BeagleBone® Blue

BeagleBone® Blue is based on the extremely successful open-source hardware design of BeagleBone® Black, a high-expansion, maker-focused, community-supported open hardware computer, created by the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation.

BeagleBone® Blue combines the high-performance flexible WiFi/Bluetooth WiLink™ interface of the BeagleBone® Black Wireless and the robotics capabilities of the Robotics Cape from Strawson Design. BeagleBone® Blue has onboard 2 cell (2S) LiPo battery management with charger and battery level LEDs, 8 servo motor outputs, 4 DC motor drivers, 4 quadrature encoder inputs, a wide array of GPIO and serial protocol connectors including CAN, a 9 axis IMU and barometer, 4 ADC inputs, a PC USB interface, an USB 2.0 host port, a reset button, a power button, two user configurable buttons and six indicating LEDs. Built on Octavo Systems’ System-In-Package that integrates a high-performance TI ARM processor and 512MB of DDR3, BeagleBone® Blue boots Linux in around 10 seconds and gets you started developing through your web browser in less than 5 minutes with just a single USB cable.

Features

Processor: Octavo Systems OSD3358 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8
- 512MB DDR3 RAM
- Integrated power management
- 2×32-bit 200-MHz programmable real-time units (PRUs)
- ARM Cortex-M3
- On-board 4GB 8-bit eMMC flash storage programmed with Debian Linux
Connectivity and sensors
- Battery: 2-cell LiPo support with balancing, 9-18V charger input
- Wireless: 802.11bgn, Bluetooth 4.1 and BLE
- Motor control: 8 6V servo out, 4 DC motor out, 4 quadrature encoder in
- Sensors: 9 axis IMU, barometer
- Connectivity: HighSpeed USB 2.0 client and host
- User interface: 11 user programmable LEDs, 2 user programmable buttons
- Easy connect interfaces for adding additional sensors such as:
  - GPS, DSM2 radio, UARTs, SPI, I2C, 1.8V analog, 3.3V GPIOs
Software Compatibility
- Debian
- ROS
- ArduPilot
- Graphical programming with LabVIEW
- Cloud9 IDE on Node.js w/ BoneScript library
- Plus much more

Specification

Item	Description
Processor (Integrated in the OSD3358)	● AM335x 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8 ● SGX530 graphics accelerator ● NEON floating-point accelerator ● 2x PRU 32-bit 200MHz microcontrollers
Memory	● 512MB DDR3800MHZ RAM (Integrated in the OSD3358) ● 4GB 8-bit eMMC on-board flash storage ● SD/MMC Connector for microSD
Connectivity	High speed USB 2.0 Client port	Access to USB0,Client mode via microUSB
	High speed USB 2.0 Host port	Access to USB1,Type A Socket, 500mA LS/FS/HS
	WiLink1835 WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz. Supportsthe following modes:	2x2 MIMO
		AP
		SmartConfig
		STA
		Wi-Fi Direct
		Mesh over Wi-Fi based on 802.11s
	Serial port	UART0, UART1, UART5 available via 4 pin JST connectors
		UART2 available via 6 pin JST connector (EM-506 GPS style connector)
		UART4 RX available via 3 pin DSM2 connector
	WiLink 1835 Bluetooth 4.1 with BLE
	I2C1 available via 4 pin JST connector
	SPI1 CS0 (S1.1) and SPI1 CS1 (S1.2) available via 6 pin JST connectors
	CAN available via 4 pin JST connector (includes TCAN1051 CAN transceiver)
	8 GPIOs (GP0 and GPI1) available via 6 pin JST connectors
	ADC inputs 0 to 3 available via 6 pin JST connector
	3.3VDC and 5VDC power output via 4 pin JST connector
Power management	TPS65217C PMIC is used along with a separate LDO to provide power to the system (Integrated in the OSD3358)
	2 cell (2S) LiPo battery charger (powered by 9 – 18VDC DC Jack): i., 4 battery level LEDs; ii.,1 charger LED
	6VDC 4A regulator to drive servo motor outputs
Debug Support	JTAG test points
Power Source	i., microUSB USB, ii., 2 cell (2S) LiPo battery connector, iii.,9 - 18VDC DC Jack
User Input / Output	i.,Power Button; ii.,Reset Button; iii.,Boot Button; iv.,2 user configurable buttons; v.,6 user configurable LEDs;vi Power LED
Motor Control (requires power from either DC Jack or 2S battery)	i., 4 DC motor drivers, ii., 4 Quadrature encoder inputs, iii.,8 Servo motor outputs
Sensors	i., 9 axis IMU, ii.,Barometer

Application Ideas

Internet of Things
Smart House
Industrial
Automation & Process Control
Human Machine Interface
motor control
UAV control
Robot

Hardware Overview

Getting Started

Preparation

STEP1. Update the latest image

When you receive a BeagleBone®Blue from seeed, the image is already burned into the on-board eMMC. Which means you can skip this step. However we highly recommend you update the latest image.

i. Click and download the latest image from beagleboard.org.

note

The "IoT" images provide more free disk space if you don't need to use a graphical user interface (GUI).Due to sizing necessities, this download may take 30 minutes or more.

The Debian distribution is provied for the boards. The file you download will have an .img.xz extension. This is a compressed sector-by-sector image of the SD card.

ii. Plug the SD card into your PC or MAC with an SD card reader.You need an SD card with a capacity of more than 4G.

iii. Download and install Etcher

Click to download Etcher here, and burn the *.img.xz file directly to your SD card with Etcher. Or unzip the *.img.xz file to a *.img file, then burn it to SD card with other image writing tools.

Click the Plus icon to add the image you just download, the software will automatically select the SD card you plug. Then click Flash! to start burning. It will takes about 20 minutes to flash.

Then reject the SD card and Insert it into your BeagleBone® Blue.

STEP2. Power and boot

Connect the BeagleBone® Blue to your computer with the Micro-USB Cable.

caution

Please plug the USB cable gently, otherwise you may damage the interface.Please use the USB cable with 4 wires inside, the 2 wires cable can't transfer data. If you are not sure about the wire you have, you can click

here

to buy. If you want to use the Motor Control modules of BeagleBone® Blue, the power supply via USB Port is not sufficiant, you need to use DC-DC Port or 2S battery.

You'll see the power (PWR or ON) LED lit steadily. Within a minute or so, you should see the other LEDs blinking in their default configurations.

USR0 is typically configured at boot to blink in a heartbeat pattern
USR1 is typically configured at boot to light during SD (microSD) card accesses
USR2 is typically configured at boot to light during CPU activity
USR3 is typically configured at boot to light during eMMC accesses
WIFI LED is typically configured at boot to light with WiFi network association (BeagleBone® Blue only)

With the latest images, it should no longer be necessary to install drivers for your operating system to give you network-over-USB access to your Beagle. In case you are running an older image, an older operating system or need additional drivers for serial access to older boards, links to the old drivers are below.

Operating System	USB Drivers	Comments
Windows (64-bit)	64-bit installer	If in doubt, try the 64-bit installer first. ● Windows Driver Certification warning may pop up two or three times. Click "Ignore", "Install" or "Run" ● To check if you're running 32 or 64-bit Windows see this Link. ● On systems without the latest service release, you may get an error (0xc000007b). In that case, please click this Link to install and retry. ● You may need to reboot Windows. ● These drivers have been tested to work up to Windows 10.
Windows (32-bit)	32-bit installer
Mac OS X	Network Serial	Install both Network and Serial driver.
Linux	mkudevrule.sh	Driver installation isn't required, but you might find a few udev rules helpful.

STEP3. Browse to your Beagle

Using either Chrome or Firefox (Internet Explorer will NOT work), browse to the web server running on your board. It will load a presentation showing you the capabilities of the board. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the presentation.

When the boot is done, a network adapter should show up on your computer. You can click to enter the Cloud 9 IDE.

STEP4. Connect to wifi

Open a new terminal,then tap the command below

root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9# connmanctl
connmanctl> enable wifi
Enabled wifi
connmanctl> tether wifi disable
Error disabling wifi tethering: Already disabled
connmanctl> scan wifi
Scan completed for wifi
connmanctl> services
*AO seeed                wifi_f45eabf743ad_7365656564_managed_psk
    CHAIHUOMAKERS        wifi_f45eabf743ad_4348414948554f4d414b455253_managed_psk
    DIRECT-99-HP DeskJet 4670 series wifi_f45eabf743ad_4449524543542d39392d4850204465736b4a6574203436373020736572696573_managed_psk
    mostfun-5bf7         wifi_f45eabf743ad_6d6f737466756e2d35626637_managed_psk
    DIRECT-TNDESKTOP-71PTKLKmsXO wifi_f45eabf743ad_4449524543542d544e4445534b544f502d373150544b4c4b6d73584f_managed_psk
    HPKJ                 wifi_f45eabf743ad_48504b4a_managed_psk
    ChinaNet-yTGy        wifi_f45eabf743ad_4368696e614e65742d79544779_managed_psk
    GPKJ1                wifi_f45eabf743ad_47504b4a31_managed_psk
    GUMO                 wifi_f45eabf743ad_47554d4f_managed_psk
    jdsfkf               wifi_f45eabf743ad_6a6473666b66_managed_psk
connmanctl> agent on
Agent registered
connmanctl> connect wifi_f45eabf743ad_7365656564_managed_psk
Error /net/connman/service/wifi_f45eabf743ad_7365656564_managed_psk: Already connected
connmanctl> quit
root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr f4:5e:ab:f7:43:ad  
          inet addr:192.168.199.145  Bcast:192.168.199.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::f65e:abff:fef7:43ad/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST DYNAMIC  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:8920 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3531 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1166820 (1.1 MiB)  TX bytes:3352208 (3.1 MiB)

root@beaglebone:/var/lib/cloud9#

When you tap ifconfig wlan0 and the internet address is something like 192.168.199.145, congratulations, you have connected to wifi successfully.

When the BeagleBone® Blue connect to the Internet, we highly recommend you use the command below to update your BeagleBone® Blue.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

It may take a long time to update, but it is worthwhile.

Demo.1 Blink

This is a Javascript demo.

Ckick the File->New File-> button at the top light corner of Cloud9 IDE.

note

after create file, just donot forget save the file meanwhile add the file type.

copy the code below and click Run

var b = require('bonescript');

var state = b.LOW;

b.pinMode("USR0", b.OUTPUT);
b.pinMode("USR1", b.OUTPUT);
b.pinMode("USR2", b.OUTPUT);
b.pinMode("USR3", b.OUTPUT);
setInterval(toggle, 1000);

function toggle() {
    if(state == b.LOW) state = b.HIGH;
    else state = b.LOW;
    b.digitalWrite("USR2", state);
}

Then you will see the USER2 LED blink.

Demo.2 USE GPIO With Grove-LED

Step 1. Please prepare staff as the Partlist below.

BeagleBone® Blue	Grove - LED Socket Kit	Grove Adapter cable(6pin)

Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now

Step 2. Connect the LED Socket Kit to the 6 pin GPIO interface of BeagleBone® Blue.

Step 3. Open a new terminal in the Cloud9 IDE, tap the code below into this terminal.

cd /sys/class/gpio
echo 49 >export
cd gpio49
echo out >direction
while sleep 1;
do echo 0 >value;
sleep 1;
echo 1 >value;
done

Now you will see your LED light up in the heartbeat mode.

Demo.3 USE UART With Grove-GPS

Step 1. Please prepare staff as the Partlist below.

BeagleBone® Blue	Grove - LED Socket Kit	Grove Adapter cable(4pin)

Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now

Step 2. Connect the Grove-GPS sensor to the 4 pin UART1 interface of BeagleBone® Blue.

Step 3. Open a new terminal in the Cloud9 IDE, tap the code below into this terminal.

apt install tio
tio /dev/ttyO1 -b 9600

Then you will see the GPS information on the terminal as the picture shown below.

Demo.4 USE I2C With Grove-Digital Light Sensor

Step 1. Please prepare staff as the Partlist below.

BeagleBone® Blue	Grove - LED Socket Kit	Grove Adapter cable(4pin)

Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now	Get ONE Now

Step 2. Connect the Grove-Digital Light Sensor to the 4 pin I2C interface of BeagleBone® Blue.

Step 3. Open a new terminal in the Cloud9 IDE, tap the code below into this terminal.

cd /sys/bus/i2c/devices/i2c-1;
echo tsl2561 0x29 >new_device;
watch -n0 cat 1-0029/iio\:device0/in_illuminance0_input

Then you will get the light value as the picture below.

Grove Compatibility List

Grove is a modular, standardized connecter prototyping system. Grove takes a building block approach to assembling electronics. Compared to the jumper or solder based system, it is easier to connect, experiment and build and simplifies the learning system, but not to the point where it becomes dumbed down. Some of the other prototype systems out there takes the level down to building blocks. Good stuff to be learned that way, but the Grove system allows you to build real systems. It requires some learning and expertise to hook things up.

The list belew is the Grove modules that work well with BeagleBone® Blue.

SKU	Item	I/O type	Working Voltage
101020017	Grove - Rotary Angle Sensor	Analog	Can work on 1.8V
101020048	Grove - Rotary Angle Sensor(P)	Analog	Can work on 1.8V
101020036	Grove - Slide Potentiometer	Analog	Can work on 1.8V
101020031	Grove - Piezo Vibration Sensor	Analog	Can work on 1.8V
101020003	Grove - Button	Digital	3.3V
111020000	Grove - Button(P)	Digital	3.3V
111020001	Grove - Encoder	Digital	3.3V
101020004	Grove - Switch(P)	Digital	3.3V
101020025	Grove - Tilt Switch	Digital	3.3V
101020018	Grove - Water Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020005	Grove - Collision Sensor	Digital	3.3V
103020030	Grove - Mouse Encoder	Digital	3.3V
104030007	Grove - Green LED	Digital	3.3V
104030005	Grove - Red LED	Digital	3.3V
101020172	Grove - Line Finder v1.1	Digital	3.3V
101020018	Grove - Water Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020019	Grove - Temperature&Humidity Sensor Pro	Digital	3.3V
101020020	Grove - PIR Motion Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020052	Grove - GSR sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020175	Grove - IR Distance Interrupter v1.2	Digital	3.3V
101020033	Grove - Ear-clip Heart Rate Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020037	Grove - Touch Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020030	Grove - Digital Light Sensor	Digital	3.3V
101020232	Grove - Speech Recognizer v1.0	Digital	3.3V
101020005	Grove - Collision Sensor	Digital	3.3V
105020005	Grove - EL Driver	Digital	3.3V
104030009	Grove - White LED	Digital	3.3V
104030010	Grove - Blue LED	Digital	3.3V
104030005	Grove - Red LED	Digital	3.3V
104030007	Grove - Green LED	Digital	3.3V
104030014	Grove - Multi Color Flash LED (5mm)	Digital	3.3V
104020001	Grove - Variable Color LED	Digital	3.3V
104020005	Grove - LED String Light	Digital	3.3V
104020048	Grove - Chainable RGB LED v2.0	Digital	3.3V
101020004	Grove - Switch(P)	Digital	3.3V
111020000	Grove - Button(P)	Digital	3.3V
101020003	Grove - Button	Digital	3.3V
101020038	Grove - Magnetic Switch	Digital	3.3V
101020025	Grove - Tilt Switch	Digital	3.3V
103020005	Grove - Relay	Digital	3.3V
107020000	Grove - Buzzer	Digital	3.3V
103020014	Grove - Dry-Reed Relay	Digital	3.3V
105020003	Grove - Vibration Motor	Digital	3.3V
108020021	Grove - Mini Fan v1.1	Digital	3.3V
103020004	Grove - Solid State Relay	Digital	3.3V
103020007	Grove - Screw Terminal	Digital	3.3V
103020008	Grove - MOSFET	Digital	3.3V
101020212	Grove - Temp&Humi Sensor(SHT31)	I2C	3.3V
101020192	Grove - Barometer Sensor (BMP280)	I2C	3.3V
101020080	Grove - IMU 9DOF v2.0	I2C	3.3V
101020054	Grove - 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer(±16g)	I2C	3.3V
101020252	Grove - IMU 10DOF v2.0	I2C	3.3V
101020193	Grove - Barometer Sensor(BME280)	I2C	3.3V
101020082	Grove - Finger-clip Heart Rate Sensor with shell	I2C	3.3V
101020050	Grove - 3-Axis Digital Gyro	I2C	3.3V
103020024	Grove - Finger-clip Heart Rate Sensor	I2C	3.3V
101020081	Grove - 6-Axis Accelerometer&Compass v2.0	I2C	3.3V
101020071	Grove - 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer(±400g)	I2C	3.3V
104030008	Grove - OLED Display 0.96''	I2C	3.3V
104030011	Grove - OLED Display 1.12''	I2C	3.3V
103020006	Grove - I2C Hub	I2C	3.3V
103020013	Grove - I2C ADC	I2C	3.3V
113020003	Grove - GPS	UART	3.3V

FAQs

Please click here to see all BeagleBone® Blue FAQs.

Schematic Online Viewer

Resources

[Schematic] BeagleBone® Blue Schematic
[Grove] BeagleBone® Blue Grove Compatibility List.xlsx
[MoreReading] BeagleBoard Main Page
[MoreReading] BeagleBoard Getting Started
[MoreReading] Troubleshooting
[MoreReading] Hardware documentation
[MoreReading] Projects of BeagleBoard

Tech Support

Please submit any technical issue into our forum.

Features​

Specification​

Application Ideas​

Hardware Overview​

Getting Started​

Preparation​

STEP1. Update the latest image​

STEP2. Power and boot​

STEP3. Browse to your Beagle​

STEP4. Connect to wifi​

Demo.1 Blink​

Demo.2 USE GPIO With Grove-LED​

Demo.3 USE UART With Grove-GPS​

Demo.4 USE I2C With Grove-Digital Light Sensor​

Grove Compatibility List​

FAQs​

Schematic Online Viewer​

Resources​

Tech Support​

Features

Specification

Application Ideas

Hardware Overview

Getting Started

Preparation

STEP1. Update the latest image

STEP2. Power and boot

STEP3. Browse to your Beagle

STEP4. Connect to wifi

Demo.1 Blink

Demo.2 USE GPIO With Grove-LED

Demo.3 USE UART With Grove-GPS

Demo.4 USE I2C With Grove-Digital Light Sensor

Grove Compatibility List

FAQs

Schematic Online Viewer

Resources

Tech Support