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

Debugging


Reality check: stuff breaks, especially with software. And when your software is broken, it makes it really hard to get things done with your hardware. So, the truth of the matter is (you already know this if you're an experienced programmer) that most of your time when you create some shiny new software thing, a considerable amount of time is spent on fixing and debugging your code.

In Linux Land, GDB (GNU project debugger) rules the roost as the standard debug tool. It is the go to app that provides a window to what is happening in the guts of another program and allows you to saunter through the source code line by line when the program runs. Conveniently, it comes preloaded on the Debian distribution for your BBB.

GDB provides four key things needed for fast and efficient debugging:

  1. Starts your program and illuminates anything that may affect the program's behavior

  2. Stops your program on the specified conditions

  3. Investigates an error or anomaly and tells you what was happening at...