Episode: 180
Title: HPR0180: Beagle Board
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0180/hpr0180.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 13:00:16

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It's Hacker Paul with the Gradio. We're singing the song to let you know that it's a time to start to show one Hacker Paul with the Gradio.
Hey! Welcome! Hi, I'm Mark Gellin, the low-tech mystic. And you?
Hey! Welcome! Hi, I'm Mark Gellin, the low-tech mystic. And you?
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computing systems, mainly focusing around the Beagle Board environment.
All the links that I talk about and everything will be available in the show notes for episode
180 at hackerpublicradio.org.
But everything will be also available through the main website, which is beagleboard.org.
You may have to dig around a little bit, but I'll have everything referenced in today's
episode, the links available under the show notes.
So either way, do your hearts content enjoy.
But the Beagle Board is a very small computing environment.
It's basically a 3-inch by 3-inch.
So I guess for the intelligent, that's a 3-inch squared PCB or motherboard, which basically
is a 600 megahertz processor computer capable of running OpenGL, running fancy pants graphics
and doing all kinds of cool stuff.
Wow, I'm really at a lack of words here for this episode.
This is really unlike myself.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bounce over to the promotional page of the Beagle
Board and play a little bit of their promotional stuff, because I think at this point they're
going to do a better job explaining this than I will.
So if you will, one moment while I patch that in.
Welcome to the old map 3530 Beagle Board Product Training Module.
The Beagle Board is a USB-powered embedded processor board that provides community-supported
low-power, high-performance ARM Cortex A8 base single-board computing.
This module will highlight the technical features, usage and benefits of the Beagle Board, show
where to find software that verifies its hardware functionality, and provide some recommended
peripherals to further complement the board.
The Beagle Board is a powerful single-board computer that performs at 1200-plus drystone
MIPS, yet it is only 3 inches square in size, and has low enough power consumption to be
powered by a USB connection.
With the available performance from the OMAP3 ARM Cortex A8 base processor, it is possible
to design a Linux-based application with web browsing or multimedia functionality
without a large development board that is typically needed.
Based on an OMAP3 3530 applications processor, the Beagle Board includes an imagination graphics
accelerator core, which can process up to 10 million polygons per second of graphics.
For HD and SD video encoding and decoding, the board contains a high-performance C64X
plus class DSP with video accelerators.
For memory the OMAP3 3530 processor has an integrated 128 megabytes of DDR memory, as
well as 256 megabytes of NAND flash memory.
The Beagle Board was designed to expand easily via popular USB and standard PC peripherals
to enable reuse of existing PC peripherals, DVID, S-Video, USB 2.0 high-speed OTG, SDMMC
slot for memory cards, stereo in and stereo out plugs for audio, and an RS-232 port are
included on the board.
For real-time debugging and emulation purposes, a Jaintake connection is present.
In the top right image, the Beagle Board is acting essentially like a desktop-based Linux
computer.
The Beagle Board is connected to a USB keyboard, USB mouse, USB ethernet network adapter, and
a DVID monitor.
It is running the angstrom operating system which was started by a small group of people
who worked on the open embedded, open zaros and open simpad projects to unify their
efforts to make a stable and user-friendly distribution for embedded devices like handhelds,
set top boxes, and network attached storage devices.
The B-Strum has already been ported to Beagle Board and is included as part of that distribution.
In the top left image, the Beagle Board is configured for software code development.
It is powered via USB connection and connected with a serial cable to the PC.
The developer is able to use a network connection over the USB for application development via
telnet, secure shell SSH, or similar networking tools.
For lower level developments, a null modem serial cable and board adapter are helpful to
view kernel-serial console outputs.
In the bottom center image, the Beagle Board is used in a custom implementation of a software-defined
radio SDR.
A complete SDR system is established using the OMAV DSP software, stereo outjack, and
a microphone to communicate over the air.
The USRP, universal software radio peripheral, is connected to the Beagle Board and used
for interfacing to different antennas for SDR.
Now we will highlight the benefits of the low-power consumption of the Beagle Board.
The board's low-power requirements eliminate the need of a noisy fan or heat sinks.
Low-power means USB cable power, such that you can take the Beagle Board with you on the
road with your laptop or a cell phone charger.
No additional power supplies are needed.
Beagle Board has comprehended the need for flexibility of channels for the processor to
boots to avoid any fission lockups.
Because boot code is in ROM, it is always there, even if the flash is erased.
So when attempting to modify some non-open devices other than Beagle Board, you may end
up making your device unable to boot without professional tools, and therefore becoming
as useful as a brick, thus the term bricking.
To solve this and overcome bricking, the Beagle Board user button allows a change in the boot
sequence, for example booting from USB instead of from NAND.
The USB 2.0 high-speed on-the-go OTG connection on the Beagle Board is very flexible and can
act as a device when connected to a PC via USB.
This can be used to provide power to Beagle Board and to emulate a network connection.
The ability to telnet into the board is available via the network connection emulation that
is loaded with an operating system, and can be used to perform software development without
the serial cable.
This is useful when the board is initialized with a working file system, or if a USB-based
loader is generated in the future.
As another scenario, Beagle Board can act as a host when connected to a USB hub, allowing
an almost endless array of USB peripherals expansion.
This will require a mini-A to standard A adapter cable.
The first thing to do once the Beagle Board arrives is to verify that the hardware is operating
correctly.
Only basic software is provided in the kit to demonstrate its features, but most of the
software is intended to be downloaded from or developed in conjunction with the technical
community.
At http colon slash slash beagleborg.org.
Link to the diagnostics code and step-by-step instructions.
At http colon slash slash beagleborg.org slash support.
Typical PC peripherals and connectors that are useful with the Beagle Board are available
from Digi-Key.
If USB power is not being used, an external power supply with a barrel connector is necessary.
Digi-Key's 5V T450-P5P-&D power supply meets the board's power needs and is suitable
for use.
For boot loading and boot console I-O, a no-motum serial cable, such as AE-9879-&D, may
be needed.
In HDMI to DVI-D cable, AE-10260-&D enables connection to digital monitors via DVI-D.
A USB hub, D8-70227-&D, is also useful when connecting multiple devices.
To get the most up-to-date information on hardware, please visit Beagle Board's hardware
and peripherals resources.
The Beagle Board has an open-source community that is full of emerging ideas, such as wearable
computers, Google Android ports, various Linux games, and a port of the open-source
OKL4 micro-curnal.
In summary, the Beagle Board is a USB-powered embedded processor board that provides community-supported
low-power, high-performance ARM Cortex-A-8, based single-board computing.
Beagle Board's website is a community of open-source developers and hobbyists that provide
unpaid support for users.
This openness allows sharing of code, keeps cost low, and enables more people to participate.
Support is also available online 24-7 to access fellow developers at http colon-slash-slash-beagleboard.org
For more information, please contact Digikey Technical Support at 1-800-858-3649 or by email
at text at digikey.com to place an order call 1-800- digikey or visit our website at www.digikey.com.
Alright, I think that summed it up much better than I perhaps way ever could.
I left the little in part and the little digikey kind of sound and add in just because it
was their little training module that I stole the audio from, and basically they're the
people that are selling it.
You can get the motherboard, which has the embedded ARM process for running at 600 megahertz.
It's got 128 megabytes of RAM, it costs $150, and this thing runs off two watts of power.
So what does that mean?
Basically, it means that a non-volt battery can power it for at least a couple hours.
So we're talking about a fairly powerful unit, at least as far as without a monitor and
all extra stuff attached to it.
It's a pretty powerful little computer that you can tote around in your pocket or like
they suggested, which I thought was pretty cool, the idea of wearables.
I'd like to throw in the idea of robotics, but all kinds of different ideas just kind of
spring to mind.
I'm not going to really ramble on anymore on this episode, but I just thought this was
a really cool subject and idea, just to throw out there, figured it would be a great episode
of HBR, let everybody just hear about this stuff and think about it.
At TheBegelboard.org website, they have also Beagleboard.org slash media, it's in the show
notes as well, but they've got a bunch of pictures, actually, they've got a Flickr group
and they've got a bunch of videos on YouTube.
So I know that they've done a Linux outlaw, has an interview with these guys as well as
I think they were at the log radio thing this year.
So whatever you guys that may be familiar with that, probably know a little bit more.
I don't know, I've been busy with school so now that I've just recently finished, I'm
just now starting to catch up on all the podcasts and stuff, been way behind.
So this may be old news if so, I apologize and if not, I hope you enjoyed either way.
Hey, maybe you enjoyed.
But regardless there will be somebody here different tomorrow to bring you another wonderful
and hopefully exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Thanks for tuning in, we'll see you tomorrow.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio, HBR is sponsored by Thero.net, so head
on over to VARO.nc for all of the team.