(BeagleBone Rev C)

this is an excellent little single-board computer (SBC); the ARM CPU has really come a long way and now provides a great hardware platform for experimenting and prototyping...first, i highly recommend getting Prof. Molloy's Beaglebone booknext, your first accessory, even before a case or microsdhc card, should be an Adafruit FTDI UART USB serial cable to plug into the serial debug header pins on the BBB's topside... run your favorite terminal app (i use Zterm on the mac: 1152008N1; if you use minicom under Linux - HINT: turn off hardware handshaking!)i plugged Adafruit cable into my BBB, fired up Zterm on my Mac, then applied power via the mini-USB port... you can then watch the boot process... login as 'root' and press Enter - no password required..the Debian distro installed on the eMMC is from Oct. 2015 - obviously needs upgrading, but good enough for my initial purposes...i also have a Beaglebone Green Wireless (BBGW)... have been very pleased with that SBC as well... wifi and Bluetooth onboard with four USB 2.0 ports makes life easierhowever, i like the BBB due to its companion book by Molloy (who has also just released a similar book for the Raspberry Pi 3)...will the BBB last in the marketplace? who knows? at this point, credit must be given to a singularly talented individual who has contributed untold hours and effort to the Beaglebone family: Mr. Robert Nelson of DigiKey - you'll find weekly new releases you can flash onto the eMMC or boot via the miniSD card port (my BBGW is dual-boot)btw, it was very easy to port support for SSD1306 128x64 OLEDs to the BBGW, and i'm sure the BBB would be the same... my Beaglebone provides a readout of:- date, time of day- IP address- free memory- free SD card storage- uptime- wifi signal strength- local weather conditionsTIP: download the file 'BeagleBonePinGuide.pdf' then print it out, cut the images, then cover both sides with tape, and then tape or glue onto the side of P8 and P9 - you'll have a handy guide to the pins - for the life of me, i don't know why the Beaglebone folks didn't pick up a clue from the Arduino folks, who screen print the numbers on the PCBs (take a look at an Uno R3) - seriously simple and stupid, eh?anyhow, you'll like this little computer - it comes with a USB cable but you'll want to find a barrel-connector power supply...what can you do with this computer? well, you're limited only by your imagination... i have my BBGW already working as a printer server, a media server, etc.. you may want to craft a home-security system or home environmental alarm...

I've bought 4 of the BBB rev C boards over the last few months from three different vendors. Three boards are the same mfg - Circuitco. The other is Element14. They have all worked the same except for a small difference with Element14 which I'll mention later.It includes a USB cable (mini to standard-A). With the cable you can power it from any USB source such as a PC/laptop or an A/C adapter used by for cell phones. Beware it's a mini-USB connector on the BBB and most android phones are micro-USB, so pull the cable out of the phone A/C adapter if you can, and use the BBB cable. The other option is a dedicated A/C to 5VDC adapter with a barrel plug (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FA7DLE0). Also pick up a micro-hdmi cable to connect to a monitor.There are lots of warnings to power it off carefully. For example from the window manager, or "shutdown -h now" from a terminal window, or press the power button once and let it power off.It's a 1GHz processor and has a few power modes, normally running as low as 300MHz so it's quite cool to the touch. If you're a power user you can force it to 1GHz but maybe want to add active cooling. If it's in a case or restricted air flow that might be a problem. At the default setting it seems very fast.It should come up on Ethernet using DHCP, when you get to that point it's easy to upgrade to the latest Debian software:sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get upgradeOn the Element14 board, first fix a whacky OS issue before trying to upgrade. Look in /etc/init.d. If you see a file called "led_aging.sh" then you almost surely have the Element14 board as the Circuitco ones don't have this. Edit that file (/etc/init.d/led_aging.sh) and make sure it looks like this:#!/bin/sh -e### BEGIN INIT INFO# Provides: led_aging.sh# Required-Start: $local_fs# Required-Stop: $local_fs# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5# Default-Stop: 0 1 6# Short-Description: Start LED aging# Description: Starts LED aging (whatever that is)### END INIT INFOx=$(/bin/ps -ef | /bin/grep "[l]ed_acc")if [ ! -n "$x" -a -x /usr/bin/led_acc ]; then/usr/bin/led_acc &fi