BeagleBone-Black

[Louis Mamakos]

On May 3, 2013, at 11:36 PM, Andre Kesteloot <andre.kesteloot at verizon.net> wrote:

> On 5/3/2013 22:37 PM, Louis Mamakos wrote:
>> It does, however, have a couple of embedded RISC microcontrollers ("PRU" - Programmable Real-Time Unit) which can be used to do various tricks with the I/O pins that might be interesting for some applications.  Sort of what the PIC devices could do; complex programmable bit-banging and I/O vs. having dedicated or special purpose hardware peripherals.  These microcontrollers have some sort of mailbox communication means with the ARM core so that they can each get the other's attention.
>> 
>> http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Programmable_Realtime_Unit_Subsystem
>> 
>> For example, make a few more extra "soft" UARTs:  http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Soft-UART_Implementation_on_AM335X_PRU_-_Software_Users_Guide
>> 
>> The Beaglebone Black looks really neat; more I/O pins than the RPi.  I might have to get one, hopefully it won't end up on the pile of all the other cool widgets.
>> 
>> louie
>> wa3ymh
> 
> Louie,
> Mike,
> 
> Indeed, the Beaglebone specifications look attractive, but I want, for the moment anyway, to concentrate on the Arduino.
> Why, might you ask, is André behaving like a luddite?
> 
> a) first, because every other week now, or so it seems to me, someone comes up with yet a new super-duper board, that does fantastic things, but the average Ham still does not get involved with it.
> Why not concentrate on what we have?
> My intent is to work on Ham projects, not pie-in-the sky ones, that might need a 1 GHz clock.
> 
> b) second, because the Arduino has an IDE that works with Windows, and that is still, by far, what most Hams use.
> Using the Beaglebone, one would have to install (dual boot ! etc) and learn a new operating system: Linux.
> Far too complicated for most Hams, in my opinion.
> 
> my $0.05 worth
> 
> 73,
> André

The Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard, etc. are self-hosted development environments; maybe you use your PC to SSH into them.  No dual-booting required, just shove some Linux image on the SD card and go from there.  Maybe it's because I've been using UNIX for 25 years, but Linux sure seems less complicated than figuring out WTF Windows is doing to you at any given point in time.  To each his own; it's really not rocket science.