BeagleBone boards discussion

Hello,

do you use BeagleBone boards personally or professionally?

I have a few boards in my electronics box, but haven't used them for a few years (or ever).

Looking at the beagleboard.org website, it somehow got more confusing than it used to be. It is hard to find software images and later I realized why - the OS is not compatible with all boards they way Raspberry Pi OS is.

BeagleBone Blue (ready to be used with various motors), Green, White, XM disappeared. BeagleBone Black has more than a year old OS images (Debian Buster), only newer boards have Debian Bookworm.

It is great that the boards are open-source, but with uncertain SW support, I wouldn't used them professionally. I do use Raspberry Pi professionally, because the compatibility and OS support is excellent.

What do you think?

David

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DAB 1 month ago

I have not gotten into the BBB line.

The learning curve is just too much for me at this time and the RPi line is easier for me to use.
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dougw 1 month ago in reply to DAB

I haven't used Beagleboards much, but they aren't as tough as some would suggest.

They come with a bootable OS already on the card - you don't even have to flash an SD card. They boot up right out of the box, which is actually much simpler than a Raspberry Pi. You don't even have to worry whether your SD card is "compatible". They also seem to be more forgiving about which 5V supply you use.

I don't know how others feel, but whenever I flash an OS for a Raspberry Pi, I worry about whether the Pi is actually going to boot.
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Jan Cumps 1 month ago in reply to dougw

dougw said:
I don't know how others feel, but whenever I flash an OS for a Raspberry Pi, I worry about whether the Pi is actually going to boot.

When I flash an image that I'm not confident about, I use a different SD card. Once I'm confident, the previous SD card becomes a spare one.
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kmikemoo 1 month ago in reply to dougw

dougw I could not remember why I didn't pursue the BBB until you mentioned...

dougw said:
they aren't as tough as some would suggest

I was always conscious of this and it just made experimenting a bit less fun. Now it sits in a box - waiting for a purpose.
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cstanton 1 month ago in reply to dougw

dougw said:
but they aren't as tough as some would suggest.

I killed my first beaglebone black by plugging in the LCD cape, it didn't have the correct pinmux/device tree and so fired the wrong volts over the data pins.

It never powered on again.
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cstanton 1 month ago in reply to dougw

dougw said:
but they aren't as tough as some would suggest.

I killed my first beaglebone black by plugging in the LCD cape, it didn't have the correct pinmux/device tree and so fired the wrong volts over the data pins.

It never powered on again.
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