BeagleBone Black Primer
We will begin the course by walking around a BeagleBone Black. After examining the BeagleBone hardwareparticipants will load their BeagleBone with the latest Debian image. Once their BeagleBone Black is up and runningthe next task will be to setup an Eclipse-based cross compilation toolset that targets the BeagleBone Black's AM3358 Cortex-A8 processor. Our first BeagleBone Black application will verify our BeagleBone hardware and the Linux-based Open-Source cross compilation environment.
The BeagleBone Black supports a pair of 46-pin I/O expansion headers. This session is dedicated entirely to understanding how to manipulate the BeagleBone Black's GPIO subsystem. The C programming language coupled with the Eclipse-based cross compilation toolset will be used to create some GPIO example applications.
The BeagleBone Black was designed to interact with external devices in an IoT kind of way (fast and easy). To realize this interactionthe BeagleBone Black supports I2CSPI. USB Ethernet and Serial (UART) interfaces. Our mission today is to generate some C source code that will enable and exercise all the aforementioned bus interfaces.
The BeagleBone Black supports a pair of 32-bit PRUs (Programmable Real-Time Units) that run independently of the Cortex-A8 at 200MHz. To access the PRUsparticipants will install a PRU compilation toolsetwhich consists of TI's Code Composer Studio (CCS) and the PRU Software Support Package. The PRUs are intended to provide precise timing for applications that are based on Linuxwhich is not particularly good at executing precision timing events.
This course concludes by walking around a BeagleBone Black Wireless. Participants final mission will entail bringing up the BeagleBone Black Wireless Wi-Fi interface and communicating with other IoT devices. Along the way they will assign a new username and password to a BeagleBone Black Wireless device. Participants will also use built-in Linux tools to bestow upon their BeagleBone Black Wireless device its very own static IP address.
Fred Eady is the owner of EDTP Electronics Inc. and is the principal engineer at the Georgia branch of Ongoing Systems LLC. EDTP Electronics was established in 1988. In the meantime, Fred has written thousands of magazine articles. He has written for all of the major electronic magazines, including Radio Electronics, Electronics Now, Nuts and Volts, Servo, MicroComputer Journal, and Circuit Cellar. Fred has even done a few short feature articles for Design News. To date, he has authored four books and contributed to a fifth. He currently works as a PIC microcontroller consultant and is a Microchip Authorized Design Partner. Fred’s expertise also extends into the ARM community where he is a hardware and firmware design consultant. His customers include aerospace companies, machine shops, specialty startup companies, medical machine manufacturers, coin-operated device businesses, and various other research and development companies. He has a very close working relationship with Microchip Technology, the manufacturer of PIC microcontrollers, and has taught multiple Ethernet and WiFi classes at Microchip's annual Masters Conference.