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Multifunction instrument based on BeagleBone Black

shabaz

Hi Brian,

 

We're thinking on the same track. I'm interested to hear what your cape is like, and ideas you're considering for it's use and how good the touchscreen is. It looks like a very high quality screen. I've been experimenting with connecting up a larger LCD with the same resolution too, it may be the same model maybe, although I just have the bare LCD, not a cape, so I have a bit of interworking to do currently. I was undecided if I wanted to hook into the dedicated LCD pins (full color) like your cape, or go the PRU route (with reduced 256 or 65k color initially), since both methods could be useful depending on the application. I'd be interested to know if it works with the current release software, and what gets configured in Linux to set the correct timings (I've not really experimented with display drivers in Linux before, so I'm not sure where to look). I think it will be really neat if we can get several different sizes of LCDs working using both methods to cover a few different scenarios.

LCDs are so expensive though.

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  • Sources of inspiration.

    Whilst researching what is available I recently came across this from Digilent - Analog Discovery, Priced at $99 for US Students, $159 Academic and $199 for the rest of us (£136.09 Farnell UK) A real problem for me though is it's not open source and is tied to a windows PC. I think this type of product, designed for the education market, should be open source but that's another story. I have recently spent a lot of money on BBB bits and pieces so whilst I would love to play with one and see if I could interface to it a BBB and produce a linux / BBB equivalent to their software, I can't justify the expenditure at the moment. It would still be great if I could get one at the student price, better still if Digilent gave me one along with the design info image  Then again it would be great if I won the lottery. Well enough of the dreams back to the black...

     

    I got to thinking about designing something with similar functions but not tied to windows or PC.  I looked at the R-Pi which has great graphics capability but little I/O and I have had a number of issues using the USB at high speeds.   Then along came BBB and it was like the proverbial light bulb switching on. All the I/O pins and two PRUs and more than adequate graphics and and and....

     

    As Morgaine mentions above the OBLS and other "open source" products offer a solution and provide already working designs. I believe this to be a logical first step.

     

    Thoughts then are to use this wealth of usefulness and cherry pick the best bits to a fully integrated product onto a cape or two.

     

    Ok a tiny little bit of top-down design:

     

    1. Low cost portable multifunctional instrument capable of but not limited to being a Logic analyser, Oscilloscope, waveform generator, frequency spectrum analyser ...  A design that has both digital and analogue functions.

    1.1 Overall system control User interface and display
    1.1.1 Beaglebone Black with either LCD + Touch screen or (not so portable) HDMI monitor, keyboard and mouse.

     

    1.2 Digital functions
    1.2.1 FPGA Cape with I/O buffering and protection linked to BBB PRUs for real time control and data transfer

     

    1.3 Analogue functions
    1.3.1 ADC + DAC Cape linked to FPGA cape for high speed capture and to PRUs for real time control

     

    At this moment in time I am still getting to grips the the BBB and it's evolving 3.8 kernel and the various O/Ss that are available. Angstrom is ok, Ubuntu and Debian are fine but I quite like Arch Linux.  Of course the software for the "instrument" must not be dependant on any particular one though.

     

    It's getting late so I will leave it  there for now.

    Brian

  • in reply to bwelsby

    Brian Welsby wrote:

     

    Angstrom is ok, Ubuntu and Debian are fine but I quite like Arch Linux. 

    Angstrom seems to be better optimised for the BBB, but has it's share of difficulties.

     

    Ubuntu/Debian are nice from the point of view of getting a generic, familiar, and supported distro. I always feel they're a bit heavy for the likes of the Pi or BBB though, but that's a common theme for any of the traditionally x86 desktop oriented distros

     

    I did like Arch. Up until they did the whole /lib -> /usr/lib thing and followed various others off the systemd cliff in a fairly decent lemmings impression. (My olinuxino arch install became basically useless after that as it became effectively impossible to upgrade past a point and therefore couldn't use many of the newer arch packages)

     

    While there are various distros that fit a range of needs, I still feel there's a lack of a good option that targets an embedded device without bringing lots of baggage along for the ride.

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  • in reply to bwelsby

    Brian Welsby wrote:

     

    Angstrom is ok, Ubuntu and Debian are fine but I quite like Arch Linux. 

    Angstrom seems to be better optimised for the BBB, but has it's share of difficulties.

     

    Ubuntu/Debian are nice from the point of view of getting a generic, familiar, and supported distro. I always feel they're a bit heavy for the likes of the Pi or BBB though, but that's a common theme for any of the traditionally x86 desktop oriented distros

     

    I did like Arch. Up until they did the whole /lib -> /usr/lib thing and followed various others off the systemd cliff in a fairly decent lemmings impression. (My olinuxino arch install became basically useless after that as it became effectively impossible to upgrade past a point and therefore couldn't use many of the newer arch packages)

     

    While there are various distros that fit a range of needs, I still feel there's a lack of a good option that targets an embedded device without bringing lots of baggage along for the ride.

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