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Ben Heck's Beaglebone Black Geocache

adamsoileau1

A few years back Ben created a BeagleBone Geocache that saved pictures and messages when discovered. Currently, I have my hands on it and am curious what you would like to see added or changed on the build. I have some experience with Raspberry Pis, but I would like to know if anyone has worked BeagleBones before and what the benefit may be for using one over a Raspberry Pi -- because a Pi usually my go-to single board computer. I have a few ideas like implementing solar cells to improve the battery life and maybe more clues for unlocking the device, but I would like to know what the community thinks of the project and what they would like to see included!

 

Original Episode: Episode 197: Ben Heck's BeagleBone Black Geocache Episode

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  • 0

    The BeagleBone Black has three main features going for it:

     

    - It's pretty much fully open source

    - You have two microcontrollers that run at 200MHz onboard for real-time handling of things like vision sensors and motors

    - You have a lot of GPIO pins to work with along with different communication protocol support (SPI, I2C, etc) and it can do rudimentary audio and HDMI.

     

    It's not the fastest board, but it can run a lightweight debian. The idea is that you would setup your operating system on a microSD card and then when you've decided on the feature you want, then you would write it to the eMMC, because it only has a number of finite write cycles to it, ultimately.

     

    The Pi 4 may well boot faster than the BeagleBone Black, however you can't customise the boot process and steps and roll your own linux kernel as easily for the Raspberry Pi 4 as you can for the BeagleBone Black.

     

    The BeagleBone Black was chosen for the project for two reasons:

     

    - It's not a typically used single board computer

    - It has a lot more functionality available to use if required

     

    The nuance comes in that not everyone has familiarity with:

     

    - uboot

    - devicetrees

    - writing assembly/C code for the PRUSS microcontrollers

    - writing their own libraries if they can't find one that fits the problem they're looking for a solution for.

     

    Eg. the project uses an ATTiny and maybe another microcontroller... I don't think it uses the PRUSS microcontrollers on the BeagleBone Black.

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  • 0

    The BeagleBone Black has three main features going for it:

     

    - It's pretty much fully open source

    - You have two microcontrollers that run at 200MHz onboard for real-time handling of things like vision sensors and motors

    - You have a lot of GPIO pins to work with along with different communication protocol support (SPI, I2C, etc) and it can do rudimentary audio and HDMI.

     

    It's not the fastest board, but it can run a lightweight debian. The idea is that you would setup your operating system on a microSD card and then when you've decided on the feature you want, then you would write it to the eMMC, because it only has a number of finite write cycles to it, ultimately.

     

    The Pi 4 may well boot faster than the BeagleBone Black, however you can't customise the boot process and steps and roll your own linux kernel as easily for the Raspberry Pi 4 as you can for the BeagleBone Black.

     

    The BeagleBone Black was chosen for the project for two reasons:

     

    - It's not a typically used single board computer

    - It has a lot more functionality available to use if required

     

    The nuance comes in that not everyone has familiarity with:

     

    - uboot

    - devicetrees

    - writing assembly/C code for the PRUSS microcontrollers

    - writing their own libraries if they can't find one that fits the problem they're looking for a solution for.

     

    Eg. the project uses an ATTiny and maybe another microcontroller... I don't think it uses the PRUSS microcontrollers on the BeagleBone Black.

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