BeagleBone Community



This page collects information about BeagleBoard.org's TI AM335x ARM-based BeagleBone board.

= Events =
 * ongoing 2009: Beagle Sponsored Project Program - add a cool project and get a free BeagleBoard to realize it!

= Description = The BeagleBone is a low-cost, high-expansion board from the BeagleBoard product line. It uses the TI AM3358/9 SoC based on an ARM Cortex-A8 processor core using the ARMv7-A architecture. It is similar in purpose to earlier BeagleBoards, and can be used either standalone or as a USB or Ethernet-connected expansion for a BeagleBoard or any other system. The BeagleBone is small even by BeagleBoard standards yet still provides much of the performance and capabilities of the larger BeagleBoards.

BeagleBone ships with a 4GB micro-SD card preloaded with the Angstrom ARM Linux distribution.

The board uses a TI TPS65217B PMIC to generate stable supply voltages regardless of input power variation. +5V DC power can be supplied to the BeagleBone through a barrel connector or from the mini-USB, both of which are located near the large RJ45 Ethernet connector.

The mini-USB type-A OTG/device client-mode socket is multi-functional. In addition to providing an alternative source of power, it gives access to an on-board front-end two-port USB client-side hub. (This is not related to the separate host-mode USB socket described later). One port of the hub goes directly to the USB0 port of the TI AM3358/9 SoC, while the other port connects to a dual-port FTDI FT2232H USB-to-serial converter to provide board-to-external-host serial communications and/or JTAG debugging. The BeagleBone's Linux serial console is available through this USB serial connection.

The SoC's USB0 connection to the front-end hub works in one of two modes which can be toggled at will at any time: it either presents the SD card as a mountable USB storage device to the host, or it provides an Ethernet-over-USB networking interface which yields a simple method of quick-start. The Ethernet-over-USB facility is additional to the BeagleBone's normal 10/100 Ethernet interface, which is directly implemented in the SoC rather than hanging off USB as in some other designs. Full IPv4 and IPv6 networking is provided by the supplied Linux system out of the box.

In addition to the USB OTG Device or client-mode facilities already described, BeagleBone also provides one host-mode USB type-A socket on the other end of the board. This is driven from the USB1 connection on the AM3358/9 SoC, and provides access to USB host peripherals such as mice, keyboards, storage, and wifi or Bluetooth dongles, or a USB hub for further expansion.

= Specifications =
 * Up to 720-MHz superscalar ARM Cortex-A8
 * 256-MB DDR2 RAM
 * 10/100 Ethernet RJ45 socket, IPv4 and IPv6 networking
 * MicroSD slot and 4GB microSD card supplied
 * Preloaded with Angstrom ARM Linux Distribution
 * Single USB 2.0 type A host port
 * Dual USB hub on USB 2.0 type mini-A OTG device port
 * On-board USB-to-serial/JTAG over one shared USB device port
 * Storage-over-USB or Ethernet-over-USB on other USB device port
 * Extensive I/O: 2 I2C, 5 UART, SPI, CAN, 66 GPIO, 8 PWM, 8 ADC
 * +5V DC power from barrel connector or USB device port
 * Two 46-pin 3.3-V peripheral headers with multiplexed LCD signals
 * Board size: 3.4" × 2.1" (86.4mm x 53.3mm) -- fits in an Altoid tin

= Expansion Boards and Accessories =

Capes

 * BeagleBone DVI-D cape
 * BeagleBone Breadboard cape
 * BeagleBone Breakout cape
 * Adafruit Proto Cape kit for BeagleBone
 * Spartan-3A FPGA cape for BeagleBone -- in development
 * Thinking Machines LCD-IO Expansion Cape -- in development

Expansions and Modules

 * Beaglebone.jpgFrame with BeagleBone companion board
 * Hardware Features:
 * 7" 800x480 TFT LCD screen
 * PWM Backlight control
 * Resistive touch panel
 * Plastic frame
 * 256MB Nand flash(K9F2G08)
 * RS232 serial ports(UART1 w/ CTS&RTS)
 * Stereo audio out
 * Micro-phone in
 * 6 x USER buttons
 * PWM Beeper
 * RTC with Battery(DS1302)


 * BeagleBone LCD7 cape and LCD display
 * 7" TFT LCD screen, resolution 800x480, 4-wire resistive touchscreen, rear mount for BeagleBone and capes.

Cases

 * Adafruit Bone Box - Enclosure for Beagle Bone
 * SK Pang Acrylic Cover for BeagleBone
 * Special Computing Bone Acrylic Case
 * canadaduane's 3D-printable BeagleBone Case design
 * NinjaBlock's 3D-printable Beaglebone front panel design
 * builttospec's laser-cut design for BeagleBone Enclosure with DVI Cape
 * Built to Spec BeagleBone Case Update

= BeagleBone Operating Systems = BeagleBone's default operating system is Angstrom, which ships with the board. This section provides basic information on Angstrom and other operating systems commonly used on BeagleBone.

Angstrom

 * Home site: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
 * Mailing lists: angstrom-distro-devel and angstrom-distro-users
 * IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#angstrom
 * Does not provide a forum, intentionally.
 * Uses Busybox, which has both pros and cons. Advantages include requiring less storage space and a smaller memory footprint for many common utilities, which also improves system startup time and performance.  The main disadvantages stem from those utilities not mirroring exactly their full-size counterparts.  This may be annoying for some, and may also break shell scripts that rely on standard functionality.
 * Uses connman for network connection management. No documentation is provided.
 * Does not include man(1) nor any man pages by default, nor debugging utilities like strace(1) and tcpdump(1) which can be helpful in getting started.

Debian

 * Home site: http://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort
 * Mailing list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/

Ubuntu

 * See BeagleBoardUbuntu
 * IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#ubuntu-arm

Fedora

 * See BeagleBoardFedora.
 * IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#fedora-arm

ArchLinux

 * Home site: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/beaglebone
 * Source repository: https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs
 * IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#archlinux-arm

Gentoo

 * Home site: http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/beaglebone/install.xml
 * IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/#gentoo-embedded

Sabayon

 * Home site: wiki.sabayon.org/Hitchhikers Guide to the BeagleBone

Buildroot

 * Home site: http://www.zoobab.com/beaglebone
 * Source repository: https://github.com/fhunleth/buildroot-beaglebone
 * The root filesystem is mounted read-only.
 * Almost everything is done as root.
 * There is no package manager. Buildroot manages package selection through make menuconfig.

Nerves Erlang/OTP

 * Home site: http://nerves-project.org/
 * Source repository: https://github.com/nerves-project/bbone-erlang-buildroot
 * Based on Buildroot (see above).

= Board recovery =
 * See BeagleBoardRecovery --- (*) Check applicability

= Software Development = Software development on the BeagleBone is normally no different to any other Linux platform, and typically varies with language and with the IDE used, if any. This section deals only with development issues that are specific to BeagleBone, or mostly so.

BeagleBone JTAG Debugging
= FAQ =

For BeagleBoard frequently asked questions (FAQ) see community FAQ and "official" BeagleBoard.org FAQ.

= Links =

Home page and Community

 * beagleboard.org -- home for BeagleBoard and BeagleBone products
 * irc://irc.freenode.net/#beagle -- official combined IRC channel
 * Google Groups forums/mailing list -- English, Japan, Brasil, Turkey
 * BeagleBoard and BeagleBone projects list
 * Use Google to search beagleboard.org (including IRC logs) using site:beagleboard.org 

Tutorials and Videos

 * BeagleBone: BeagleBoard-101 Intro -- slides (turn off Javascript for single page)
 * BeagleBone Intro, video by Jason Kridner, Texas Instruments
 * How-To: Get Started with the BeagleBone, video by Matt Richardson, MakeMagazine
 * The Beaglebone - Unboxing, Introduction Tutorial and First Example, video by Derek Molloy, DCU/EE
 * Beaglebone: C/C++ Programming Introduction for ARM Embedded Linux Development using Eclipse, video by Derek Molloy, DCU/EE
 * Beaglebone: GPIO Programming on ARM Embedded Linux, video by Derek Molloy, DCU/EE

Manuals and resources

 * BeagleBone System Reference Manual (rev. A3_1.0).
 * Texas Instruments - Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 Microprocessor overview.
 * ARM/ARMv7-AR Architecture -- ARM Cortex-A8 architecture overview
 * ARM Cortex-A8 Technical Reference Manual r2p1
 * ARM Cortex-A Development Platforms -- ARM page on Beagle boards
 * TI TPS65217 Power Management IC, TPS65217 PMIC datasheet
 * FTDI FT2232H Hi-Speed Dual USB UART/FIFO IC overview, FT2232H datasheet
 * Linux-USB Gadget API Framework and USB OTG, and kernel config -- Ethernet-over-USB

Errata
= Subpages = 