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BeagleBoard
Replacement:DEV-09978. We won't be carrying this board any longer because we now carry the Beagleboard xM. This page is for reference only.
The original Beagle Board is an incredibly powerful single-board computer developed by Texas Instruments, featuring their OMAP3530 system on a chip. The board is supported by a large community and is designed with open-source development in mind.
The Beagle Board measures about 3x3" and has all the functionality of a basic computer. With its numerous expansion options, the Beagle Board can be used as the backbone for a large variety of projects. The OMAP3530 includes an HD-video capable TMS320C64x+ DSP for accelerated video and audio decoding, and an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable 2D/3D GPU. Video outputs can be provided by the on-board S-video or DVI-D (HDMI connector) outputs.
The board also includes an MMC+/SD/SDIO interface, USB 2.0, 3.5mm stereo audio in/out connectors, and RS-232 and JTAG connectors.
The board can consume up to 2W of power, which can be provided via USB or an external 5V source, via the on-board barrel jack. Because of the efficient power consumption, the board requires no additional cooling.
**Note: **We now carry the C4 revision of this board.
- 600MHz superscalar ARM Cortex A8 processor
- Over 1,200 Dhrystone MIPS
- Up to 10 million polygons per second graphics output
- HD-video capable C64x+ DSP core
- 256MB LPDDR RAM
- 256MB NAND Flash
- I2C, I2S, SPI, MMC/SD capabilities
- DVI-D and S-video video output
- JTAG
- SD/MMC+ socket
- 3.5mm stereo in/out
- USB 2.0 HS OTG
- RS-232 serial
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Customer Reviews
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Is it coming back or not?
:(
I've been waiting beagleboard for a long time. When will it be back in stock?
When are you getting this board back in I've been waiting and waiting? I'd rather get from you as digi but would like to know how long of a wait this will be.
The system reference manual needs to be updated to rev C4 (the currently selling item).
I agree that it should be when it becomes available, but a jog over to BeagleBoard.org reveals that they don't have a C4 reference manual yet either. :)
Here's some good references:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard
Get the board up and running:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners
Things you will need:
- Self Powered USB Hub
- The HDMI to DVI-D Cable
- IDC10 to DB9M
- USB-A to Mini-A if you want to power through the OTG Port
- A well regulated 1A 5V wall wart with center positive pin (DO NOT APPLY MORE THAN 5.5V!)
- A SD card reader/writer
- An SD or SDHC card with at least 1GB space
- A linux box to get the SD card formatted, I'd recommend Ubunto, just remember that when you follow the beginners guide you preface all the commands at the shell with 'sudo', or configure your box to run root.
The well regulated power supply is key. My undergrad design team destroyed the GPU on one board and the voltage regulator on another before we realized the cheap brick we got was giving us way too much voltage.
However, we still managed to present our project without the GPU by running a VNC server instead, which goes to show how versatile the system is.
I think i might have been spoiled by the incredible wealth of information, examples, projects, forums, libraries, and resources for PIC´s , AVR´s , and ARDUINO´s...but i´ve just received one of these Beagleboards and i think it´s a really great hardware BUT... i´ve been trying to find stuff about it for the last 2 days and haven´t been able to find much. In fact, almost nothing, compared to arduino and the others.
Does anyone know of a good resource for projects, examples, info... ??
What made arduino such a winner from the start was the almost immediate wealth of information for it, and the lack of that might be the doom of beagleboard... :(
(deprecated 8*)
Does this board, the one that sparkfun sells, include the in/out ports?
Hey Sparkfun,
When are you guys going to get the Beagle XM in stock?
If, then when?
When it shows up. We've had issues sourcing this. No ETA.
Hi SparkFun guys,
I plan to order a beagle board from SparkFun and I am in
China Mainland now. I don't know if you can ship the board
to me in address of China Mainland directly due to so-called
U.S. export controls, could you answer me the question?
Thanks,
Tom
Please direct this question to customerservice@sparkfun.com
I need them. Not one piece :)
104 in stock at digi-key!
Maybe back in stock here in short time?
Dude... Why don't you guys just buy like a hundred of these suckers? The last time you had some in they went so fast I didn't have a chance to get one:( I would rather buy from you guys! SparkFun Rocks!
I am sure they buy more than a hundred. According to the BeagleBoard site, all of the retailers get 200 at a time.
BeagleBoard definitely needs to pick up the pace though at making and sellings these things. They are quite popular little boards.
Figures you'd get them in when I'm broke and now you just got 5 left.
I completely agree that a Mini-B could be used but this limits its usage as a host device and the (USB)peripherals that go with beagle strictly require to use a Mini-A.
--ram
You can use the Mini-B, but if you want to use the OTG as the host then you either have to short 2 pins on the connector or use the Mini-A.
usb a to mini A cable like this
http://media.digikey.com/PDF/Data%20Sheets/Tensility/10-00003.pdf
USB-A to Mini-A if you want to power through the OTG Port
This is atmost an important component to be bundled with the beagle and it would be great if sparkfun could sell!!
--ram
Hey,
I'm currently playing with an Overo Water board. It's pretty similar except the OMAP3530 is on a standalone board (with RAM / Flash, uSD connector, and optionnaly WiFi / BT) which clips on a sort of motherboard (Summit, Palo,etc.). Mine is a Palo43 board, along with the Samsung 4.3" touchscreen.
I run linux on it, and try to get OpenGL ES, OpenVG working (SDK still in beta at texas instrument).
It's soooo powerful for such a small thing ... it raises a lot of new ideas !
-- Thomas.
This thing is crazy! I'm starting to shift from ARM7 (typically 60-72MHz) to ARM9 and Cortex-M3 for a bit more power (the chips also tend to be cheaper), but 600MHz is nuts. I'll have to look in how much difference there is between the older ARM architectures and Cortex A8 to get an idea of what the learning curve would be.
As someone who has used the 3530 professionally (under Linux), this is one freekin awesome chip. The power is amazing. But with that power comes responsibility. Or at the very least, considerable complexity. This is no AVR or PIC - completely different level. Writing code to actually take advantage of the hardware requires considerable time reading the very large manuals, and understanding all of the different options. Each pin on this baby can do a million thing (well, close), and so you have to manage all of that in your code. It's worth it though, if you have the time to understand it all, because you can do very complicated things with it.
Then it has 256 Mb RAM, not 128.
Is it easy/possible to get to the GPIO pins on the OMAP3530 with this board, especially as compared to the Arduino?
Found this http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/blinking_leds_with_the_beagle_board.html that seems pretty instructive. Note that it uses 1.8v signalling
Hi,
Beagle board are amazing to play with . I am a big fan of it and would love to buy it from sparkfun.
Which revision is the one that you are stocking now ?
--Ram
They are way too cool! Looks like we're currently carrying the C3 revision.
-techsupport at sparkfun dot com