Quest for a Logic Analzyer

wpsuperadmin beaglebone 7 Comments

Since I started this adventure in hardware I have wanted to get an logic analyzer. I have an older but good oscilloscope that only goes so far when it comes to digital logic signals. I could go for the Saleae, but if I am going to do that I would rather sprint for the higher end model which is an easy $400+. In the mean time I was on a quest to find a low cost option. Upon my travels of the interwebs I found a few options. There’s Dangerous Prototype’s bus pirate (which I have) or their openbench logic. There are also the microcontroller options using, say, a Teensy or STM32. Then when I came across the BeagleLogic, it …

Angstrom Yocto 1.4 from Source

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Going down the ROS road has been a long one. Full of hair pulling (if I had any) but also a huge learning experience now that it is working. Due to some of the requirements for mjpeg-server I had to compile Angstrom from source so that I can use the branch for Yocto 1.4. In turn this has lead to having to compile other components like the WiFi driver. Compiling from source isn’t too bad as it uses the same Bitbake process used for recipes. The hard part is flashing the SD Card and then flashing the eMMC. I am not sure if  I did it the “correct” way but in the end it worked. This is how I did …

BBB: Getting Setup, Updating, NTP, WiFi

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This post comes after having a few issues and deciding to redo my BeagleBone Black.Unlike the Raspberry Pi, there are few things you need to do, like loading the latest image, WiFi, and NTP. Your Beaglebone Black may not come with the latest image but after flashing there are still updates by running the opkg update and opkg upgrade. This takes a long time to run. Once complete, the SSH session will be disconnected and you can power cycle. If you have connection errors it’s a problem with DNS and you can add the feed URL to the hosts files. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beagleboard/Kyq1NQOFSns Running an upgrade is optional; it will run fine without it.  Download the latest image:http://downloads.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/beaglebone/ Download the one with …

Twitter Bootstrap and ROS

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Working on the BeagleBone Black and ROS, I started playing with the Twitter Bootstrap framework. Its a combination of CSS and Javascript libraries that make is much easier to create a website from scratch. I had heard of it and seen a few projects but never dived into it. With the new robot running ROS which has a websocket interface, I ended up trying Bootstrap. Here are few resources I used to get started plus a few screenhots of what I am working on. Once it is in a usable state I will post it on Github and a guide on how to use it. In the meantime I will try to post what I can. Get Bootstrap: http://getbootstrap.com/     Good …

BBB: WebCam Streaming

wpsuperadmin beaglebone, Tutorials 5 Comments

After figuring out the Raspberry Pi camera module and getting MJPG-Streamer working I decided to try it on the BBB(BeagleBone Black). This should be easier as you are working with USB vs the RPi camera module which isn’t full developed.  Thanks to Warren I already had a Logitech C210 camera I use for the Adaruit show and tells and video chating with family.  Any UVC camera should work, you can check out this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_USB_video_class_devices. Fastest way to check is to plug it in and see if the system sees it as a camera. # lsusb – will show all USB devices on the bus. This doesn’t mean it has the driver. # ls /dev/  – will list all the devices in …

BBB: Adventures in ROS – Cross Compiling and Recipes

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Previously I setup ROS on the BeagleBone Black and installed Angstrom build environment on Ubuntu x86 so I can compile for ARM. Now that the base is setup we can add the Beagle-Ros layer and try cross compiling a recipe with Bitbake. Wait, what… what is layers and baking recipes you speak of, are we cooking? Since we can’t compile directly on the BBB we have to do it on a x86 system. But we have to tell the compiler the architecture we want and how to package it up into a IPK that we can install on the BBB. The IPK needs to have all the right parts to make a ROS package. But you can test using just …

BBB: Adventures in ROS – Getting Setup

wpsuperadmin beaglebone, ROS, sbot3, Tutorials 3 Comments

Originally written about a month ago when I started this project. I will be posting more as I make progress. Now that I finally have a Beaglebone Black, I can start to explore and have some fun. I want to get back to working on the SBot and with all the features I want to add, I was leaning towards an onboard Linux system with an Arduino or similar to do the low level timing stuff. Originally I wasn’t going to go the ROS route and write everything from scratch, but the more I dive into ROS (Robot Operating System), this seems the way to go. So first things first, get ROS running on the BBB and see what I can do …

BeagleBone Black packs 1GHz ARM CPU, 512MB RAM for just $45

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Just got an email this morning from Newark that you can -order the BeagleBone Black. Great new price and improved hardware. By the time I checked it said 0 available, but it looks like you can still checkout. Hopefully I can get one this summer. Here is the info posted by Engadget: The BeagleBone might be just the piece of hardware for the DIY set itching to boot Linux in 10 seconds, but the freshly unveiled BeagleBone Black packs an even greater punch — and the same speedy start times — at just half the price of its predecessor. The $45 credit card-sized package totes a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 3D graphics accelerator, a pair of PRU 32-bit RISC CPUs, 2GB of built-in storage …