Category Archives: BeagleBone Black

LED Display

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LED display @ Maker Faire

LED display @ Maker Faire

Last year I mentioned a long term project I'm working on: A huge LED display built out of 32x32 LED RGB matrix modules driven by a BeagleBone Black, which could drive the display like a usual monitor using a framebuffer driver. After many months and just right before Maker Faire 2015 in Hanover I managed to bring the project in a presentable state. This article shall give an overview over the project. Continue reading →

U-Boot on BeagleBone Black

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Understanding the boot up mechanism of the BeagleBone Black is important to be able to modify it. As we later want to change the Linux Kernel itself we need to know how it is started by the BeagleBone.

The AM335x processor on the BeagleBone Black has many configurable options where it can boot from which are all documented in Chapter 26 of the AM335x ARM® Cortex™-A8 Microprocessors Technical Reference Manual. The BeagleBone Black provides by alternative boot sequences which are selectable by the boot switch (S2). Continue reading →

BeagleBone Black

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For my recent electronics projects I wanted something more powerful than the usual Atmel megaAVR or AVR XMEGA microcontrollers I used in the past. The obvious step upwards in performance is some embedded system running Linux. A few years ago I played a little bit with an ALIX.3D3 embedded board, but nowadays most people would start with a Raspberry Pi and I also used to have an early model of those as well. Even though the Raspberry Pi seems to be everywhere there is a better alternative in my view: The BeagleBone Black. The most obvious advantage of the the Raspberry Pi (even compared to the Model B) is the much high flexibility concerning I/O. Most important it provides with its general-purpose memory controller (GPMC) a high-bandwidth parallel memory interface which is ideal for a fast interconnection e.g. with FPGAs.
Continue reading →