Introducing the BeagleBone Blue

Our friends at BeagleBoard have just unveiled the newest dev platform in the BeagleBone family. Designed for educators, hobbyists and professionals alike, the BeagleBone Blue is an impressive, Linux-enabled robotics controller complete with an extensive set of peripherals for building mobile robots quickly and affordably.

The BeagleBone Blue features a built-in battery management with charging, PWM/PPM outputs for 6V servo motors or electronic speed controllers, DC motor drivers, quadrature encoder inputs, an onboard 9-axis IMU and barometer, as well as an assortment of GPIO and serial protocol connectors including CAN,4 ADC inputs, a PC USB interface, a USB 2.0 host port, a reset button, a power button, two user configurable buttons and eleven user configurable LED indicators.

An Octavo Systems OSD3358 System-In-Package is the brains of the operation, integrating a TI AM3358 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with 512MB of DDR3, 4GB 8-bit flash storage, and power management. The TI AM3358 also has a pair of 32-bit programmable real-time units running at 200MHz, which comes in handy for robotic applications.

Thanks to its pre-configured Wi-Fi access point, simply connect a battery and open a web browser to start coding your BeagleBone Blue. The board is compatible with Debian, ROS, and ArduPilot software, in addition to Cloud9 IDE on Node.js and other graphical programming options.

Ready to get your robot or autonomous vehicle moving fast? You can read more about the latest BeagleBone in the team’s blog, and buy yours on element14 here!