The Beaglebone Black Primer

The BeagleBone Black Primer

The BeagleBone Black Primer Master BeagleBone Black: Today’s most powerful low-cost embedded development platform! You can do amazing things with BeagleBone Black. Get started in just five minutes: all you need is a USB cable and this easy, hands-on primer! Brian McLaughlin teaches you enough to be seriously dangerous. Start with the simplest embedded programming concepts. Explore BeagleBone Black’s capabilities, and learn all the essentials, from controlling I/O to establishing network connections. Then, step by step, master increasingly advanced techniques with the Cloud9 IDE and BoneScript...Integrate external hardware...Install Linux or Android...Use Cape expansion boards to do even more. Don’t just learn it: do it. This guide is packed with projects, from weather stations, to car computers, to a “capstone” project using Software Defined Radio to capture signals from local airspace and orbiting satellites! You won’t just put BeagleBone Black to work: you’ll start imagining great projects of your own. And then you’ll build them. Discover how BeagleBone Black works, and what it can do Get your BeagleBone Black—and get it working, fast Link your BeagleBone Black to the world, and link yourself to the global BeagleBone community Learn to read schematics and use them to connect hardware Prototype your projects with breadboards Extend BeagleBone Black with Capes Add sensors to capture and use data from the environment Use actuators to make things happen in the real world Make your BeagleBone Black recognize your face Learn from mistakes, and go beyond what you’ve already learned Brian McLaughlin is an engineer by profession and by hobby. Building on a solid foundation in software, he was first exposed to advanced hardware topics while working on the Hubble Space Telescope. After working for Lockheed Martin, he joined NASA, where he’s supported many of NASA’s most exciting missions. He holds a B.S. in computer science (North Carolina State University) and an M.S. in systems engineering (University of Maryland). He’s also written for GeekDad and is a member of the growing Maker community.

The BeagleBone Black Primer

Bad to the Bone

BeagleBone Black is a low-cost, open hardware computer uniquely suited to interact with sensors and actuators directly and over the Web. Introduced in April 2013 by BeagleBoard.org, a community of developers first established in early 2008, BeagleBone Black is used frequently to build vision-enabled robots, home automation systems, artistic lighting systems, and countless other do-it-yourself and professional projects. BeagleBone variants include the original BeagleBone and the newer BeagleBone Black, both hosting a powerful 32-bit, super-scalar ARM Cortex A8 processor capable of running numerous mobile and desktop-capable operating systems, typically variants of Linux including Debian, Android, and Ubuntu. Yet, BeagleBone is small enough to fit in a small mint tin box. The "Bone" may be used in a wide variety of projects from middle school science fair projects to senior design projects to first prototypes of very complex systems. Novice users may access the power of the Bone throughthe user-friendly BoneScript software, experienced through a Web browser in most major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, or the Linux operating systems. Seasoned users may take full advantage of the Bone's power using the underlying Linux-based operating system, a host of feature extension boards (Capes) and a wide variety of Linux community open source libraries. This book provides an introduction to this powerful computer and has been designed for a wide variety of users including the first time novice through the seasoned embedded system design professional. The book contains background theory on system operation coupled with many well-documented, illustrative examples. Examples for novice users are centered on motivational, fun robot projects while advanced projects follow the theme of assistive technology and image-processing applications.