BeaglePlay – A $99 Texas Instruments AM625 industrial SBC with plenty of communication and expansion options

The BeagleBoard.org Foundation has just launched their latest single board computer with the BeaglePlay SBC powered by a Texas Instruments AM625 Cortex-A53/M4/R5 processor with 16GB eMMC flash, 2GB DDR2, and a wide range of I/Os, wired and wireless communication options, and support for expansion module compatible with MikroBus, Grove, and Qwiic connectors.

Two wired Ethernet are offered, namely a typical Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, as well as a single-pair Ethernet RJ11 port limited to 10 Mbps but with a much longer range and power over data, and wireless connectivity includes dual-band WiFi 4, Bluetooth LE, and Sub-GHz. The board also features HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces and a MIPI CSI camera interface.

BeaglePlay specifications:

• SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM625 (AM6254) with
  • Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.4 GHz
  • Arm Cortex-M4F at up to 400 MHz
  • Arm Cortex-R5F
  • PowerVR Rogue 3D GPU supporting up to 2048×1080 @ 60fps, OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2
  • Programmable Real-Time Unit Subsystem – Dual-core PRUSS running at 333MHz
• System Memory –  2GB DDR4
• Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot
• Display
  • HDMI Type-A supporting up to Full-HD/1080p with 24-bit RGB
  • 40-pin OLDI (LVDS) display interface
• Camera  – 22-pin 4-Lane MIPI CSI camera connector
• Networking & Wireless
  • Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
  • 10Mbit single-pair Ethernet (SPE) and 5V/250mA power over data line (PoDL) with RJ11 jack
  • 2.4 GHz and 5.0GHz WiFi 4 via WiLink 8 WL1807 module
  • Bluetooth LE/Sub-GHz (802.15.4) via TI CC1352P7 M4+M0  MCU with BeagleConnect firmware
  • 4x U.FL antenna connectors
• USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and data, 1x USB Type-A port
• Expansion
  • MikroBus header for MikroElectronika Click sensors and actuators
  • Grove connector for Seeed Studio Grove modules
  • QWIIC Connect interface for SparkFun modules
• Debugging – 2x 10-pin JTAG TAG-CONNECT pads
• Misc – User button, Reset and Power buttons, Power LED, 5x user LEDs, RTC with coin cell battery backup
• Power Supply – 5V via USB-C port
• Dimensions – 82.5 x 80 mm
• Weight – 55.3 grams

The board ships with a Debian Linux image with a desktop environment pre-installed along with features such as Wi-Fi access point and BeagleConnect gateway functionality and the Texas Instruments CC1352P7 wireless microcontroller (MCU) can be programmed with the (Linux Foundation) Zephyr RTOS. Various examples, hardware and software documentation, and getting started instructions can be found on the documentation website.

The BeaglePlay can support a range of applications such as industrial Human Machine Interface (HMI), retail and POS automation, 3D point cloud systems, vision analytics, vehicle and drone infrastructure, medical equipment, smart buildings, Edge AI, web3 Distributed Infrastructure, and more.

We’ve written about other Texas Instruments AM623/AM625 hardware before such as Forlinx OK6254-C SBC, Toradex Verdin AM62 and Variscite VAR-SOM-AM62 system-on-modules, but those are typically for B2B customers and the BeaglePlay allows anybody with $99 to spare to experiment with the new Sitara processor, as well as various other chips from Texas Instruments. You’ll find the board for sale on Element14 ,Digi-Key, and Mouser. Further information may be found in the announcement and the product page.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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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