Book Image

Programming the BeagleBone

By : Yogesh Chavan, Amit Pandurang Karpe
Book Image

Programming the BeagleBone

By: Yogesh Chavan, Amit Pandurang Karpe

Overview of this book

The whole world is moving from desktop computers to smartphones and embedded systems. We are moving towards utilizing Internet of Things (IoT). An exponential rise in the demand for embedded systems and programming in the last few years is driving programmers to use embedded development boards such as Beaglebone. BeagleBone is an ultra-small, cost-effective computer that comes with a powerful hardware. It runs a full-fledged Debian Linux OS and provides numerous electronics solutions. BeagleBone is open source and comes with an Ethernet port, which allows you to deploy IoT projects without any additions to the board. It provides plenty of GPIO, Anlaog pins, and UART, I2C, SPI pins which makes it the right choice to perform electronics projects. This gives you all the benefits of Linux kernel such as multitasking, multiusers, and extensive device driver support. This allows you to do programming in many languages including high-level languages such as JavaScript and Python. This book aims to exploit the hardware and software capabilities of BeagleBone to create real-life electronics and IoT applications quickly. It is divided into two parts. The first part covers JavaScript programs. The second part provides electronics projects and IoT applications in Python. First, you will learn to use BeagleBone as tool to write useful applications on embedded systems. Starting with the basics needed to set up BeagleBone and the Cloud9 IDE, this book covers interfacing with various electronics components via simple programs. The electronics theory related to these components is then explained in depth before you use them in a program. Finally, the book helps you create some real-life IoT applications.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Programming the BeagleBone
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
BeagleBone Capes
Index

BeagleBone GPIO map


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...