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

Installing and building a custom kernel


This recipe will build the kernel and modules from scratch and copy them to a deploy or temporary directory.

Getting ready

Connect and power up your board via USB to your host computer; then, open a terminal window.

How to do it...

To perform this recipe, follow these steps:

  1. First, log in as the root user and then download the kernel file from Robert C. Nelson's git repo:

    $ sudo -i
    # git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/bb-kernel.git
    
  2. Navigate to the new directory that git created for you on your BBB with this command:

    # cd bb-kernel/
    
  3. At this point, you have two options for the kernel version you prefer to use: either v3.8.x or the latest experimental v3.14.x. You'll notice that the git command also generates a tmp directory for the build:

    • For the 3.8.x Wheezy branch (this version comes with full cape support) use this command:

      ~/bb-kernel# git checkout origin/am33x-v3.8 -b tmp
      
    • For the v3.14.x Jessie branch (which comes with better USB and Ethernet...