EBC Exercise 02 Out-of-the-Box, Bone

The BeagleBone can do many neat things right out of the box using just the USB cable and SD card that come with it. Install the SD card (not the one that says Linux SDK on it) and attach the Bone to a host computer via the USB cable. The little USB connector goes to the Beagle in the connector on the bottom of the board near the Ethernet connector. Connect the large end of the USB cable to a host computer. The host can be either Linux, Mac, or Windows (though if you are doing development, consider running Linux on the host.) I give instructions for each.

The Beagle, powered via the USB, will boot up. You should initially see two LEDs blinking, near the Ethernet connector. The one labeled 0 blinks a heartbeat pattern. LED 1 blinks when the SD card is being accessed. After about 30 seconds LED 1 will stop blinking.

Here are some of the things it can do.

Built in USB to serial adapter
The Beagle xM has a serial port connector on board, but the Bone doesn't. Instead you access the serial port through the USB connector.