BeagleBone Black Wireless Board Gets WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1 LE, Drops Ethernet

The BeagleBone Black is still one of the most popular development boards around, but in a world going more and more wireless, it only comes with a wired Ethernet interface. Seeed Studio BeagleBone Green Wireless and Neuromeka BeagleBone Air already provided BeagleBone compatible boards with WiFi and Bluetooth LE, as well as Zigbee for the latter, but now BeagleBoard.org themselves have launched BeagleBone Black Wireless with WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1 LE based on Octavo Systems OSD3358 System-in-Package with Texas Instrument Sitara AM3358 processor, 512 MB RAM, TI LDO and PMIC, and many passive components. BeagleBone Black Wireless specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz with PowerVR SGX530 GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3L Storage – 4GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot USB – 1x mini USB client port for power & communication, 1x USB host port Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth […]

Samsung JerryScript is a Lightweight Open Source JavaScript Engine for the Internet of Things

In the old days, micro-controller programming was all done in assembly or C, but in recent years higher level languages, included interpreted ones such as Python and JavaScript, have made their ways into MCUs with projects such as MicroPython or Espruino (JS) often running on STMicro STM32 ARM Cortex M micro-controllers, but also other platforms such as ESP8266. As I browsed through the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2016 schedule, I discovered that Samsung worked on it own implementation of a JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things: JerryScript. It is a full implementation of ECMAScript 5.1 standard written in C that can run on micro-controllers with less than 64KB RAM, and less than 200KB storage (160KB footprint with ARM Thumb-2 compilation). JerryScript is comprised of two main components: Parser and Virtual Machine (VM), with the parser performing translation of input ECMAScript application into byte-code than is then executed by the Virtual […]

Linux 4.7 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linux 4.7 is out: So, after a slight delay due to my travels, I’m back, and 4.7 is out. Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn’t all that big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners. There’s a couple of network drivers that got a bit more loving. Appended is the shortlog since rc7 for people who care: it’s fairly spread out, with networking and some intel Kabylake GPU fixes being the most noticeable ones. But there’s random small noise spread all over. And obviously, this means that the merge window for 4.8 is open.Judging by the linux-next contents, that’s going to be a bigger release than the current one (4.7 really was fairly calm, I blame at least partly summer in the northern hemisphere). Linus Linux 4.6 brought USB 3.1 superspeed, OrangeFS distributed file system, 802.1AE MAC-level encryption (MACsec), and BATMAN V protocol support, improved […]

Google Research PRUDAQ is a 40MSPS ADC Data Acquisition (DAQ) Cape for BeagleBone Black & Green

Engineers at Google Research wanted to measure the strength of a carrier signals without having to use a bulky oscilloscope or DAQ (Data Acquisition) system,  so they looked into several makers boards to achieve this task, eventually decided to go with BeagleBone Black / Green, and created their own PRUDAQ cape capable of sampling 40 million samples per second, and open source it all. PRUDAQ cape specifications: Dual-channel simultaneously-sampled 10-bit ADC (Analog Devices AD9201) Up to 20MSPS per channel (40MSPS total) theoretical 0-2V input voltage range (DC coupled) 4:1 analog switches in front of each channel provide a total of 8 single-ended analog inputs. (See here for differential input) SMA jacks for direct access to the 2 ADC channels Flexible clock options: External input via SMA jack Internal on-board 10MHz oscillator Programmable clock from BeagleBone GPIO pins Powered via BeagleBone headers – no external power needed Fully exposed BeagleBone headers […]

Getting Started with Beaglebone Green Wireless Development Board

SeeedStudio introduced BeagleBone Green Wireless based on BeagleBone Green, but replacing the Ethernet port by a Wilink8 WiFi and Bluetooth module, and providing 4 USB ports in total. I’ve also ready taken some picture of the board, and Grove Base Cape to addition the company’s add-on boards via I2C, UART, analog, or digital interfaces. So today, I’ll report about my experience getting started with the board. First Boot of BeagleBone Green Wireless Since the board comes with a Debian image installed on the internal 4GB eMMC flash, checking out the board should be really easy. The Wiki may help, but for a first try to check the board is indeed working, you can simply connect it to a 5V power supply, or the USB port of your computer to port it up. I’m using a development machine running Ubuntu 14.04 with both Ethernet connected to my router, and a WiFi […]

$44.90 BeagleBone Green Wireless Board Adds 802.11n WiFi & Bluetooth 4.1 LE and More USB Ports

After BeagleBone Air, there’s now another BeagleBone Black derived board with WiFi and Bluetooth, as BeagleBone Green gets a wireless version with WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, and four USB ports. BeagleBone Green Wireless Specifications The Ethernet port is also gone, but most of the other specifications remain the same as seen from the comparison table below. BeagleBone Black BeagleBone Green BeagleBone Green Wireless SoC Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8 processor @ 1GHz with NEON, PowerVR SGX530 GPU, PRU… System Memory 512MB DDR3 RAM Storage 4GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot USB 1x USB client, 1x USB 2.0 host 1 USB client, 4x USB 2.0 host ports Network Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n & Bluetooth 4.1 LE Video Output HDMI N/A Expansion Headers 2×46 pin headers 2×46-pin headers and 2x Grove connectors Debugging 6-pin serial header and unpopulated 20-pin JTAG header Dimensions 86.3 x 53.4 cm Price […]

OSD3358 SiP Integrates TI Sitara AM3358 SoC, Memory, PMIC, LDO and Passive Components into a Single BGA System-in-Package

Octavo Systems has created a BeagleBone Black reference design that’s exactly like the original board, except for one detail: It’s based on the company’s OSD3358 system-in-package (SiP) that combine Texas Instruments AM3358 Cortex A8 processor with up to 1GB RAM, TI LDO and PMIC, and over 140 passive components into a single 400-ball BGA package. The only three other main components on the reference design are the eMMC flash, Ethernet transceiver and HDMI framer. Key specs of OSD3358 SiP: Texas Instruments AM335x (AM3358 or AM3352) Cortex A8 processor @ 1 GHz 256MB, 512 MB or 1GB DDR3 memory Texas Instruments TPS62217C PMIC Texas Instruments TL5209 LDO Over 140 passive components Package – 400 1.27mm pitch BGA – 27 x 27 mm package size Temperature Range – Base version: 0 to 85°C; Industrial version: -40° to 85° C Some of the advantages of a SiP package over using multiple chips include faster […]

BeagleBone Air is a BeagleBone Black & Green Compatible Development Board with WiFi, Bluetooth LE, and Zigbee Connectivity

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 […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC