BeagleBone: Expert Guides and Resources

BeagleBone is an exciting tiny board that brings your electronics and software projects to life. Its affordability and ease of use make it popular among hardware enthusiasts and programmers. The following articles help you get started using this powerful board.Preparing your BeagleBoneWhen your BeagleBone arrives, it comes in a box with everything you need.

The BeagleBone is an outstanding tool for so many programs because . . . well, it has pretty much everything. It operates at a very high frequency; it features all the most popular communications ports; it can be set to consume very little energy; it can be programmed in a wide array of programming languages. It isn’t an overstatement to say that the BeagleBone offers boundless possibilities in many areas, from fast-reacting systems and processing-heavy programs to low-consumption vehicles.

Capes are plug-in boards that you can plug on top of the BeagleBone computer to add extended capabilities to it in a simple manner. Capes give you quick access to some easy-to-use systems such as LCD screens, GPS modules, and motor controllers. Some of these are introduced here; if you’re interested in checking out the enormous list of capes, visit BeagleBoard: BeagleBone Capes.

In the Linux community the administrator of the system is called the superuser. For BeagleBone, root is the superuser and is used for privileged tasks, such as installing and updating software, messing around directories with restricted access, and controlling the BeagleBone’s input and output pins. You don’t need to log in as root, even when you’re not logged in as root, you run programming scripts and commands with root permission.

There are better ways to shut down and reboot your BeagleBone than simply unplugging it. Unceremoniously unplugging your BeagleBone is the equivalent of shutting down your computer by pressing the power button or even removing its power source, which sometimes leads to complications such as file corruption. To shut down your BeagleBone, simply type this command on the command line: debian@beaglebone:~$ sudo shutdown -h now You see the following information after you use the shutdown command: Broadcast message from root@beaglebone (pts/0) (Thu Jul 3 18:50:09 2014): The system is going down for system halt NOW!

Often, the best way to get acquainted with a new working platform, such as the BeagleBone, is to light up and turn off an LED on command. To do so, you set a GPIO (general purpose input/output) as output; you want to control the state of a component. Wiring the circuit for an LED First, you set up the circuitry.

When you first get your BeagleBone, you’ll find the board and a Mini USB cable inside the box. If you purchased an Original BeagleBone, you also get a 4GB microSD card. That’s everything you need to get started, along with your computer. There are two distinct versions of the BeagleBone: the Original BeagleBone and the BeagleBone Black.

When you know your way around the command line, downloading and installing new software on a computer or BeagleBone running the Linux OS is quite easy and straightforward. The software comes in what are called packages — software programs that can be downloaded from the Internet and installed simply by typing a command in the prompt.

For your BeagleBone, you should have a 4GB microSD card of at least Class 4 with an adapter. You have two options for writing the .img file to a microSD card: If your computer has an SD card slot, insert your microSD card into a microSD card adapter and connect it to your computer. If your computer doesn’t have an SD card slot, you need an external SD card writer.