BeagleBoard

BeagleBoard - Low Cost, Fan-Less, Single-Board Computer

The BeagleBoard is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer based on low-power Texas Instruments processors featuring the ARM Cortex-A series core with all of the expandability of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise.

For some additional background, you can look at the BeagleBoard brief.

BeagleBoard
BeagleBoard-xM
BeagleBone
Associated Products

The USB-powered Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single board computer utilizing Texas Instruments’ OMAP3530 processor that unleashes laptop-like performance and expansion without the bulk, expense, or noise of typical desktop machines.

Beagle Board is based on an OMAP3530 application processor featuring an ARM® Cortex™-A8 running at up to 720MHz and delivering over 1,200 Dhrystone MIPS of performance via superscalar operation with highly accurate branch prediction and 256KB of L2 cache. Focal to Beagle Board experience is the high-speed USB 2.0 on-the-go (OTG) port that can be utilized to provide power to the board or to deliver highly flexible expansion. Standard PC peripherals can be connected to Beagle Board using the USB with a mini-A to standard-A cable adapter, DVI-D using an HDMI to DVI-D adapter, or through the MMC/SD/SDIO connector enabling a complete desktop experience.

To learn more about what can be done with Beagle Board, Digi-Key's OMAP3530 Beagle Board Product Training Module provides a discussion about Beagle Board's functionality and capabilities. Additional, information can be obtained through BeagleBoard.org where you can also get access to an active and growing development community.

Key Features:

Industry’s highest performance ARM
-720MHz ARM Cortex-A8 (>1GHz ARM11 MIPS)
- NEON and VFP extensions for additional acceleration

State of the art POWERVR™ graphics hardware
- 10 million polygons per second
- Advanced tile-based rendering

Industry leading C64x+ DSP & video acceleration
- Streaming, portable media player, and high-res video

Tiny 3” x 3” PCB that can fit in your pocket
- Yet support for 1280x1024 DVI-D monitors

Learn more about the BeagleBoard's Features
at BeagleBoard.org

Community-Based Activity:

Development tools
Programming: gcc for ARM Cortex-A8
Programming: free, non-commercial TI compiler for C64x+
Utilities: serial and USB boot-loader tools

Kernels and drivers
Reference Linux kernel for testing board hardware
USB: hubs, keyboards, mice, Ethernet, WiFi, web cameras, and more

Linux distributions
Angstrom (Open Embedded), Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and more

User mode applications
Productivity: AbiWord, Gnumeric, GIMP
Multimedia: FFmpeg, MythTV
Gaming: ScummVM, solitaire

These are just some examples of on-going community development projects on BeagleBoard.org

BeagleBoard-xM

BeagleBoard-xM breaks 1-GHz performance barrier for embedded design innovators and hobbyists!

BeagleBoard-xM delivers extra MIPS with 1-GHz ARM® Cortex™-A8 performance and extra memory with 512MB of low-power DDR RAM, enabling hobbyists, innovators and engineers to go beyond their current imagination and be inspired by the BeagleBoard.org community. Designed with the community inputs in mind, this open hardware design improves upon the laptop-like performance and expandability, while keeping at hand-held power levels. Direct connectivity is supported by the on-board four-port hub with 10/100 Ethernet, while maintaining a tiny 3.25” × 3.25” footprint.

As with previous BeagleBoard.org offerings, the BeagleBoard-xM is not intended to be a complete development environment, but rather a community-supported platform that can be used as the basis for building more complete development systems and as a target for community software baselines. For a complete development system, please consider the Sitara™ AM37x Evaluation Module from Texas Instruments. Add to cart!

Features:

Additional expansion headers provided
Boots from external media, such as microSD slot, serial port or USB port
More than 2,000 Dhrystone MIPS using the superscalar ARM Cortex™-A8
HD video capable C64x+™ DSP core
Open GL® ES 2.0 capable 2D/3D graphics accelerator
On-board Ethernet and four USB 2.0 ports that support low, full and high speeds
MMC/SD connector
DVI-D port
S-Video port
USB miniAB connector

Compatible with:

OMAP35x processor
DaVinci™ DM37x processor
Sitara AM37x processor

Specifications:

Hardware:

1-GHz super-scalar ARM Cortex™-A8
512-MB LPDDR RAM
High-speed USB 2.0 OTG port optionally powers the board
On-board four-port high-speed USB 2.0 hub with 10/100 Ethernet
DVI-D (digital computer monitors and HDTVs)
S-video (TV out)
Stereo audio out/in
High-capacity microSD slot and 4-GB microSD card
JTAG
Camera port

Software:

Validation and demonstration image from the Angstrom Distribution

Benefits:

Enables developers to directly add connected small camera modules for on-board image signal processing and external audio converters
Developers are easily able to boot new operating systems from external media without any dependencies on fixed non-volatile memory like NAND flash
Runs a full Linux operating system with desktop windows managers and office applications
Achieves photo-realistic, real-time pixel-shaded graphics for gaming and 3D user interface acceleration
Can be used for USB peripherals like keyboard, mouse, WiFi, Bluetooth, web cameras or additional USB hubs
Can add a digital computer monitor
Allows addition of an NTSC or PAL television
Can act as a PC peripheral, such as a virtual USB-to-serial adapter or storage device, even providing power to the Beagle Board-xM, or used to connect additional USB peripherals

Applications:

Web services
3-D gaming
3-D UI
Linux kernel and driver development
Boot loaders and firmware
UI framework
ARM® NEON codecs
Codec plug-ins for GStreamers
OpenGL® applications
OpenMAX™ IL applications
Ubuntu, Android, MeeGo, WinCE, QNX, Angstrom, Symbian, Debian, Gentoo and others
Home media centers
In-vehicle entertainment
Robotics
Web kiosks
Digital signage
And many more …!

BeagleBone

The BeagleBone is the low-cost, high-expansion hardware-hacker focused BeagleBoard. It is a bare-bones BeagleBoard that acts as a USB or Ethernet connected expansion companion for your current BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM or works stand-alone. The BeagleBone is small even by BeagleBoard standards and with the high-performance ARM capabilities you expect from a BeagleBoard, the BeagleBone brings full-featured Linux to places it has never gone before.

What is the BeagleBoard Bone capable of doing?

At over 1.5 billion Dhrystone operations per second and vector floating point arithmetic operations, the BeagleBone is capable of not just interfacing to all of your robotics motor drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras, but also running OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software to recognize the objects around your robot and the gestures you might make to control it. Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and displaying mutliple video formats utilizing a completely open source software stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards to create massive video walls. If what you are into is building 3D printers, then the BeagleBone has the extensive PWM capabilities, the on-chip Ethernet and the 3D rendering and manipulation capabilities all help you eliminate both your underpowered microcontroller-based controller board as well as that PC from your basement.

Key Features:

Shipped with 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution (validation and demonstration image) with node.js and Cloud9 IDE
Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor
Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1" spacing
On-chip Ethernet, not off of USB
Easier to clone thanks to larger pitch on BGA devices (0.8mm vs. 0.4mm), no package-on-package memories, standard DDR2 vs. LPDDR, integrated USB PHYs and more.

Applications:

3D printers and industrial robotics
Autonomous robots and flying drones
Web servers and Internet-enabled kiosks
Home media centers and automation
In-vehicle entertainment and monitoring
Thin clients and digital signage
Development with Ubuntu, Android™, Open Embedded, Windows® Embedded, QNX, Symbian, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and more ...

Specifications:

>700-MHz superscalar ARM Cortex™-A8
256-MB DDR2 RAM
1-port USB 2.0 host
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
microSD slot and 2-GB microSD card
USB 2.0 flexible device port with ability to supply power
On-board USB-to-serial/JTAG over shared USB device port
3.3-V 2× 46-pin peripheral with multiplexed LCD signals and battery-control expansion headers
Board size: 3.4” × 2.1”

Associated Products

Additional hardware and software development options are available for the OMAP Applications Processors, including evaluation modules, development kits, and TI and third party application software. Digi-Key also offers the following parts found useful to extend or develop with the BeagleBoard: