The BeagleBone is a low-cost, high-expansion hardware-hacker focused BeagleBoard. It is a bare-bones BeagleBoard that acts as a USB or Ethernet connected expansion companion for your current BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM or works stand-alone. The BeagleBone is smaller than the previous version of BeagleBoards (looks like the business of a credit card) and features TI Sitara™ AM3358 Cortex A8 processor clocked at 700Mhz. The BeagleBone is also able to run a full-featured Linux.
Here are the current hardware specifications:
- TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8 @ 700 MHz
- 256 MB DDR2 RAM
- Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″
- Shipped with 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
- Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
- Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1″ spacing
- On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
- Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.
Note that this version does not have video output. I’ve read somewhere another version with HDMI/DVI and/or LVDS or an expansion board will be available later. Finally, there will be no future version with video but instead it should use a daughterboard for direct video (See Jason Comment below). The price of the Beaglebone + daughterboard should still be cheaper than the Beagleboard.
It will start shipping end of November (at the same time as the Raspberry Pi Board), but you can already pre-order it.
Further details at available at http://beagleboard.org/bone. You can also read the official Texas Instruments Beaglebone press release.
There also appears to be some code available on gitorious: http://gitorious.org/rowboat/vendor-ti-beaglebone.
Linux EZ Software SDK for Beaglebone will be available sometimes in November.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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