The BeagleBone Black Primer

Millions of DIYers, makers, hobbyists, and engineers are discovering BeagleBone Black: today's amazingly powerful new low-cost embedded development platform. BeagleBone Black offers extraordinary opportunities for connectivity and expansion, and can boot a full Linux operating system in under 10 seconds. What's more, you can start developing for BeagleBone Black in less than five minutes with just a single USB cable. Now, there's a complete, hands-on guide to creating BeagleBone Black projects of your own: Brian McLaughlin's The BeagleBone Black Primer. McLaughlin first reviews the basic embedded programming concepts and techniques that every hardware developer needs to know. Next, he introduces the BeagleBone Black hardware, explaining its specs, capabilities, and performance. You'll learn how BeagleBone Black works, what it can do, and how it improves on the earlier BeagleBoard and BeagleBone. Building on this introduction, you'll learn how to program BeagleBone Black, interact with its General Purpose Input/Output pins, load new operating systems, ensure adequate power, connect Ethernet and WiFi connections, and more. Step by step, you'll master increasingly advanced BeagleBone Black programming techniques using the Cloud9 IDE and BoneScript. McLaughlin shows how to integrate LEDs and other hardware; create a simple Larson scanner; and configure the BeagleBone Black to run Ubuntu Linux or Android. Building on what you've learned, you'll integrate Software Defined Radio (SDR) and use it to capture signals from both your local airspace and satellites in outer space. McLaughlin concludes by introducing Cape expansion boards, and showing how they can help you extend BeagleBone Black to do even more. Throughout, you'll find multiple projects, both "starter" and "advanced" -- as well as "jumping-off points" carefully conceived to encourage your own creativity.