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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

selsinork wrote:

 

As a suggestion let's have a BeagleBone Black only group.  One of the problems I see in the wider community is the lack of distinction between the different beagle boards. So much so that while navigating their wiki looking for info on the eMMC that's only on the Black you're getting directed to stuff for the BeagleBoard xM and it's often more difficult than it needs to be to determine if what you're reading applies to the Black or not.

My preference is to have a BeagleBone group and not discriminate on the basis of soldermask color.  This is somewhat selfish on my part, since I already have a BBone White and I'm not planning to pick up a BBone Black any time soon.

I think the differences between Black and White aren't that great -- it's almost the same processor, and I would hope that the expansion connectors are compatible so you can use the same capes.  So most topics about BBone Black would also apply to White, except for HDMI of course.  Yes, BBone White has built-in USB serial and JTAG but I suspect most users of those aren't going to need as much help.

I do heartily agree with keeping BeagleBones separate from BeagleBoards.  And I don't mind it being called the "BeagleBone Black" group as long as it's clear that Whites are welcome too -- as well as a future  BeagleBone Brown some day

I suppose that's mostly ok.  I'd just prefer we learn from the mistakes that are obvious on some of the wikis where there's no distinguishing lines and clicking on a link supposedly for upgrading the eMMC takes you to instructions for microSD on a board that doesn't have eMMC.

On the subject of capes, most of the stuff I've read, seen as clips on youtube etc tends to gloss over the white/black differences. I've been going through the pinouts of the expansion headers and marking off the ones you can't use due to hdmi/emmc. Without doing the math, it looks like you lose ~70% of P8. And as it also appears that there's no simple way to disable either - you need to send a software command to the eMMC to enable reset before you can disable it and you seemingly need to send something over I2C to the hdmi framer.

So capes could be an interesting experience

As a serious cape related question.. How many capes actually cost less than the Black ? A quick scan through uk.farnell.com suggests not many, so I wonder how the Black will affect the cape ecosystem.

I don't plan on ever using capes myself, but I also realise I'm probably not quite the average target audience for them either  

I possibly would have used one of the DVI capes with the original bone, but adding the cost of those together puts it close enough to a sabre-lite - which probably explains why I never did get the original.

John Beetem wrote:

 

as well as a future  BeagleBone Brown some day

only as long as it leaves the blue leds at the door

selsinork wrote:

 

As a serious cape related question.. How many capes actually cost less than the Black ? A quick scan through uk.farnell.com suggests not many, so I wonder how the Black will affect the cape ecosystem.

There are quite a few sub-US$45 capes at http://boardzoo.com.  Cheap ones tend to be things like proto boards and RS-232RS-232 interfaces.  I hope that BBone Black will drive down the prices of capes through volume.

Incidentally, I rather like blue LEDs.  But then I lived through the 1980s when blue LEDs were the "holy grail" of optoelectronics -- you could have any color up to green.  Maybe you can convert your hated blue LEDs to yellow by dabbing on a bit of phosphor -- that's how cheap "white" LEDs are made.

You might want to check out http://www.adafruit.com. They have a proto cape for the BeagleBone at US$8.99. The connector headers need to

be soldered in (they are included). I'm not sure about the quality (double sided FR4)  but adafruit tends to have good products. It is also sold by

MCM electronics http://www.mcmelectronics.com.

John Beetem wrote:

 

My preference is to have a BeagleBone group and not discriminate on the basis of soldermask color.  This is somewhat selfish on my part, since I already have a BBone White and I'm not planning to pick up a BBone Black any time soon.

 

I think the differences between Black and White aren't that great -- it's almost the same processor, and I would hope that the expansion connectors are compatible so you can use the same capes.  So most topics about BBone Black would also apply to White, except for HDMI of course.

Although everything you say about "more similarities than differences" is true, that's exactly the same reasoning that the Beagleboard devs give for not separating out the BeagleBones from the BeagleBoards.  I guess it's a matter of perception.  They see everything they do as a unit under Angstrom, and don't want to see any partitioning,  Unfortunately we've seen and discussed the confusion that their mixing of the boards causes, even when they don't see it.  For total newbies the head scratching is likely to be even worse.

Although like yourself I have a white BeagleBone, I support selsinork's suggestion for an Element 14 group to be named "BeagleBone Black" because that's the board that's going to sell in very large volumes and require a large amount of beginner-level community support, just like the Pi does.  The white BB will not, simply because it's not in the same price niche.

A BBB-specific group would support the rapidly expanding new community of BBB users better it seems to me, and adding white BB to the mix will probably reduce clarity of discussions for these new users.  It's no hardship for BB old timers to add "This also applies to white BB" in appropriate places, rather than as a default.  It's we who are going to be doing the BBB support as new BBB purchasers arrive, so whatever makes that easier gets my vote.

Anyway, it's all academic, since it's clear from Drew's response that they're not going to give BBB group support on a par with Pi.  As a result we'll never know how popular BBB is becoming since there will be no BBB group membership information, and how many BBB users get eaten by lions as they try to navigate the knode jungle will never be known.

Morgaine.

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.

It looks like there's been some site reorganization to improve the knode tree.  BeagleBone Black is now at

the knode > Single-Board Computers > BeagleBone Black

which seems a lot clearer than before.  I assume that this is the new "preferred location".

The transition probably doesn't break any thread bookmarks because messaging seems to be orthogonal to site navigation, but browser state is sensitive to it, so if you have a tab open on a thread in the old

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

then it will now have lost its parent if you try to go back, but good riddance to that.

Unfortunately there's still no downward navigation to reach "Discussions" within BeagleBone Black, so the only way of getting there is to click on an existing BBB thread and then go upwards to "Discussions" in its breadcrumbs.

While not as useful as having a BBB group would be, things are improving slightly I think.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Unfortunately there's still no downward navigation to reach "Discussions" within BeagleBone Black, so the only way of getting there is to click on an existing BBB thread and then go upwards to "Discussions" in its breadcrumbs.

I really don't get why 'Discussions' is so well hidden, and both BBB and SL have the other annoying problem of if you ever find them and click on a 'learn more' button or link you're re-directed off to a document under the knode > Development Platforms and Kits > Dev Kits Learning Center > Documents - so in a completely different area, no clue you're missing out on other information.

Unless you're paying close attention you probably miss that you've been teleported elsewhere too