SparkFun Electronics - BeagleBoard

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Product Info

BeagleBoard

sku: DEV-09444

Description: The 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.

Features:

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

Documents:

Pricing

	17 in stock backorder allowed

$149.95	price
$134.95	10+ (10% off)

	quantity

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Comments

20 comments

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	by ram +2.4 \| September 30, 2009 at 1:56 PM 0
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

	by Jimb0 \| September 30, 2009 at 3:23 PM
They are way too cool! Looks like we're currently carrying the C3 revision. -techsupport at sparkfun dot com

	by ketralnis +3 \| September 30, 2009 at 6:49 PM 0
Is it easy/possible to get to the GPIO pins on the OMAP3530 with this board, especially as compared to the Arduino?

	by ketralnis +3 \| September 30, 2009 at 6:54 PM 0
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

	by alfmar +1.7 \| October 1, 2009 at 3:41 AM 0
Then it has 256 Mb RAM, not 128.

	by KTownsend +5.8 \| October 1, 2009 at 5:48 AM 0
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.

EmbeddedMan

+5.4

| October 1, 2009 at 8:00 AM

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.

Otatiaro

+1.7

| October 2, 2009 at 3:05 AM

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.

Shifted

+1.8

| October 4, 2009 at 1:36 PM

+0.22

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.

	by FlynnS +1.1 \| January 6, 2010 at 7:15 AM 0
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.

	by ram +2.4 \| October 5, 2009 at 1:13 AM 0
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

	by ram +2.4 \| October 5, 2009 at 5:03 AM 0
usb a to mini A cable like this http://media.digikey.com/PDF/Data%20Sheets/Tensility/10-00003.pdf

	by Shifted +1.8 \| October 5, 2009 at 9:12 AM 0
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.

	by ram +2.4 \| October 6, 2009 at 9:55 PM 0
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

	by brian30wm +2.5 \| November 22, 2009 at 6:26 PM +0.55
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.

	by Okan +1.6 \| December 7, 2009 at 2:50 PM +0.55
I've been waiting beagleboard for a long time. When will it be back in stock?

	by pannitan +2.1 \| December 20, 2009 at 1:20 PM +1.1
Is it coming back or not? :(

	by Sriv +0.5 \| January 18, 2010 at 7:35 PM –0.52
The system reference manual needs to be updated to rev C4 (the currently selling item).

	by JMo +3.5 \| January 19, 2010 at 1:34 PM 0
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. :)