So far, if you wanted to add wireless connectivity to BeagleBone Black or BeagleBone Green, you’d either use a USB dongle, or a wireless CAPE, but Neuromeka, a Korean company has recently launched BeagleBone Air “IoT gateway” board, fully compatible with the two aforementioned boards (minus HDMI output), but adding on-board WiFi, Bluetooth LE, and Zigbee connectivity.
BeagleBone Air specifications:
- SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358BZCZ100 Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz with NEON + PowerVR SGX530 GPU
- System Memory – 512 MB DDR3L @ 800 MHz
- Storage – 4GB eMMC + micro SD slot
- USB
- HS USB 2.0 client port (micro USB)
- HS USB 2.0 host poty (USB type -A)
- HS USB 2.0 host port on expansion header
- Connectivity
- 10/100M Ethernet (RJ45)
- WiFi 802.11 b/g/n via Realtek RTL8188US with SMA connector for antenna
- Bluetooth 4.0 LE via TI CC2541 with SMA connector for antenna
- Zigbee via TI CC2531 with SMA connector for antenna
- Expansion Headers
- Beaglebone Black compatible connectors
- UART & I2C headers
- LED and Button headers
- UART0 via 6-pin header, UART2 via 4-pin header
- Debug Ports – Optional onboard 20-pin JTAG, serial header (6-pin), BLE and Zigbee debug pin
- Misc – Reset, boot, and power buttons
- Power Supply – 5VDC via 2-pin header
- Dimensions – 86.36 x 54.61 mm
BB-Air with enclosure, 3 WiFi antennas and power supply
The board runs Debian with Linux 3.18.3 kernel or higher, with all required drivers. The company also provides an “IoT SW platform” with a sensor domain manager, IGoT micro webserver, and Thing+ cloud support(optional), as well as a cross-compile development environment based on Eclipse that apparently only works with Windows. They also have an Android apps called “IGoT Smart apps”. More details can be found in the Wiki.
The development board, also called BB-Air, is sold as part of a kit with a DIY case, a micro USB to USB cable, three antennas, and a 5V/2A power adapter.
The board appears to be available now, but the only place I could see it for sale was on a Japanese website, where they offer the kit plus an extra CAPE for debugging for 11,000 Yen ($102.7 US). Neuromeka BB-Air product page does not provide much more extra information.
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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