I've talked to several designers of digital fabrication machines (laser cutter, 3D printers, CNC mills, Pick-n-Place, etc) that are incorporating the BeagleBone Black (BBB) into their machines. It's price and capabilities are a good fit to replace dedicated laptop or desktop computer for running such devices. The BBB has the added advantage of its Programmable Real-time Units (PRUs): two 200MHz microcontrollers on the same die as the 1GHz ARM Cortex A8. This eliminates the need for a separate microcontroller board like an Arduino, ChipKit, LaunchPad, GertBoard, etc.
A prime example is MachineKit. A downloadable SD card image which runs LinuxCNC on the BBB. This enables makers to easily control a range of existing machines such as 3D printers and CNC mills. I noticed this list of BeagleBone capes on the excellent BeagleBone LinuxCNC blog:
http://bb-lcnc.blogspot.com/p/hardware-capes.html
An unofficial list of various 3D Printer, CNC, and motion control related capes I am aware of, along with their status. If you know of any I missed, or notice something wrong, please leave a note in the comments.Contents:
The boards are grouped by my personal experience with them. I have the first two (BeBoPr and K9) in-hand and have printed or moved motors with them. The next two (Replicape and Rosetta Bone) I have seen move motors via internet video. The remaining boards I have simply heard about, and are listed in the order I found out about them.
I'm curious - has anyone tried any of the above?
Thanks,
Drew
