Date: 07/11/2011

$89 priced embedded board for embedded systems students

BeagleBoard.org mainly supported by the Texas Instrument has introduced the new embedded systems board the BeagleBone. Based on theTexas Instruments (TI) Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor, $89 priced BeagleBone development board is suggested for electronics engineering (EE) professionals for its open source development value for hobbyists, developers and engineers. EE professional can do their intersting embedded system projects based on this board. This board can find more intersting for B.E. students in electronics engineering and instrumentation branches to their academic projects. They can develop further hardware, software and interface to this board for various intersting applications.

The key features and advantages of this board includes:

Easy and extensive hardware, connectivity with Linux and access to open source community
Developing projects with sensors and controls on the BeagleBone is easy with the flexible Linux kernel that reduces complication of learning input/output (I/O) through the use of existing drivers and interface applications. BeagleBone runs full-featured Linux, including native scripting and compilation tools.
It also provides on-chip Ethernet-MAC, USB with PHY and A/D converters, along with other peripherals, to minimize the number of extraneous components needed and further simplify design.
BeagleBone can be used as a stand-alone development board or as an add-on to the existing BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM or desktop computer to attach thousands of readily available sensors and peripherals.
Features >60 configurable industry-standard 3.3 Volt I/Os, five serial ports, two I2C buses, timers, power management modules, SPI.
Developers have access to the open source community, which provides a large number of I/O references to help with programming.

With the BeagleBone, I'll be able to run the same, full Linux OS as my development PC but on the perfect low-power ARM microprocessor - and in a small-embedded form factor with all the I/O my next application needs, comments Robert Nelson, application engineer, Digi-Key Design Support.

Visit www.beagleboard.org to learn more. Watch this page later for listing more such boards for B.E. students for selecting right embedded hardware board for their projects.