The new BeagleBone Black announced by Texas Instruments is a credit-card-sized Linux computer aimed at developers, makers, hobbyists and students, and is selling for just $45 – half the price of the original BeagleBone.
The pricing and specifications of the new board clearly position it as a competitor to the more established Raspberry Pi. Although the marketing material does not come out and say as much, it does include snippets like 'Everything you need to go from box to developing in less than 3,14 minutes' – 3,14 being equal to pi, of course.
It also points out that the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x processor onboard the BeagleBone Black boasts double the performance of ARM11-based solutions, and indeed, the Raspberry Pi is based on an ARM11 processor core.
BeagleBone Black is based on the 1 GHz Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor and includes 2 GB of onboard storage to run pre-loaded Linux software, as well as a USB cable to power the board. Featuring USB, Ethernet and HDMI interfaces, the board has the interfaces to connect to a wide variety of devices such as a mouse, keyboard or LCD display. It offers designers flexibility with expansion headers, including 65 digital I/Os, seven analog inputs and access to a variety of analog and digital peripherals.
The system comes pre-loaded with a Linux operating system and Cloud9 IDE to kickstart development and keep the microSD slot available for additional storage. The software is optimised to help new users explore embedded Linux and become proficient quickly. The ecosystem includes free access to documentation, example code and mainline kernel support for other software distributions like Ubuntu, Android and Fedora. BeagleBone Black’s kernel and driver flexibility allows users to easily integrate new hardware and software.
More than 30 plug-in boards, called ‘capes’ by the community, are compatible with BeagleBone Black, with more capes to come. Integrating BeagleBone Black with these capes – such as 3D printers, a DMX lighting controller, a Geiger counter, a telerobotic submarine, LCD touch screens and more – extends the functionality of the board and accelerates the development process.
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