Who this book is for

This is a book primarily for those of you who are new to microcontrollers, small board computing, and physical computing. Although we will get into some relatively advanced examples, the vast majority of our book's recipes are for the aspiring maker, casual programmer, and budding engineer or tinkerer who has wondered how to get started on a full-blown microcomputing Linux system.

You might find some things in here that you could have found in some form on the Web. As we are dealing with open source tools and technology, this is inevitable. However, what we found when trying to learn about using BeagleBone Black for the first time was that although we could find some answers, it is always a struggle to get to an answer quickly.

As we proceed, our intention is to do our best to give you clear and simple introductions to concepts. So, for example, if you already know your way around things such as i2c, sysfs, and GPIO pins and know how to write custom functions in Python, you may find this book a bit too slow.

Given the speed of changes in the small board computing sector, many online tutorials are quickly aging out or just too advanced for a beginner. Thus, we believe that there is a dearth on the market of good, "easy-to-succeed" introductory books and material on BeagleBone Black.

Furthermore, unlike Raspberry Pi, which is surrounded by warm and fuzzy support forums, the BeagleBone community forum is comparatively sparse. Worse, it is often intimidating and unwelcoming to a new user. Our intention is to be light-hearted, fun, and inviting for a first-time user.