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

Controlling external LEDs


In the last chapter, we looked at a quick blink recipe on how to control our on board LEDs. Now, the objective is to have an external LED on a breadboard blink. First, we will take a look at the circuit symbol of a basic LED so that we can recognize its proper usage, as shown in the following diagram:

The typical symbol for a light-emitting diode (LED)

In the following image, you will see what a real-life LED actually looks like. Not so straightforward as looking at the symbol, right?

Note

With LEDs, polarity matters to have a working circuit. Pay attention to the fact that the anode is the longer end, whereas the cathode is the shorter end. Although mixing them up will not cause any damage, the circuit will not work.

Getting ready

You'll need the following items to supplement your now happily perking BBB:

  • LED: Just a plain vanilla, inexpensive LED is fine; this is the type you'll find for pennies at your local hobby store or online. You may already have a bunch in your...