CircuitCo/BeagleBoneBlack

BeagleBone Black Description
The BeagleBone Black is the newest member of the BeagleBoard family. It is a lower-cost, high-expansion focused BeagleBoard using a low cost Sitara XAM3359AZCZ100 Cortex A8 ARM processor from Texas Instruments. It is similar to the Beaglebone,but with some features removed and some features added. The table below gives the high points on the differences between the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black.

Production is currently ramping and we expect to be in full production the end of May. We are currently shipping small quantities of boards and we will have increasing quantities of boards shipping as we ramp production.



BeagleBone Black Features
The following table lists the key features of the BeagleBone Black.



BeagleBone Black Picture
Here is a picture of the Rev A5A board.



BeagleBone Black Key Component Locations
Here are the locations of the key components on the Rev A5A.



BeagleBone Black Connector and Switch Locations
Below is the location of the connectors and switches on the Rev A5A board. The Power Button and Battery Connections are new additions to the Rev A5A.



Terms of Use
You may use the Beaglebone Black as you choose. However, we do not support the use of the board in commercial products.The reasons for this are very simple.

We did not design the board for use in your product. We cannot therefore guarantee that it will work in all cases and over the full range of operation you expect.

We have had instances where people have done this and returned 25% of their purchases saying they would not work. Either the boards worked perfectly once received, or they had been blown up. This adds to our costs and puts a burden on our RMA operation. It also takes away from our production capacity. We do not want to see our distributors run out of boards because someone is buying up the inventory.

We are here for the community and we want to keep costs as low as possible to support the community.

All design material is open source and easily accessible. Everything is provided to build you own board. You can make changes as needed or use it as is. It is your product when you use these materials.

There is one exception to this. You may use the board in a product if we approve its use in the design and have access to all design material for our review. The use of the board must be visible to the end user and the use of the board must be part of the product advertising.

We view this as a value add arrangement. These arrangements are VERY limited and we will be VERY selective in engaging in these arrangements. The decision to engage or not is our decision.

FAQ

 * FAQ

List of frequently asked questions. Will be updated as more questions continued to be answered.

Accessories (Cables, capes, power supplies, etc.)
For a list of the confirmed working accessories please goto *Accessories Page] Covered there are cables, capes, power supplies, displays,etc. Anything that can be added to the BeagleBone Black.

Revision A5A (Production Version)
1) Boards are built using the XAM3359AZCZ100 processor. 2) PCB Change...LCD noise issue was resolved by adding 47pf bypass caps on some of the LCD signals. 3) PCB Change...Added access to four battery charger signals on the TPS65217 (TS=Temperature Sense, BAT=Battery connection,BATT_SENSE=Battery voltage pin, GND=Ground). Pins are not populated but the four signals are in a 2x2 .1x.1 spacing. 4) PCB Change...Added a power button which allows for wake up, power down, and sleep options. It also provides the ability to alert the processor before powering down to provide an orderly shutdown. It is expected that SW will be used in conjunction with the switch to control the various power modes and transitions from one to the other. By holding the button down for 8 seconds, it will force a power down of the board. 5) Added a 100K pull down resistor from J1 pin 1 to J1 pin 4 to fix the unterminated serial port issue.

Revision A4B
Added a 100K pull down resistor between pins 1 and 4 of J1 to fix the serial port issue.

Revision A4A
Incorporated the capacitors to fix the noise issue on the display

Revision A4
First prototype release version of the board. Limited distribution. One notable issue here is that the board has an AM3352 processor instead of an AM3359, despite how the part is marked. Part was mismarked as an AM3359. The SGX and PRU are not operational.

Known Issues
REV A5A...The current release of the SW does not support audio over HDMI. There will be an updated SW release to activate this feature in the near future.

REV A4,A4A...Processor is a AM3352 due to the incorrect part being marked as an AM3359.

REV A4,A4A...Does not ship with any cables. Rev A5 will ship with the USB cable.

REV A4...If you look closely, you will notice some noise in the display. This is due to a termination issue on the board caused by too many connections to the LCD data pins. This will be fixed on the A5 revision.

REV A4, A4A...Serial port can cause the system to crash if there is not a serial cable plugged into J1.

Updating the eMMC Software
It is highly recommended that you always use the latest version of the Software. For instructions on updating the Software on your BeagleBone Black go to *Software Update

Software sources

 * Bootloader: http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot/SourceCode (git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git)
 * Kernel: http://github.com/beagleboard/kernel/tree/3.8
 * Root file system: http://github.com/beagleboard/meta-beagleboard

To access the getting started guide do the following:

1) Go to http://github.com/jadonk/beaglebone-getting-started. 2) At the top of the page next to the "Clone in Windows" button, click the ZIP button. 3) Unzip that folder into a separate directory. 4) Open the readme file.

LATEST PRODUCTION FILES (A5A)
The links below are static links that always point to the latest version of the listed documents. These links can be used by distributors or users to point to the latest documentation. As documents are updated, the links will remain the same, but the actual file will be updated. This insures that you always have the latest documents and your links will always work.


 * System Reference Manual (PDF)
 * Schematic (PDF)
 * Schematic (OrCAD
 * BOM (xls)
 * PCB Files (Allegro and Gerbers)
 * All Hardware Documents

REV A4

 * Bill of Materials
 * System Reference Manual (PDF)
 * Schematic (PDF)

BeagleBone Capes
BeagleBone capes are add on boards that can be connected to the BeagleBone Black to add functionality. These capes are made by a lot of different companies and individuals. A list of capes that are in production are listed at BeagleBone Capes. If you have a cape that is in production and can be purchased and you would like it listed, please contact [mailto:support@circuitco.com Circuitco].

Most of the current capes will work with the BeagleBone Black. However, the kernel is 3.8 on the BeagleBone Black, so some work may be required to get the drivers updated for some of the capes to work. Some may not work or may require some hardware changes due to some differences in the design of the BeagleBone Black as described below.

For a list of the ones that are currently identified as compatible and incompatible, go to *BeagleBone Black Capes>br>

The onboard HDMI driver uses the LCD pins. They are still connected to the expansion header, but in some cases, they could cause an LCD cape to have some noise issues unless the cape has a buffer. A buffer should take care of this issue. If you want to use these pins as GPIO pins, you may be limited in speed due to the capacitance caused by the loadig of the pins by the HDMI driver. They should function fine in most applications.

The onboard eMMC uses the MMC1 signals. They are also connected to the expansion header. The expectation is that in order to use these signals, the eMMC device on the BeagleBone Black will need to be disabled by activating the reset line to the eMMC device. It is not clear that this will work as you have to write to the eMMC first and tell it to enable the reset. At this point in time, it is not totally clear that the reset line will do the trick. Further investigation is ongoing. This will also require booting from the uSD port. Best option is to not use the MMC1_CLK and MMC1_CMD signals at all and tie them low. Do not use these signals for anything else will trying to use the other eMMC1 lines on the expansion header. The 10 pin power expansion header has been removed. Any cape needing this connector will not be 100% compatible.

Regulatory Compliance Documents

 * FCC
 * Canada
 * CE
 * REACH

Export Information
ECCN: 5A002A1

CCATS: G141473


 * Documents

Useful Links
BeagleBoard home page