Beaglebone Black hardware
Most students have been introduced to either single-board microcontrollers or single-board computers in form of Arduino series or Raspberry PI, so with that in mind first look at the Beaglebone Black should not be so unfamiliar. At the first glance it bears resemblance to the Arduino with its pinout rails and big ethernet port that can be seen on figure 1. Of course not all Beaglebone Black boards are equipped with ethernet port since some of them have capability of achieving internet connection via WiFi.
One feature of Beaglebone Black platform is the possibility of extension by adding so called 'daughter' boards. Those boards are called capes and are used to broaden the pinout capacity of the board by attaching them to headers. Beagle platform is characterized also by its low power consumption. Lower baseline for power consumption is 1W when board is idling, while it reaches its top at 2,3W when boar is running at full capacity.
Figure 1: Top and bottom view of Beaglebone Black
Beaglebone Black utilises Texas Instruments Sitra AM335x 1GHz processor incorporated with DDR 512 Mb memory. Earlier we mentioned that Beaglebone can be compared with usual desktop computer. Everyday desktop computers are much more powerful than Beagle board, with that said power of the processor found on the board cannot be ruled out, since it has ability to run up to 1GHz in speed, thus performing 2 billion calculations and instructions. This component alone is reason why Beaglebone is so popular in use on robots and other high level engineering projects.
Beaglebone platform is often compared to other single-board Linux operated computers like Raspberry Pi. Area in which Beaglebone platform excels over others is in its I/O pinouts. General purpose pinouts give it an ability to have both analog and digital inputs and outputs, something that is not present on all single-board computers.
Figure 2: Headers with pin names and function description
Pinouts are making it possible for Beaglebone to connect itself to other passive components. On the figure 2 colored scheme is present where all pinouts are displayed graphically. By using coloring it is easier to notice which pinout serves which purpose. Note that most of these are multiplexed, meaning they have more functions than that shown on the figure. Before connecting passive components like LEDs and others it must be noted that Analog out pinouts give out voltage from 0 - 1,8V or from 0 - 3,3V depending on which pin we use. As a security precaution a circuit is provided to ensure that you do not draw current from the reference supply, which would mean that its voltage value could not be sustained.