The Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer based on Texas Instruments’ OMAP35x device family, with all of the expandability of today’s desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise.
And its tiny.
Its not available yet, but certainly looks interesting - and at a projected price of $150, definitely worth keeping an eye on.
It looks like this is available from Digikey now. Has anyone tried it out?
Yes, Digi-Key has them. I am going to get one in Jan, and have already completed the build of the development environment for it. I am also looking at the Gumstix Overo (also $149.00 like the BeagleBoard) now. I should have a development environment completed for it soon. Sparkfun is also carrying a very interesting development system that can run Linux, but it is fairly expensive (from my perspective) at $499.00.
8-Dale
Hey Dale, did you ever have a play with the BeagleBoard? I was considering getting one for a project.
Yes indeed, I have been working with the BeagleBoard for sometime now. What is your application? The BeagleBoard is a very capable, small, and low power platform for embedded Linux projects. I’m working on putting on on my robot as soon as I get it talking to an Arduino reliably.
8-Dale
How does it go on power? Thinking about turning this Hexapod (and a rover, and a helicopter, and and and) into an autonomous wifi hacker.
BeagleBoard is powered by 5VDC, either from a wallwart or other regulated supply. you do have to be careful to provide it regulated 5VDC or you could damage the board. Other than that, there isn’t really anything special about the power supply. There are several. You might want to investigate what expansion boards are available for BeagleBoard before you commit to any project with it. There will be level shifting that needs to be done to make it compatible with 3.3V or 5V sensors since the Beagle is 1.8V natively.
BTW, Lynxmotion sells a 5VDC @ 2.5Amp wallwart that is perfect for powering BeagleBoard, and in fact is what I am using right now for it. I’ve had it powering as many as 4 USB devices as well as BeagleBoard (a BeagleBoard-xM) itself with no problems at all - it’s been on 24/7 without failure.
8-Dale
Nice one. Have you tried running it off a battery pack at all?
As far as expansion modules go I’d only really need USB I think.
Not yet, but I have a couple ideas how to do it. One is to use some sort of regulator between a battery and the board.
The BeagleBoard-xM, which is what I have, has 4 USB ports and Ethernet on board. 
I’m working on code to have the BeagleBoard (Python) be able to give commands to and receive data back from an Arduino class board like the Botboarduino. So far, I can get communications started, but nothing else.
8-Dale
Awesome, sounds cool. I’d be interested to see how you get on with it.
The -xM board is what I was looking at too, so that I could have 1 or 2 Alfa wireless adapters plugged in to do packet injection for de-authing clients to capture WPA 4-way handshakes and whatnot.
I’m not ready to post code yet, but I will once I have the full command driven setup working. Since I don’t want to get into making a custom expansion board for Beagle (the right way to do this), the idea is to have serial communication (USB Serial) between Beagle and one or more Arduino compatible boards (Botboarduino, Botboarduino Mega Shield and Seeeduino Mega, and/or the farther off Botboarduino Mega). The Arduinos would take commands via UART link (USB) or I2C and return data results via the same means. Beagle code will be written in Python and of course Arduino code will be done in a combination of C/C++ and various Arduino library calls. This is all very much in the prototyping stage and subject to change without notice (as always).
The BeagleBoard-xM is the only way to go for this project IMO, since it already has a 4 port USB hub and Ethernet on board. You’ll most likely need at least a 5V @ 2.5 Amp (minimum) regulated supply to be sure you have enough current for the USB ports. One idea I have to power a Beagle from a battery pack is to get a breadboard power supply from SparkFun, don’t install the power and ground headers but instead run wires off that into a barrel plug to the Beagle. My only reservation about this is the size of the wires coming off the breadboard power supply - they aren’t going to be large enough for the required current draw.
I know 2.5A is about right for this, because I’ve had devices plugged into all four USB ports plus Ethernet in use and more, without problems running off the Lynxmotion 5V @ 2.5A power brick. In any case, some sort of regulator will be required between the battery and Beagle to be sure it doesn’t get more than 5VDC.
8-Dale
That sounds pretty sane to me. I’d be writing code on the Beagle in Python too. When I get to the stage of actually getting a BeagleBoard and starting doing some development I might ping you again with some questions and stuff if that’s cool!
Yeah I’ve looked at a few other SBC’s but most of them are kind of geared towards network appliances like wifi access points/routers/wireless IDS/etc.
The current draw could be a bit different with higher powered wireless devices, but I’m more interested in sensitivity than power so I would probably be cranking the TX power down a bit on the wifi cards anyway.
Welp, got my BB. Just installed an Ubuntu image onto it, will see how it goes! Very neat so far.
