RPi if they were interested). I read it as a teasing form of friendly rivalry. And you can't go create a low-buck board designed to sell in the 6 or 7 figures without inevitably comparing yourself to the RPi. When it comes to getting hackery Linux computers into people's homes, the RPi is the gold standard, and comparisons are inevitable whether you're a competitive person or not.

mrsteveman12• 12 years ago

I absolutely love my beaglebone, aside from some issues with the Linux drivers for the USB host port, it's been very reliable and useful.

To date, I've used my beaglebone to

- stream live video of my baby kittens from the window well they were born in outdoors (their mom was a feral cat, I used the video stream to keep track of them until they could be rescued and brought inside)

- transparently encrypt USB drives using the client+host ports [1]

- use the onboard hardware RNG and some custom python[2] to supply entropy to other boxes on the local network

- use it as an offline environment to perform sensitive PGP and CA signing operations

And I'm toying with the idea of building some kind of open source network/USB connected hardware security module system with the BeagleBone as the reference platform to run it on.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713155

[2] https://github.com/infincia/netrng

bootload2• 12 years ago

"... I absolutely love my beaglebone, aside from some issues with the Linux drivers for the USB host port ..."

How did you go installing Linux? What distro? Have you got wifi working?

ChuckMcM3• 12 years ago

I grab the latest ubunutu of the elinux.org site, and Wifi works out of the box (with a generic Wifi USB device). You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and make sure that you auto wlan0 and provide WPA passwords and what not.

alexalex• 12 years ago

Thank you, Beagle!

And a big thank you to TI, for this project. I hope that if TI views their involvement in BeagleX as successful, they can extend what went right with this project into other product lines (open design files, reasonable pricing, accessible documentation, accessible IDEs/compilers, transparency with design decisions, and a true sense of community). My company has begun transitioning to Nordic for RF and it feels like dealing with a startup (Nordic) vs. an incumbent (TI).

The ability to run android on BBB is a wonderful advantage of the BBB vs RasPi. The Beaglebone was my introduction to exploring embedded android and it was perfect for it. The community is smaller than the RasPi but it is very strong. I hope there are more tools supporting the BBB as a point of entry into android.

ausjke• 12 years ago

Beagle owner here, I owned quite a few revisions.

You can stack up to 4 caps to make it a product quickly.

However I'd prefer a SODIMM module for volume production instead of the connectors used on BBB.

Year of the Beagle

Related Stories