BeagleBone has two expansion headers at both edges with 46 pins each. If you look carefully, you can see that headers are marked as P8
, P9
and pins 1
, 2
, 45
, and 46
are marked on the board. Not all extension pins are GPIOs. Some pins are reserved to deal with analog components. Some pins are power and ground pins. BeagleBone SRM and Schematic diagram give details of which extension pin is connected to which of the processor pin. Many sensors/components require an external power supply to operate. Power supply can be given to these sensors via power and ground pins. BeagleBone provides both 3.3 volts and 5 volts pins to power up sensors with that voltage level.
The AM335X processor has four banks of 32 GPIO pins each. Not all 128 pins are accessible. Some are used for a specific purpose like USER
LEDs. Please refer to the image below to see the list of GPIOs available on extension headers of BeagleBone Black. A total of 32 GPIO pins are available to users on BeagleBone...