The BeagleBoard is a low-power

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstrat ...

produced by

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

in association with

Digi-Key Digi-Key is a privately held American company that distributes electronic components. Headquartered in Thief River Falls in the U.S. state of Minnesota, the company is the fourth largest electronic component distributor in North America and the ...

and Newark element14. The BeagleBoard was also designed with

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

development in mind, and as a way of demonstrating the Texas Instrument's OMAP3530

system-on-a-chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

. The board was developed by a small team of engineers as an educational board that could be used in colleges around the world to teach open source hardware and software capabilities. It is also sold to the public under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

share-alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Cop ...

license. The board was designed using

Cadence In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ''cadentia'', "a falling") is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards.Don Michael Randel (199 ...

OrCAD for schematics and Cadence Allegro for PCB manufacturing; no simulation software was used.

Features

The BeagleBoard measures approximately 75 by 75 mm and has all the functionality of a basic computer. The OMAP3530 includes an

ARM Cortex This is a list of central processing units based on the ARM family of instruction sets designed by ARM Ltd. and third parties, sorted by version of the ARM instruction set, release and name. In 2005, ARM provided a summary of the numerous vendo ...

-A8

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

(which can run

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

, Minix,

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project e ...

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archi ...

, or

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

; a number of unofficial Android ports exist), a TMS320C64x+ DSP for accelerated video and audio decoding, and an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

to provide accelerated 2D and 3D rendering that supports

OpenGL ES 2.0 OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accele ...

. Video out is provided through separate

S-Video S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video ) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate chann ...

and

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controlle ...

connections. A single SD/ MMC card slot supporting SDIO, a

USB On-The-Go USB On-The-Go (USB OTG or just OTG) is a specification first used in late 2001 that allows USB devices, such as tablets or smartphones, to act as a host, allowing other USB devices, such as USB flash drives, digital cameras, mouse or keyboa ...

port, an

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

serial connection, a

JTAG JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group which codified it) is an industry standard for verifying designs and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture. JTAG implements standards for on-chip instrumentation in electronic design aut ...

connection, and two stereo 3.5 mm jacks for audio in/out are provided. Built-in storage and memory are provided through a

PoP Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ( ...

chip that includes 256 MB of

NAND flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use t ...

and 256 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

(128 MB on earlier models). The board uses up to 2 W of power and can be powered from the USB connector, or a separate 5 V power supply.

Rev. C4 specifications

* Package on package (PoP) SoC/Memory chip. ** Processor TI

OMAP The OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) family, developed by Texas Instruments, was a series of image/ video processors. They are proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia applications. OMAP devices generally ...

3530 SoC – 720 MHz

ARM Cortex-A8 The ARM Cortex-A8 is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. Compared to the ARM11, the Cortex-A8 is a dual-issue superscalar design, achieving roughly twice the instructions per cycle. The Cortex ...

core ** "HD capable" TMS320C64x+ core (520 MHz up to

720p 720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcas ...

@30 fps) ** Imagination Technologies

PowerVR PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL accel ...

SGX 2D/3D graphics processor supporting dual independent displays ** 256 MB LPDDR

** 256 MB NAND Flash memory * Peripheral connections ** DVI-D (HDMI connector chosen for size – maximum resolution is 1280 × 1024 – and it does not output digital audio) ** S-Video ** USB OTG (mini AB) ** 1 USB port ** SD/MMC card slot ** Stereo in and out jacks ** RS-232 port ** JTAG connector ** Power socket (5 V barrel connector type) * Development ** Boot code stored in ROM ** Boot from NAND memory, SD/MMC, USB, or serial ** Alternative boot source button. ** Has been demonstrated using Android, Angstrom Linux,

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both side ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

, Gentoo,

Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, ...

ARM,

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, s ...

for ARM and

Maemo Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to c ...

Linux distributions,

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determi ...

, the

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

operating system,

, QNX and a version of RISC OS 5 made available by

RISC OS Open RISC OS Open Ltd. (also referred to as ROOL) is a limited company engaged in computer software and IT consulting. It is managing the process of publishing the source code to RISC OS. Company founders include staff who formerly worked for Pace ...

BeagleBoard

Features

A modified version of the BeagleBoard called the BeagleBoard-xM started shipping on August 27, 2010. The BeagleBoard-xM measures in at 82.55 by 82.55 mm and has a faster CPU core (clocked at 1 GHz compared to the 720 MHz of the BeagleBoard), more RAM (512 MB compared to 256 MB), onboard

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

jack, and 4 port USB hub. The BeagleBoard-xM lacks the onboard NAND and therefore requires the OS and other data to be stored on a microSD card. The addition of the Camera port to the -xM provides a simple way of importing video via Leopard Board cameras.

Specifications

* Package on Package

POP Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ( ...

CPU/memory chip. ** Processor TI DM3730 Processor – 1 GHz

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...

Cortex-A8 core ** 'HD capable' TMS320C64x+ core (800 MHz up to

@30 fps) ** Imagination Technologies

SGX 2D/3D graphics processor supporting dual independent displays ** 512 MB LPDDR

** 4 GB microSD card supplied with the BeagleBoard-xM and loaded with The Angstrom Distribution * Peripheral connections ** DVI-D (HDMI connector chosen for size – maximum resolution is 1400 x 1050) ** S-Video ** USB OTG (mini AB) ** 4 USB ports ** Ethernet ** MicroSD/MMC card **Stereo in and out jacks ** RS-232 port ** JTAG connector ** Power socket (5 V barrel connector type) ** Camera port ** Expansion port * Development ** Boot code stored on the uSD card ** Boot from uSD/MMC only ** Alternative Boot source button. ** Has been demonstrated using Android, Angstrom Linux,

, Gentoo,

ARM and

Linux distributions,

, the

operating system, and

BeagleBone

Announced in the end of October 2011, the BeagleBone is a barebone development board with a

Sitara Sitara or Sithara may refer to: People * Sithara (actress) (born 1973), Indian actress * Sithara (singer) (born 1986), Indian singer * Sitara Devi (1920–2014), Indian dancer * Sitara (actress), Pakistani film actress * Sitara Hewitt, a British ...

ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 720 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, two 46-pin expansion connectors, on-chip Ethernet, a microSD slot, and a USB host port and multipurpose device port which includes low-level serial control and JTAG hardware debug connections, so no JTAG emulator is required. The BeagleBone was initially priced at US$89. A number of BeagleBone "Capes" have recently been released. These capes are expansion boards which can be stacked onto the BeagleBone Board (up to four at one time). BeagleBone capes include but are not limited to: * LCD touchscreen capes (7" and 3.5") * DVI-D cape * Breakout cape *

Breadboard A breadboard, solderless breadboard, or protoboard is a construction base used to build semi-permanent prototypes of electronic circuits. Unlike a perfboard or stripboard, breadboards do not require soldering or destruction of tracks and are h ...

cape * CAN bus cape * RS-232 cape * Battery cape

BeagleBone Black

Launched on April 23, 2013, at a price of $45. Among other differences, it increases RAM to 512 MB, it increases the processor clock to 1 GHz, and it adds HDMI and 2 GB of

eMMC The MultiMediaCard, officially abbreviated as MMC, is a memory card standard used for solid-state storage. Unveiled in 1997 by SanDisk and Siemens, MMC is based on a surface-contact low pin-count serial interface using a single memory stack sub ...

flash memory. The BeagleBone Black also ships with

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

3.8, upgraded from the original BeagleBone's Linux kernel 3.2, allowing the BeagleBone Black to take advantage of

Direct Rendering Manager The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards. DRM exposes an API that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations ...

(DRM). BeagleBone Black Revision C (released in 2014) increased the size of the flash memory to 4 GB. This enables it to ship with

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

GNU/Linux installed. Previous revisions shipped with Ångström Linux.

BeagleBoard-X15

The BeagleBoard-X15 is based on the TI

AM5728 processor with two

ARM Cortex-A15 The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz. Overview ARM has claimed th ...

cores running at 1.5 GHz, two ARM Cortex-M4 cores running at 212 MHz and two TI C66x DSP cores running at 700 MHz. The processor provides

USB 3.0 USB 3.0, released in November 2008, is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices. Among other improvements, USB 3.0 adds the new transfer rate referred to as '' ...

support and has a

dual-core SGX544 GPU running at 532 MHz.

PocketBeagle

Launched in September 2017, PocketBeagle offers identical computing performance to BeagleBone Black in a physical form factor that offers over 50% reduction in size and 75% reduction in weight, along with over 40% cheaper purchase price (December 2018 MSRP US$25 vs. US$45 for BeagleBone Black). The miniaturization was made possible by using the Octavo Systems OSD3358-SM that shrinks all major subsystems of the BeagleBone Black into a single ceramic package attached using

ball grid array A ball grid array (BGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging (a chip carrier) used for integrated circuits. BGA packages are used to permanently mount devices such as microprocessors. A BGA can provide more interconnection pins than can be pu ...

. The advantages of the miniaturization come at the cost of removal of all built-in connectors except for a single micro USB port, the removal of on-board eMMC flash storage, and a reduction of header pins from 92 down to 72 due to space constraints, meaning that most capes will either not work at all or need heavy modifications to work with PocketBeagle. Just as the BeagleBone Black's

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...

(PCB) is cut to fit snugly in an

Altoids Altoids are a brand of mints, sold primarily in distinctive metal tins. The brand was created by the London-based Smith & Company in the 1780s, and became part of the Callard & Bowser company in the 19th century. Their advertising slogan is "The ...

mint tin, PocketBeagle's PCB is cut to fit snugly in an Altoids Smalls mint tin. Recommended use cases for PocketBeagle include embedded devices where size and weight considerations are most critical, such as quadcopter drones and other miniaturized robotics, along with handheld gaming applications.

Specifications

The following

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

are reported to have obtained support for the hardware used on the boards:

, Android (code named rowboat),

Void Linux Void Linux is an independent Linux distribution that uses the X Binary Package System (XBPS) package manager, which was designed and implemented from scratch, and the runit init system. Excluding binary kernel blobs, a base install is composed e ...

and

Ångström The angstromEntry "angstrom" in the Oxford online dictionary. Retrieved on 2019-03-02 from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/angstrom.Entry "angstrom" in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Retrieved on 2019-03-02 from https://www.m ...

. The board also supports other OSes such as

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is ava ...

, QNX,

MINIX 3 Minix 3 is a small, Unix-like operating system. It is published under a BSD-3-Clause license and is a successor project to the earlier versions, Minix 1 and 2. The project's main goal is for the system to be fault-tolerant by detecting and ...

, and

Windows Embedded Windows IoT, formerly Windows Embedded, is a family of operating systems from Microsoft designed for use in embedded systems. Microsoft currently has three different subfamilies of operating systems for embedded devices targeting a wide market ...

Optional expansion boards

* BeagleBoard Zippy – Feature expander daughter card for BeagleBoard * BeagleBoard Zippy2 – Second-generation Zippy. (UART, EEPROM, 100BASE-T, SD-Slot, RTC, I²C (5 V)) * BeagleTouch Display – Touchscreen 4.3" OLED panel with touchscreen, and drivers for Angstrom Linux built by Liquidware. * BeagleLCD2 Expansion Board – 4.3" wide aspect LCD panel + touchscreen with interface board. Developed by HY Research. * BeagleJuice – Lithium-ion battery pack for portability developed and built by Liquidware. * WLAN adapter – This additional expansion card enables wireless connectivity functionality for the BeagleBoard. * BeadaFrame – 7" TFT LCD display kit includes a touch panel and a plastic frame, by NAXING Electronics. * 4DLCD CAPE – 4.3", 480x272 resolution LCD cape with resistive touch or non-touch and seven push buttons * Vifff-024 – a very sensitive camera allowing capture of video stream at quarter moon illumination. Developed by ViSensi.org.

Optional enclosures

* Beagle Board RevC Clear Acrylic Case – Case for a BeagleBoard alone. (without Zippy2) * BeagleLCD2 Clear Acrylic Case – Case for BeagleBoard with BeagleLCD2

Tutorials and Technical Resources

BBB GPIO interactive map
– An interactive map of the GPIO of the BeagleBone Black
tinkernow.com
– DIY website largely based on BeagleBone, resources for setup, operating, and projects.

Clones

* IGEPv2 – a slightly larger board that includes more RAM, built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, a USB host, an Ethernet jack, and use microSD cards instead of regular SD cards. * ICETEK Mini Board (Chinese)

References

External links

Official website

BeagleBoard System Reference Manual

OMAP35x Applications Processors

Texas Instruments OMAP Developer Network
{{Single-board computer Embedded Linux Linux-based devices Texas Instruments hardware Single-board computers Open computers

Features

Rev. C4 specifications

BeagleBoard

Features

Specifications

BeagleBone

BeagleBone Black

BeagleBoard-X15

PocketBeagle

Specifications

Optional expansion boards

Optional enclosures

Tutorials and Technical Resources

Clones

See also

References

External links