This page last changed on Sep 11, 2012 by headley.

Evaluating Beaglebone as Gateway Node Hardware Candidate

Beaglebone Specs/Features

Processor AM3359 (ARM Cortex A8)
Instruction length 32 bit
Clock frequency (MHz) 500MHZ-USB Powered 720MHZ-DC Powered
RAM 256MB DDR2 400MHZ (128MB Optional)
FLASH None (256MB NAND Flash add-on board)
EEPROM 32K
Floating Point VFP
Input Voltage ?
Programmer HW ?
Programmer SW ?
Bootloader ?
PCB 3.4" x 2.1", 6-layer
weight 1.4 oz (39.68 grams)
Debug Support USB to Serial Adapter
On Board JTAG via USB
miniUSB connector
4 USER LEDs
Optional 20-pin CTI JTAG
Expansion Connectors Power 5V, 3.3V , VDD_ADC(1.8V)
3.3V I/O on all signals
McASP0, SPI1, I2C, GPIO(65)
LCD, GPMC, MMC1, MMC2
7 AIN(1.8V MAX)
4 Timers
3 Serial Ports
CAN0
EHRPWM(0,2)
XDMA Interrupt
Power button
Battery Charger
LED Backlight
Expansion Board ID (Up to 3 can be stacked)
microSD card Y
USB Single USB 2.0 type A host port
Dual USB hub on USB 2.0 type mini-A OTG device port
On-board USB-to-serial/JTAG over one shared USB device port
Storage-over-USB or Ethernet-over-USB on other USB device port
USART 5 (4 w/ RTS,CTS)
Ethernet 10/100
SPI Y
I2C 2
CAN Y
Digital IO 66 GPIO
ADC 8
DAC 0
PWM 8
High Resolution Outputs- up to 6 single ended.
ECAP PWM- 2 outputs
Timers 4
Watchdog N
RTC N
external interrupt Any GPIO can be used as an interrupt
and is limited to two interrupts per GPIO Bank
for a maximum of eight pins as interrupts.
vendor mouser, digikey
form factor custom 3.4"x2.1
cost USD $90
features ?
Build Environment OpenEmbedded, bitbake
C, C++ Y
Java jamVM, openJDK, cacao
Language support ?
Peripheral libraries ?
OS support Linux (Angstrom, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, ArchLinux)
Cost ?
debugger ?
IDE ?
Command line ?
User Support Angstrom user/devel mailing lists, no forum, web

Out of the box

  • What's in the box
  • Connect USB
  • http, ssh, cloud9
  • Serial (USB) console
  • Eject disk

Toolchain, Environment

  • VMWare
  • Ubuntu
  • Virtual Disk (SD Card)
  • Angstrom
  • Open Embedded, Bitbake

Configuration, Packages

Java VMs

Oracle SE Embedded
JamVM
OpenJDK

Java Environment

  • JAVA_HOME
  • gnu.io.rxtx.SerialPorts

RXTX

LCM

zeroMQ

Building

  • Build pre-defined image
  • Customize image build
    • add packages
    • configure kernel
  • Create disk image
  • Partition and format microSD/mmc card
  • Install disk image to SD Card
Document generated by Confluence on Feb 03, 2026 14:29