Have a question about the Next-Gen BeagleBone? Ask it here!

For anyone else with one of these, see

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/beagleboard/beaglebone-black/G_QjWvBNXvc

you'll probably want to go to http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software and get the latest software image (2013.05.3 as of now) before trying to do anything with opkg

you'll probably want to go to http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software and get the latest software image (2013.05.3 as of now) before trying to do anything with opkg

Something must have been wrong with the build.  Looks like they pulled it.  I can see it in the change history so you're not a liar

selsinork wrote:

 

dhid wrote:

 

I'm not a Linux expert at all but does this mean that you have to have a suitable EDID file to force a particular mode?

The EDID is supposed to be supplied by the display, essentially there's an I2C connection between the display and the device. Called DDC - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

This has been around since the 15pin vga days at least. It allows the display to essentially have a small eeprom containing descriptions of the various modes that it supports. The connected device can read these and set itself up accordingly. In some cases the I2C connection can also be used for software control of the display brightness, contrast etc.

 

However, historically the display mode in windows, linux etc has been set manually in the driver. So all sorts of displays either don't provide the data at all, don't provide correct data or whatever.  The downside to KMS appears to be that it expects everything to play by the rules and unconditionally believes whatever rubbish it reads out of the EDID - leading to problems when something is not right, and that could be as simple as the necessary connections are missing from the cable.

 

So at some point they've provided the option to force KMS to use an EDID provided by the user instead of believing the display. That gives you a way out, but is rather different from the older kernel command line options that google will turn up.

I've not looked in detail, but I suspect it doesn't give you the same level of control as you can get from config.txt on the Pi. For example, as EDID was originally for computer displays I don't know if it'll have a way to specify overscan settings to solve your problem.

Some details on EDID data format here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data I don't see anything specific for overscan though there may be ways to use horizontal blanking ot border settings to deal with it.

Thanks selsinork I've never really looked at the EDID stuff much before as I've mostly used Windows and what Unix I used in the past was on terminals with no graphics.

Well I've half solved my problem!

I noticed that RT1 (Polyswitch type fuse for HDMI) was rather hot when I had the HDMI to VGA Adaptor plugged in! Remembering that the HDMI to VGA converters draw a fair bit of current and as the Polyswitch is only 100mA hold current I hooked it out and connected the HDMI 5V to VDD via meter on 300 mA current range and discovered it draws between 140 and 200 mA and worked when connected like this!

So that explains why I got a display briefly when I connected the HDMI converter having already booted connected to the TV but got nothing when booting with it connected directly - there was a couple of seconds before the Polyswitch started to go to high resistance and drop the voltage below that required for the HDMI converter to function correctly.

I've now put a link in between VDD and the HDMI 5V and the HDMI to VGA converter works OK and with no overscan, unlike the TV. I just need to try to sort out the overscan problem when connected to the TV.

I'll start having a play with creating an EDID file and trying different resolutions and refresh rates and see what happens.

Thanks for your interest and help - much appreciated!

dhid wrote:

 

I just need to try to sort out the overscan problem when connected to the TV.

 

I don't own a TV, so probably not a lot of help here, but I know that some displays have an option to turn off overscan. My Samsung 400UX-2 has a 'Size' option with 'screen fit', Zoom1, Zoom2, 4:3, 16:9 options. Setting it to Screen fit defeats overscan and gives you a native resolution display. Not that I can understand why you'd ever want overscan on a display like this..

selsinork wrote:

 

I'm not a fan of forums at the best of times, but that google groups thing they're using is awful, and the general mixture of beagleboard, beaglebone and beaglebone-black stuff leaves you never quite sure if what you're reading even applies to your board.

The old Google Groups wasn't bad.  The new Google Groups is awful IMO which prevents me (and I'm sure many others) from casual use.  This means that if you do post a problem, the people who might be able to help you don't visit very often and your query goes unanswered.

One thing I like about element14 is that you can quickly view presence of new comments in many groups (though not 'blog comments, alas) so in a few seconds I can see if there's something that might be of interest.

In all cases, you do need a good wiki to back up the forum, and community members who have enough interest to keep the wiki up to date.  Are they updating the Beagle wiki with BBoneBlack lore?

I prefer to view the beagleboard forum directly in google groups versus embedded on bealgeboard.org: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!categories/beagleboard

The CircuitCo wiki has an extensive article for BeagleBone Black (BBB):

http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

Other important BBB articles:

Updating the software: http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=Updating_The_Software

Accessories (including cape testing): http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBone_Black_Accessories

John Beetem wrote:

 

In all cases, you do need a good wiki to back up the forum, and community members who have enough interest to keep the wiki up to date.  Are they updating the Beagle wiki with BBoneBlack lore?

CircuitCo is updating their BeagleBoneBlack wiki pages periodically, and I started adding BBB info to the eLinux BeagleBone wiki page which I maintain, although since I currently lack a BBB myself I can't base it on first-hand experience.

Wikis are wikis though ... those of you who actually have BBBs already, you can help out if you want to.

gryphon wrote:

Something must have been wrong with the build.  Looks like they pulled it.  I can see it in the change history so you're not a liar

2013.05.08 is there right now... quick grab it before it vanishes

dhid wrote:

 

I've been trying to find a fix for a problem I'm having with using HDMI

The notes against the 2013.05.08 release that's recently appeared suggests there may be light at the end of that tunnel..

Audio now supported. Will default to 1280x720 for audio support and should be compatible with TVs and displays.

Fixed bug in HDMI driver that was sending conflicting information to the display.

Until we have some space to work in, I might as well add to this thread:

I've not had much time to experiment with the board recently, but I had an hour today, and I tried powering the board from a battery.

The LiPo was from Olimex, and basically just connects to the pins as according to the SRM table 3:

My LiPo has built-in circuit, so I soldered a 10k resistor to TS and GND. The LiPo connector was convenient to solder to pins TP6 and TP8, and then  a zero-ohm link between TP5 and TP6 on the underside.

I had only a right-angle connector so I bent it appropriately (the connector is on a 2mm pitch whereas the holes are not, so the pins need slight bending, so maybe an already-vertical connector would not have space to bend them)

Plugging it in, the board worked fine, and the serial port allowed for the usual access. I didn't try Ethernet yet.

The battery (Olimex code "BATTERY-LIPO1400mAh") by luck fits flush with the connectors so a daughter board can still be stacked over it in future.

Really I need to write to the config registers to set the charge voltage to 4.2V (the default is 4.1V) but I've not looked to see how to do that yet.

Excellent info and write-up, shabaz.

I have Olimex's OLIMEXINO-STM32, which is a a Cortex-M3 microcontroller board that semi-clones the Maple and provides some Arduino compatibility in its headers.  The white connector at the bottom left of the Olimexino pictures is the LiPo batter connector, the same one which you've attached to your BBB, and works great on the Olimexino.

I'm looking forward to replicating your mod on BBB in due course.

Note to E14 admins.  Useful posts like shabaz's which many people are likely to want to reference in the future are going to get lost through lack of a BeagleBone group.

Very nice post, indeed.

About the lack of BeagleBone group, this BeagleBone Black sub-space in the Knode has similar functionality to a regular group: http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/dev_platforms_kits/element14_dev_kits/next-gen_beaglebone  Is there something that is lacking?  Or is it just that it is buried too deep under the Knode?

thanks,

drew

Very nice post, indeed.

About the lack of BeagleBone group, this BeagleBone Black sub-space in the Knode has similar functionality to a regular group: http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/dev_platforms_kits/element14_dev_kits/next-gen_beaglebone  Is there something that is lacking?  Or is it just that it is buried too deep under the Knode?

thanks,

drew

I think it's a combination of a few things:

• It's buried deep, as various people have mentioned.
• Groups narrow down searches automatically, whereas in the knode, one is never sure.
• Whatever is the knode anyway?  Abstract memes are a shot in the dark, not sure about this one.
• "next-gen_beaglebone" is a very poor name for a BeagleBone Black group-like container.
• Navigation in the knode is really bad, no link to BBB under element14 Development Kits
• Groups create community and people immediately know what they mean.
• The Pi has a group, it seems reasonable that BBB should get similar support.
• The Google Group for Beagle* is a mess, we could do a lot better here with a specific group.

I won't argue that the knode can't fulfil the role, it probably can in theory.  I'd just question whether it's working in practice.

For a balanced argument, I'll also enumerate some pros for knode and cons for groups:

• The group concept doesn't scale too well.  A group for every board just isn't going to work.
• Groups distort the level playing field.  I bet Olimex isn't happy with the Pi getting special treatment.
• The knode could be nicely hierarchical.  That appeals well to my engineering sensibilities.

So, I do see some advantages to the knode approach, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to offer BBB the same degree of support as Pi is getting.  And until knode's hierarchical navigation is fixed so that at some level under knode you immediately see both Pi and BBB listed, it's not going to work at all.

Addendum.  It's pretty clear that the Element14_dev_kits page (the parent of "next-gen_beaglebone") is structured for high-profile advertising of Featured Products and not for convenient access to popular board resources and discussion groups.  Advertising and engineering support are in direct conflict in this instance, and it's made knode less helpful that it might otherwise be.

The cleanest fix would probably be to go up a level, to knode/dev_platforms_kits/ , and at the top of that page to list "Dev kits with active discussions".  The knode would then be providing hierarchical access to per-board discussions and other resources, semi group-like.  Currently it doesn't.

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

Is there something that is lacking?  Or is it just that it is buried too deep under the Knode?

You can't join the group as such. For example we know there's 8000+ people joined the Ras-Pi group. Here ? Maybe only the dozen or so of us, but no way to know.

Buried way too deep, you really have to know something exists in the knode before you have a hope of finding it. Take this area, the breadcrumbs at the top of the page show:

Home > the knode > Development Platforms and Kits > element14 Development Kits > BeagleBone Black >   Discussions

but if you go back to the e14 homepage and try to follow that trail it stops at element14 Development Kits and the BeagleBone black doesn't appear below that.

Also, why under element14 Development Kits ?  If you don't know it's there you'd be looking for CircuitCo, Ti or something along those lines..

If you go to http://www.element14.com/community/groups?ICID=all_technologies_menubar and 'Search for a Group' you don't find anything relating to beaglebone.

A lot of the same problems exist for other sub-groups in the knode, for example someone recently asked if there was a case for sabre-lite in, I think, the Embedded group (can't find the post today and the embedded group tells me there's no posts found for language english).

I never expected the sabre-lite group to have lots of activity, but given how quickly they seem to sell out you'd expect more.

Same goes for the Black - that Pi vs BeagleboneBlack thread I sometimes wish I hadn't started has generated a good bit more discussion from a wider audience. Very hard to tell just how much of that is due to how well hidden this area is though.

One other thing I noticed is that there seems to be some difference with the search box at the top of the page. You seem to get different results once you're already into the knode. It's hard to tell for sure but the impression I get is that the search from the homepage either doesn't include the knode or ranks the results differently, and once you're into the knode the reverse is true ?  If the search is different and people don't find what they're looking for at first attempt it's likely they'll just move on.

I mentioned that navigation in knode needs to be fixed, but something has to be broken first for it to be fixed.  Navigation in knode isn't broken, it just doesn't exist at all.  Only the advertising seems to have been given much design thought, and totally overwhelms usability.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

• The group concept doesn't scale too well.  A group for every board just isn't going to work.
• Groups distort the level playing field.  I bet Olimex isn't happy with the Pi getting special treatment.

We seem to end up with two almost seperate sites, you have the groups concept which is the default view when you first enter the site. Then there's the knode logically seperate and somewhat hidden.

Is it any surprise that things that have a higher profile due to being more readily accessable, either directly from the homepage or at least from the default view, get more interest ?

I found out the other day that we are able to create groups ourselves. Again, it's not obvious that you can until you find the page with the create group button.  I did contemplate creating a Beaglebone Black group, but thought better of it... Two areas with the same name might just add confusion.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Only the advertising seems to have been given much design thought.

Is it just advertising ?  The numbers we've seen under the 'check more stock' link suggest that someone thinks that the BBB will be popular enough to have lots of them ordered.

Assuming that means they've made a commitment to buying them you'd expect a more prominent feature of them.

I see that there's currently a direct link to here from the top right of the e14 homepage, so hopefully Drew has got the message   but those links don't stay forever and once it goes the higher profile it gives will be lost and we'll vanish back into the bowels of the knode to be forgotten again..

selsinork wrote:

 

but those links don't stay forever and once it goes the higher profile it gives will be lost and we'll vanish back into the bowels of the knode to be forgotten again..

And right there you've identified the single biggest problem with the knode.  A group has strong permanence, whereas knode places its emphasis on ephemeral discussions, all mixed up at top level.  It doesn't have the same degree of focus.  Searching and navigation problems are just fallout from that.

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

Is there something that is lacking?  Or is it just that it is buried too deep under the Knode?

 

One last thought, even here, there's fragmentation.

There's "enter to win a BeagleBone Black" in Dev kits and Learning center, "The new BeagleBone is Back in Black" in Single-Board computers. both posted by e14 employees it appears.  Whatever happens, wouldn't it be a good idea to have all the Black related stuff in the same place ?

Ping.

Hi selsinork & Morgaine, thanks for the feedback and you both raise good points. 

I spoke with Sagar  today and there is a plan to improve the BBB experience on the site.  We understand that the navigation is lacking and it will be improved.  There is also the issue of the pre-release "next-gen" name versus the actual "black" name.  Those next-gen references will be migrated to black including in URLs.

In the meantime, this discussion area ("Home > the knode > Development Platforms and Kits > element14 Development Kits > BeagleBone Black > Discussions") is the preferred location for BBB discussions.

Thanks,

Drew

Drew Fustini (admin) wrote: [my highlighting]

 

In the meantime, this discussion area ("Home > the knode > Development Platforms and Kits > element14 Development Kits > BeagleBone Black > Discussions") is the preferred location for BBB discussions.

There is no such navigation available in the knode, so saying that it's the preferred location can only be a statement of hope currently, not an actuality in the meantime.  Unless people are given a direct link to one of the BBB discussions or stumble across one among the random assortment of recent posts highlighted on the front page, they'll never find it.

Of course, we know it's not hard to find with a little perseverence (one of your RHS advertisements links to it), but new users can't divine which the "preferred location" actually is, and won't read your statement of hope until they've already found the spot.  Chicken and egg there.  Some will find nothing and just head elsewhere.

It's puzzling to see this choice being made, as it's likely to be bad for your user numbers and for the quality of support that new arrivals obtain from the site.  Fixing the knode's navigation faults will help, but only partially.  BBB support will still be inferior to that which Pi enjoys.  Is there a gain?  I don't see one.

As a stopgap, I recommend that you add to your front page (LHS column) a link called BeagleBone Black under "Featured Groups / Applications and Others", which already contains a mixture of real groups and community links.  That'll provide a direct link to your preferred location straight away and is easy + fast to do, in advance of fixing the knode's navigation which will require much more work from your devs.