BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source Gadgets

Open source hardware hobbyists now have a chipset to play with that’s comparable to the powerful processors found in smartphones such as the Nexus One or HTC Incredible.

Texas Instruments has released a new version of its low-power, single-board computer called BeagleBoard-xM. It’s based on the same 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that drives the most sophisticated smartphones today. That gives it far more processing power than the leading open-source microcontroller platform, Arduino, which many hobbyists currently use to create robots, sensors, toys and other DIY devices.

The BeagleBoard-xM has multimedia features similar to the processor seen in the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid, and includes on-board ethernet, five USB 2.0 ports and 512 MB of memory.

“It’s a fully loaded, open platform that allows users to run multiple applications and embed them in devices,” says Jason Kridner, ARM software architecture manager and BeagleBoard community manager. “We wanted to offer something that’s cheap, ups the performance level and has sufficient memory.”

The first BeagleBoard debuted in 2008, targeting hardware hobbyists who wanted a powerful chipset to build home-brewed gadgets. But, so far, it has been eclipsed by the simpler open source microcontroller Arduino. Arduino has become a big hit among DIYers powering an eclectic variety of projects including electronic textiles, a fire-breathing dragon and many robots.

BeagleBoard isn’t as popular, even though it packs in more technical firepower. Some hobbyists say that could change as open source hardware hackers get more ambitious and move beyond what a simple microcontroller can do.

The 3-inch?square BeagleBoard-xM runs a full Linux operating system with desktop managers and office applications. It also includes a 2-D and 3-D graphics accelerator, a port to add a computer monitor and an S-video port for TV.

BeagleBoard will let hobbyists and open source hardware enthusiasts go where the Arduino won’t, says Justin Huynh, a open source hardware hacker.

“A lot of people complain that Arduino is not powerful enough and if you want something that’s more technical and intensive it is just not good enough,” he says. “So BeagleBoard can be a very interesting alternative.”

And at $180, the�BeagleBoard-xM is inexpensive enough to be a technical toy for DIYers, says Hyunh.

“What we have seen happen in the Arduino community is now happening with the BeagleBoard,” he says.

Here are four cool ideas that use the BeagleBoard:

BeagleBoard Videowall

There are at least two ways to create a large display: Buy a giant TV screen from Best Buy, or MacGyver a solution using multiple PC monitors.

The BeagleBoard Videowall tries the latter. It has six 19-inch LCD monitors networked together over USB to run high definition full-screen video.

“I enjoy the challenge of making the most out of limited resources, and the BeagleBoard is a perfect platform for doing just that,” says M�ns Rullg�rd, an embedded software consultant based in England. “It has the power to do really cool things if you get it right, while remaining small both in physical size and power consumption.”

Rullg�rd and his project partners wanted to create “something spectacular” using the BeagleBoard and FFmpeg, open source multimedia libraries and programs.

The resulting Videowall project uses six BeagleBoards, where each board plays a special file containing only the corresponding segment of the video. The files were created ahead of time on a PC.� To synchronize the playback across the BeagleBoards, they are interconnected with a USB-based network.

The video wall made its public debut in February in Brussels and it will be shown this week at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin.

Photo: M�ns Rullg�rd