GNU-Linux Rapid Embedded Programming
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Systems' overview

Here is a brief introduction of the developer kits we will use into this book.

The first kit is the BeagleBone Black, which is a low-cost, community-supported development platform for developers and hobbyists. It's able to boot Linux in under 10 seconds and get started on development in few minutes with just a single USB cable. This board is widely used on several prototypes on the Internet, so it's a board that every embedded programmer should know.

The second kit is SAMA5D3 Xplained , which is a fast prototyping and evaluation platform that comes with a rich set of ready-to-use connectivity, storage peripherals, and expansion headers for easy customization. A USB device connector can be used to power the board as well as for programming and debugging it. This board is very interesting due the fact it uses a very low power-consuming CPU with good performances and with a lot of industrial-oriented peripherals.

The last (but not least) kit is Wandboard, which is a complete computer with high-performance multimedia capabilities, a good peripheral equipment and, in contrast with the other boards, it's composed by a core module and an easy interface board to customize or modify. The board is very interesting because it can be equipped with a multicore CPU and because it comes as a CPU module connected to a carrier board, which allows embedded developers to have a highly hardware-customizable device.

The BeagleBone Black

In the following image, there is a picture of the BeagleBone Black, with a credit card, so that you can have an idea about the real dimensions of the whole system:

Here are some interesting URLs where you can read some useful information regarding BeagleBone Black:

The main hardware key features of my BeagleBone Black (revision C) are reported in the following table:

The following two images show the bottom and top views of the Wandboard, where we can see some interesting things. Here are the features of the bottom side of the board:

  • The RS-232 9-pins connector COM1 can be used to access the serial console
  • The USB mini port used as USB OTG connector
  • The USB host port
  • The secondary microSD connector
  • The power connector
  • The Ethernet connector
  • The audio ports
  • The SATA connector
  • The HDMI connector

On the top side (we split the core module on the left and the interface board on the right) we have:

  • The camera interface connector
  • The primary microSD
  • The Wi-Fi chip
  • The four expansion connectors
  • The reset button can be used to reset the board

This board too can act as a PC, and that's why we will install a complete Debian distribution on it too. This board, as in the case of the BeagleBone Black, has a HDMI connector for external monitor.

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