Book Image

BeagleBone Black Cookbook

Book Image

BeagleBone Black Cookbook

Overview of this book

There are many single-board controllers and computers such as Arduino, Udoo, or Raspberry Pi, which can be used to create electronic prototypes on circuit boards. However, when it comes to creating more advanced projects, BeagleBone Black provides a sophisticated alternative. Mastering the BeagleBone Black enables you to combine it with sensors and LEDs, add buttons, and marry it to a variety of add-on boards. You can transform this tiny device into the brain for an embedded application or an endless variety of electronic inventions and prototypes. With dozens of how-tos, this book kicks off with the basic steps for setting up and running the BeagleBone Black for the first time, from connecting the necessary hardware and using the command line with Linux commands to installing new software and controlling your system remotely. Following these recipes, more advanced examples take you through scripting, debugging, and working with software source files, eventually working with the Linux kernel. Subsequently, you will learn how to exploit the board's real-time functions. We will then discover exciting methods for using sound and video with the system before marching forward into an exploration of recipes for building Internet of Things projects. Finally, the book finishes with a dramatic arc upward into outer space, when you explore ways to build projects for tracking and monitoring satellites.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
BeagleBone Black Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 3. Physical Computing Recipes Using JavaScript, the BoneScript Library, and Python

Now that you're armed to the…er, fingertips with your Linux commands and can happily control your BeagleBone Black remotely like a pro, it's time to get physical with the board. So, to begin with our exercises in physical computing, we're whipping up some essential recipes on the following topics:

  • Controlling external LEDs

  • Using buttons – button press function

  • Using analog sensors

  • Variable resistance sensor – photocell

  • Using motors

Our programming language of choice will principally be JavaScript in tandem with BoneScript, which is a Node.js and browser-side library. We will also include or reference a few Python script analogues to broaden our skills with the hardware.