What hinders your BeagleBone project?

In my case, the consistency of the project - to keep things up to date after relaease.

BB is my preferred SBC.
I work more on a Pi these days but I started with BB and it has a favourite spot in my heart. And the embedded real time engine is an asset.
It used to be the board I'd do all my blogs and initial Linux work on - regardless of what the final target system was.

What doesn't work out well for me, is that the BB project starts new initiatives, but not so good as keeping these alive - documentation, support, updates. Always looks like a hot flame at the start, then dozing off. And bitten by purchasing an add-on where the page mentioned that full software support was in the pipeline.

There was a period where so much code and blogs were broken because device paths changed, and not everyone updates blogs or code, so nothing seemed to work.

Also, there just wasn't any C library for I/O (at least, not for fast I/O), so I had to write my own, and having to delve into the register configurations (non-trivial, it was different for the various banks of pins) and then repeating for different functions like I2C etc., got really hard to maintain, and I don't know what the recommended speedy library is today that is usable like (say) mbed or Arduino with DigitalRead/DigitalWrite etc., so that it could be easy to pick up. The Pi has ready-to-use libraries in C, and they are reasonably fast. I'd say that holds me back from using the BBB a bit nowadays - Pi is just easier to quickly get into, despite the BBB having better hardware in some ways (and less features in others, e.g. 5 GHz WLAN absence, less memory. etc). Still, I really like the BBB, it's got better audio features for instance, and hope that if there were well-documented good libraries (I'm sure there are, I just don't know about them) for I/O (for C and for Python) then I'd use it more.

I never really got any traction with the BeagleBones.  I got the original BBB and at that time the development ecosystem was not very mature and I struggled to get started.  I think the BeagleBones have some great hardware capabilities, but for what I normally do I’ve found it much easier to use RPis.

I’m afraid that for a simpleton like me, that I’ll probably have the same experience with the Portenta 8.

I found it easier to get started and use the Pi for the same reasons stated by others and haven’t returned to the BeagleBone after the initial encounter. There is a lot of documentation on using a Pi for different applications and the issues can usually be resolved with a quick search online. This wasn’t always the case with the BeagleBone. 

I really like the beaglebone, same as Jan, my favorite SBC. I own many of them, several colors, bbb, bbg, bbbw, bb-ai, pocket beagle, even a beagleboard xm.  The bbb is great for IoT and tinkering with linux. The adafruit “blinka” python works well. I really wanted the bb-ai to be my daily SBC but it wasn’t compatible enough with the bbb for me. The forums are really good, Drew, Jason, RCN, all smart and helpful people. As mentioned above getting things done, compared to rPi is always harder. But I learn a lot in the effort.   

Interesting… I didn’t know Blinka worked with the BeagleBone. 

I own a few BBs but don't often get around to doing a project with them. The main reason is the projects I would do involving BB are pretty big and represent a huge commitment of time. It is probably waiting for something really interesting to push priorities to the forefront.

A proper use case. This applies to all SBC's. I have yet to find a power hungry requirement to use a Beaglebone or other SBC when an MCU can deliver what I require with much less power.

Mind you that may change. I'm pondering over whether to develop a POE solution for a sensor network linked to an edge device. Beaglebone looks very suitable as the edge device, as one element of my project requires a variable voltage PWM signal... but then again when you look at the price of some of these Beaglebone capes, it makes you think twice about whether this project is worth the sunk cost... so that's my 2nd reason... cost.

For me, the rollover from µC to SBC (except for size) is when I'm

• building gateway/edge devices
• have database, or processes with a long lifecycle that are candidates for the likes of node-RED
• calculation heavy libraries like OpenCV

At that moment, the BB has an advantage if real time operation is a requirement, with the PRUs.
Although taming those is still difficult for me, after several years of practicing.

Yes, those are very good aspects. I'm rather interested in the first element (building gateway/edge devices) to get me started.

For example, does the use of Docker images make things easier or is this an over-complication. I'm assuming this is typically required if you're planning to replicate your solution on other Beaglebone boards etc. otherwise best ignore.

Then how do you configure the LAN (assuming it's Ethernet). For example, do you simply add an Ethernet switch and plug things in. What other software controls are added to handle LAN in terms of setting IP addresses etc. How do you configure firewalls and other security elements.

Also what about using gateway/edge device as a USB hub. For microcontrollers this is often an over-looked solution to create a star topology. How do you go about setting this up etc. What USB host library works best.

In relation to databases, which works best. I have a tendency to jump to a LAMP solution, but this is very overweight and it would be handy to swap out the PHP for Python etc.