BeagleBone

BeagleBone

Introduction

The BeagleBone Black is a $45 Linux desktop / microcontrollerThe BeagleBone is like a combination between a microcontroller (like Arduino) and a small Linux desktop. It is most similar to a Raspberry Pi, but with more pinouts and a faster processor. The BeagleBone has several variants, the most recent edition being the BeagleBone Black (aka BBB), which retails for $45 USD. 

It is a great choice if you are going to add image or video processing to your robot. An Arduino is nowhere near powerful enough to handle images. Arduino, however, is extremely easy to use and extremely well documented with a massive community. 

Against a Raspberry Pi, it's a harder choice to make. It's more expensive, but has a processor that's faster and capable of running ARMv7 operating systems like Ubuntu and Android, where a Raspberry Pi is substantially more limited. A Raspberry Pi is easier to use and has a much larger community behind it, but the BeagleBone has some powerful hardware features. If you are undecided, the good news is that they are both really cheap, both run Python, and have very similar ways of accessing GPIO (the /sys/ directory), so really you could change your mind midway through a project and not face too much of a setback.

Evan Boldt Sat, 06/01/2013 - 17:44

BeagleBone Black with Angstrom

BeagleBone Black with Angstrom

Introduction

Angstrom Linux is what ships on the BeagleBones. It's kind of terrible because I think everyone when they first get it will say, oh I should run opkg upgrade so that everything is up to date. Guess what? That breaks the boot. It won't startup anymore. I don't know how to fix it or what goes wrong. You'll get three LED's on, no USB connection on either the mass media or network, and it'll never come online on the LAN because it won't start up. 

If you want things to be up to date, you may want to install Ubuntu.

On the other hand, it is pretty lightweight and is pre-configured in a lot of ways that other distros don't have by default. For example, the cloud9 editor is kind of nice.

Installing Images

Whether you have a BeagleBone or BeagleBone Black, you can use the Angstrom-Cloud9-IDE-GNOME-eglibc-ipk*.img.xz

They both run ARM7 and the image has the NEON optimization. The image for the BeagleBone Black might have additional features, but it's the same Angstrom with less features as far as I can tell.

sudo su
xz -cd ./Angstrom-Cloud9-IDE-GNOME-****.img.xz > /dev/sdd

URLs

Check out the tutorial page on http://beaglebone.local/. There are some neat node.js buttons on http://beaglebone.local/bonescript.html

The very cool Cloud9 IDE is available on http://beaglebone.local:3000/

If you're on windows and don't have an SSH client that you like, there's GateOne SSH client availble in-browser at https://beaglebone.local/

If those URLs don't work, then you might try replacing beaglebone.local with 192.168.7.2. If that doesn't work, there might be something wrong with your installation. You could re-flash another image.

Tweaks

Disable GNOME autostart

If you want a graphical environment to develop and test on, that's fine, but a lot of the time your deployment will be headless. Well, you can have your cake and eat it too.

update-rc.d -f gdm remove
systemctl disable gdm
mv /lib/systemd/system/gdm.service ~/gdm.backup.service
systemctl --system daemon-reload

There are probably more steps there than are necessary, but I couldn't get it to stay down for a while, so try them all.

Then if you want to start your graphical environment at any point, just login and run gdm

Install locate

Locate is an awesome tool for searching the filesystem really quickly.

opkg install findutils
updatedb

Run a Script on Startup (cron)

nano ~/startup.sh
#put something in /tmp/ so we can see if this ran
touch /tmp/WINNING
#turn off the heartbeat
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr0/brightness
chmod +x ~/startup.sh
env EDITOR=nano crontab -e
@reboot /bin/bash /home/root/startup.sh

Run a Script on Startup (systemd)

Angstrom uses systemd, so it has a few things different than a Debian/Ubuntu system. Not sure why you'd want to do it this way. It's a lot harder than cron.

First make a script you want to run on startup. You might just use this bash file to launch all your other processes. If you do, throw a & at the end of each line to run them in background.

nano ~/mystartup.sh
#!/bin/bash
touch /tmp/WINNING
chmod +x ~/mystartup.sh

After making an executable script, make a service for systemd to use.

nano /lib/systemd/system/mystartup.service
[Unit]
Description=My own script to run on startup
ConditionPathExists=|/usr/bin After=local-fs.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/home/root/mystartup.sh
systemctl --system daemon-reload
systemctl enable mystartup.service

To load it and test it, try:

systemctl start mystartup.service
ls -l /tmp/WINNING
journalctl

Note that journalctl is apparently the new way of doing a "less /var/log/syslog"

Benchmarks

Compare the benchmarks to those of the Raspberry Pi (wiki) using this package (zip). Also compare to my Ubuntu BBB tests.

Processor Info

root@beaglebone:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor	: 0
model name	: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
BogoMIPS	: 990.68
Features	: swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls 
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x3
CPU part	: 0xc08
CPU revision	: 2

Hardware	: Generic AM33XX (Flattened Device Tree)
Revision	: 0000
Serial		: 0000000000000000

Dhrystone

At 3059570 dhrystones per second, the BBB with Angstrom is almost 4 times faster than a Raspberry Pi (809061) with Raspbian on it. However, it is about 10% slower than it could be with Ubuntu on it (3319960).

##########################################

Dhrystone Benchmark, Version 2.1 (Language: C or C++)
Optimisation    Opt 3 32 Bit
Register option not selected

       10000 runs   0.01 seconds 
      100000 runs   0.11 seconds 
      200000 runs   0.18 seconds 
      400000 runs   0.13 seconds 
      800000 runs   0.26 seconds 
     1600000 runs   0.52 seconds 
     3200000 runs   1.05 seconds 
     6400000 runs   2.09 seconds 

Final values (* implementation-dependent):

Int_Glob:      O.K.  5  Bool_Glob:     O.K.  1
Ch_1_Glob:     O.K.  A  Ch_2_Glob:     O.K.  B
Arr_1_Glob[8]: O.K.  7  Arr_2_Glob8/7: O.K.     6400010
Ptr_Glob->              Ptr_Comp:       *    94584
  Discr:       O.K.  0  Enum_Comp:     O.K.  2
  Int_Comp:    O.K.  17 Str_Comp:      O.K.  DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, SOME STRING
Next_Ptr_Glob->         Ptr_Comp:       *    94584 same as above
  Discr:       O.K.  0  Enum_Comp:     O.K.  1
  Int_Comp:    O.K.  18 Str_Comp:      O.K.  DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, SOME STRING
Int_1_Loc:     O.K.  5  Int_2_Loc:     O.K.  13
Int_3_Loc:     O.K.  7  Enum_Loc:      O.K.  1  
Str_1_Loc:                             O.K.  DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, 1'ST STRING
Str_2_Loc:                             O.K.  DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, 2'ND STRING


From File /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
model name	: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
BogoMIPS	: 297.40
Features	: swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls 
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x3
CPU part	: 0xc08
CPU revision	: 2

Hardware	: Generic AM33XX (Flattened Device Tree)
Revision	: 0000
Serial		: 0000000000000000


From File /proc/version
Linux version 3.8.13 (koen@rrMBP) (gcc version 4.7.3 20130205 (prerelease) (Linaro GCC 4.7-2013.02-01) ) #1 SMP Mon May 20 17:07:58 CEST 2013


Nanoseconds one Dhrystone run:       326.84
Dhrystones per Second:              3059570
VAX  MIPS rating =                  1741.36

OpenSSL

Again, the BBB on Angstrom proves to be significantly faster than the Raspberry Pi. About 4 times faster or way more. However, the comparison to the BBB with Ubuntu are actually the opposite. Angstrom is faster by about 10%. The difference? No NEON FPU optimizations on Ubuntu!

root@beaglebone:~# openssl speed;
OpenSSL 1.0.0j 10 May 2012 built on: Wed Apr 3 21:06:55 CEST 2013 options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,int) des(idx,risc1,2,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(idx) compiler: arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc -march=armv7-a -mthumb-interwork -mfloat-abi=softfp -mfpu=neon -mtune=cortex-a8 --sysroot=/build/v2012.12/build/tmp-angstrom_v2012_12-eglibc/sysroots/olinuxino-a13 -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -O2 -pipe -g -feliminate-unused-debug-types -Wall -DHAVE_CRYPTODEV -DUSE_CRYPTODEV_DIGESTS The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes md2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 mdc2 2200.18k 2903.10k 3079.22k 3123.71k 3131.59k md4 5415.82k 20091.55k 62372.30k 131555.57k 194939.46k md5 4617.55k 16804.97k 50871.15k 102349.66k 145803.90k hmac(md5) 7419.73k 25105.91k 67753.84k 117279.85k 149212.21k sha1 4689.06k 15086.80k 37111.10k 58582.77k 70082.56k rmd160 4321.96k 13657.71k 33189.03k 51514.42k 61322.19k rc4 51274.46k 57055.08k 58599.86k 59068.36k 59196.82k des cbc 15641.44k 16844.09k 17096.95k 17186.71k 17143.13k des ede3 5966.27k 6118.46k 6149.65k 6173.80k 6179.74k idea cbc 15220.99k 16040.11k 16331.43k 16378.86k 16340.16k seed cbc 21797.27k 23300.32k 23793.27k 23880.09k 23956.81k rc2 cbc 13306.59k 14101.91k 14234.37k 14302.09k 14325.00k rc5-32/12 cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 blowfish cbc 27004.49k 29706.03k 30572.82k 30746.37k 30866.58k cast cbc 26993.30k 29720.81k 30501.50k 30798.77k 30854.70k aes-128 cbc 27466.35k 29851.57k 30765.55k 31029.95k 31033.71k aes-192 cbc 23934.83k 25819.16k 26408.67k 26625.71k 26651.49k aes-256 cbc 21310.20k 22657.92k 23204.56k 23356.48k 23362.27k camellia-128 cbc 28544.43k 31191.34k 31965.01k 32352.21k 32362.51k camellia-192 cbc 23092.30k 24841.16k 25474.06k 25586.30k 25650.86k camellia-256 cbc 23167.57k 24852.70k 25346.39k 25612.71k 25614.38k sha256 4648.14k 11368.65k 21020.95k 26654.38k 29045.86k sha512 969.92k 3858.49k 5574.64k 7650.79k 8548.17k whirlpool 1872.39k 3901.80k 6372.60k 7553.37k 7996.82k aes-128 ige 25801.92k 28261.82k 29148.35k 29319.28k 28924.91k aes-192 ige 22733.70k 24548.07k 25245.12k 25323.28k 25036.29k aes-256 ige 20328.61k 21757.95k 22204.79k 22366.69k 22090.91k sign verify sign/s verify/s rsa 512 bits 0.002286s 0.000191s 437.4 5244.1 rsa 1024 bits 0.011637s 0.000559s 85.9 1790.5 rsa 2048 bits 0.068425s 0.001828s 14.6 546.9 rsa 4096 bits 0.444783s 0.006260s 2.2 159.7 sign verify sign/s verify/s dsa 512 bits 0.001946s 0.002152s 513.9 464.7 dsa 1024 bits 0.005539s 0.006413s 180.5 155.9 dsa 2048 bits 0.018094s 0.021652s 55.3 46.2 sign verify sign/s verify/s 160 bit ecdsa (secp160r1) 0.0011s 0.0048s 935.6 210.4 192 bit ecdsa (nistp192) 0.0011s 0.0052s 873.1 192.9 224 bit ecdsa (nistp224) 0.0015s 0.0069s 679.8 144.8 256 bit ecdsa (nistp256) 0.0020s 0.0099s 509.9 100.8 384 bit ecdsa (nistp384) 0.0041s 0.0218s 245.0 45.8 521 bit ecdsa (nistp521) 0.0093s 0.0490s 107.4 20.4 163 bit ecdsa (nistk163) 0.0040s 0.0081s 247.2 124.2 233 bit ecdsa (nistk233) 0.0078s 0.0154s 128.3 65.1 283 bit ecdsa (nistk283) 0.0119s 0.0276s 84.3 36.2 409 bit ecdsa (nistk409) 0.0283s 0.0632s 35.3 15.8 571 bit ecdsa (nistk571) 0.0634s 0.1443s 15.8 6.9 163 bit ecdsa (nistb163) 0.0040s 0.0087s 252.3 115.5 233 bit ecdsa (nistb233) 0.0076s 0.0166s 130.8 60.3 283 bit ecdsa (nistb283) 0.0118s 0.0302s 84.6 33.2 409 bit ecdsa (nistb409) 0.0284s 0.0718s 35.2 13.9 571 bit ecdsa (nistb571) 0.0637s 0.1660s 15.7 6.0 op op/s 160 bit ecdh (secp160r1) 0.0041s 246.8 192 bit ecdh (nistp192) 0.0044s 229.8 224 bit ecdh (nistp224) 0.0057s 174.7 256 bit ecdh (nistp256) 0.0083s 121.1 384 bit ecdh (nistp384) 0.0177s 56.6 521 bit ecdh (nistp521) 0.0406s 24.6 163 bit ecdh (nistk163) 0.0039s 255.5 233 bit ecdh (nistk233) 0.0075s 132.8 283 bit ecdh (nistk283) 0.0136s 73.6 409 bit ecdh (nistk409) 0.0312s 32.1 571 bit ecdh (nistk571) 0.0718s 13.9 163 bit ecdh (nistb163) 0.0042s 236.7 233 bit ecdh (nistb233) 0.0082s 121.3 283 bit ecdh (nistb283) 0.0152s 65.7 409 bit ecdh (nistb409) 0.0357s 28.0 571 bit ecdh (nistb571) 0.0825s 12.1 
Evan Boldt Sun, 06/02/2013 - 02:52

BeagleBone Black with Ubuntu

BeagleBone Black with Ubuntu

Introduction

The BeagleBone Black is a very powerful and affordable microcontroller - superior to an Arduino Uno in a lot of ways. It's fast enough to be used as a desktop computer, yet it has more pinouts than an Uno. With the BeagleBone Black priced at $45, it's really a great value compared to an Arduino ($35) or even a Raspberry Pi ($35).

An Arduino, while power-efficient and reliable, is incapable of high performance use cases like image processing. Even the ARM based Arduino Due is thousands of times slower than the BeagleBone Black. It can't even parse a JPEG (the library won't fit in the flash). A BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi, however, can easily process live streams from USB webcams and OpenCV.

The BeagleBone Black is significantly faster and more capable than the comperable $35 Raspberry Pi Model B. Both have the same RAM, HDMI out, and Ethernet, but the BeagleBone Black has superior IO (more and faster) and has a faster processor capable of running Ubuntu, where the Raspberry Pi cannot due to its older architecture. Remember, Raspberry Pi was intended to be an educational tool to teach kids to program, not to help you hack together a robot. The BBB has two extra processors dedicated to effectively manage the pinouts.

The downside? The pre-installed OS (Angstrom) at this point in time will break if you do a package upgrade. Not only will it never boot again once it finishes updating, but it also uses too much of the /tmp/ filesystem and stalls halfway though. You can run Ubuntu on it, but there isn't much of a point, since it's basically incapable of having a desktop UI or using OpenGL as far as I can tell. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible. In fact, LXDE and XFCE sort of work.  This leads to the bigger problem. The documentation, support, and community behind BeagleBone is nowhere near that of the Raspberry Pi, let alone Arduino (which has the best by far).

Setup

A lof of this information is based on the BeagleBone Ubuntu wiki.

Installing to an SD Card

From a Linux computer that has the target microSD card in, download a recent .tar.xz from this wiki or our upload of the 13.04 image, in case theirs disappears. Then run these bash commands:

tar xJf ubuntu-13.04-console-armhf-2013-05-18.tar.xz
cd ubuntu-13.04-console-armhf-2013-05-18
sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdd --uboot bone_dtb --svideo-ntsc --swap_file 1024

Be sure to change /dev/sdd to whatever the SD card is on your computer. If you are using a european TV/monitor, you should set it to PAL instead of NTSC. It seems to default to PAL though. If you get flickering, also consider finding a more powerful power supply for the BeagleBone. Supposedly, it needs 500mA of 5V, but it seems to like to have more than that available.

The copy process can take a while - especially the rootfs file sync phase. Be patient.

Boot

Plug in the microSD card with the contacts facing down. It sticks out about an eigth of an inch when all the way in. It doesn't quite seem to be in all the way, but it is.

Push down the user boot button. Keep it down while plugging it in. The boot button is the button right next to the microSD card slot. After pressing the button while powering on the first time, it will not be necessary again.

Eventually, you'll see the penguin at the right and you can stop holding the button down. If you pay attention to the LEDs, you can see when the OS is loaded too.

SSH Access

You can either get a keyboard, micro HDMI to HDMI cable, HDMI TV or monitor, and a mini usb power cable, or you can just plug it into a desktop with the mini USB cable.

To access the Ubuntu loaded BeagleBone Black by SSH over USB, use this command:

ssh ubuntu@192.168.7.2

The password will be temppwd. To change the password, just run "passwd" once you log in.

Internet

In order to access the internet do download the extra packages, you'll need to plug in an ethernet cable. Theoretically, you should be able to forward the desktop's connection with a bridge, but it is probably more trouble than it's worth. Network Manager on ubuntu has an easy way to share connections though. "Edit connections..." then edit the BeagleBone's USB connection (probably Wired Connection 2). In the IPv4 tab, change the "method" to "shared". I assume something similar can be done on Windows.

Swapfile

Add a swapfile, if it wasn't by your install process.

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/swap/   
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/cache/swap/swapfile bs=1M count=1024
sudo chmod 0600 /var/cache/swap/swapfile 
sudo mkswap /var/cache/swap/swapfile 
sudo swapon /var/cache/swap/swapfile

sudo nano /etc/fstab
/var/cache/swap/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

Install Packages?

There are a few packages provided in the /boot/ directory.  They might already be installed, but I think they are not installed by default due to licensing or something.

cd /boot/uboot/tools/pkgs
sudo bash ti-omapconf.sh
sudo bash imx-sdma-firmware.sh
sudo bash ti-omapdrm.sh
sudo bash ti-tidspbridge.sh
sudo bash ti-uim.sh
sudo bash ti-wlink-firmware.sh

XFCE Graphics (Don't Bother)

It's easy to install the graphical environment. It might be impossible to get it to work though. The installation will use up an additional 1 GB of space on top of the default install size of 0.5 GB, so it may not be a great idea to do on a 2GB card. 

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
sudo shutdown -r now

This install takes about an hour, and includes really a full desktop linux desktop. This is probably more than you want.

Mine seems to crash after a few seconds of being booted into a graphical environment. It doesn't matter what environment I choose either. I've tried XFCE, LXDE, and Unity under LightDM and LXDM. XFCE comes the closest to staying on the longest. Unity does not work due to a lack of OpenGL.  There do not seem to be any drivers for it available yet.

I don't think Unity will work at all, since compiz can't find OpenGL extensions, but the lightdm login will come up, as you can see. Before you get too down on not having a familiar environment, don't worry about it! Just get a good way of syncing between the BeagleBone Black and your desktop. That way you can keep your faster and familiar computing environment and keep your BeagleBone slim and specialized for what you're actually using it for.

Sync

I chose BitTorrent Sync due to the simplicity to set up. It isn't open source, but neither is Dropbox and a lot of us still use it. It is one of the few sync options that offers very easy to install ARM-compatible builds. There is a trick to setting it up though, you have to add a symlink first.

wget http://btsync.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/btsync_arm.tar.gz
tar xzf btsync_arm.tar.gz
rm btsync_arm.tar.gz LICENSE.TXT
sudo ln -s /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/ld-linux.so.3 /lib/ld-linux.so.3
./btsync

Then just take a browser and visit http://192.168.7.2:8888/ if it is connected by USB, or http//arm.local:8888/ if on LAN.

If you are more concerned about privacy and open source software, maybe check out building your own with rsync, or look at lipsync, which uses rsync and some filesystem monitoring.

Bash Autocomplete

Autocomplete when tab is pressed (practically necessary!). It is for some reason necessary to install it and then reinstall it, which is definitely odd, but whatever.

sudo apt-get install bash-completion
sudo apt-get install --reinstall bash-completion

Locale

Set your locale, so it stops bugging you about it being set to C by default.

sudo nano /etc/default/locale
LANG=en_US.utf8

sudo locale-gen en_US.utf8

Local Bin Folder

Add a home bin directory

mkdir ~/bin
nano ~/.bashrc
#append to the bottom to automatically add home bin to the path
PATH=$PATH:/$HOME/bin/

Dim the Lights

Put some masking tape or painter's tape over those 4 LED's because they are really annoyingly bright. That might sound like a joke, but if you have it blinking in the corner of your eye non-stop for hours it will actually start to give you a headache. They never stop blinking either. One of them is the Linux Kernel Heartbeat light.

They're brighter than normal LEDs too. Why? Dunno. They're blue? Blue LEDs are usually dimmer though. It's hard to even take a picture of the board while it's on! I really can't believe how rediculously annoying they are...

Alternatively, instead of putting tape over it, you could run this to actually turn them off. That's probably the right way to do this. Really, it's just the heartbeat that's annoying, but you can turn off the rest too if you want.

# just turn off the heartbeat
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr0/brightness
# get rid of the rest too
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr1/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr2/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr3/brightness

If you're worried you won't be able to tell if it crashes, just look at the LAN leds or any of the other 3 indicators. They're always blinking too.

Run a script at startup

So here is a really neat trick:

nano /home/ubuntu/bin/startup.sh
#! /bin/bash
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr0/brightness
chmod +x /home/ubuntu/bin/startup.shsudo su
sudo crontab -e
@reboot /bin/bash /home/ubuntu/bin/startup.sh

Isn't cron cool?

Set Up Python

GPIO is done essentially by just writting and writing to the special /sys/ folder. Check out this github project for a more familiar interface for it.

Allow python to interface with i2c.

sudo apt-get install python-smbus

Benchmarks

Compare the benchmarks to those of the Raspberry Pi (wiki) using this package (zip). Also compare to my Angstrom BBB tests.

Dhrystone

Running whetstone on the Beaglebone Black with Ubuntu compiled with just -O3 yields 3,319,960 dhrystones per second. A Raspberry Pi nets 809,061.5. The BeagleBone was able to do 4.1 times more operations per second. This is also 10% faster than the same BeagleBone Black with Angstrom, the default Linux distrobution, which ran at 3,059,570. The same test ran on a desktop computer with an AMD Phenom II x4 965 gets around 25,062,657. That's more 10% of a pretty powerful desktop, which I think is somewhat impressive.

gcc dhry_1.c dhry_2.c dhry.h cpuidc.c -lm  -O3 -o dhry
./dhry
##########################################

Dhrystone Benchmark, Version 2.1 (Language: C or C++)

Optimisation Opt 3 32 Bit
Register option not selected

10000 runs 0.01 seconds
100000 runs 0.10 seconds
200000 runs 0.20 seconds
400000 runs 0.21 seconds
800000 runs 0.24 seconds
1600000 runs 0.48 seconds
3200000 runs 0.96 seconds
6400000 runs 1.93 seconds
12800000 runs 3.86 seconds

Final values (* implementation-dependent):

Int_Glob: O.K. 5 Bool_Glob: O.K. 1
Ch_1_Glob: O.K. A Ch_2_Glob: O.K. B
Arr_1_Glob[8]: O.K. 7 Arr_2_Glob8/7: O.K. 12800010
Ptr_Glob-> Ptr_Comp: * 94584
Discr: O.K. 0 Enum_Comp: O.K. 2
Int_Comp: O.K. 17 Str_Comp: O.K. DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, SOME STRING
Next_Ptr_Glob-> Ptr_Comp: * 94584 same as above
Discr: O.K. 0 Enum_Comp: O.K. 1
Int_Comp: O.K. 18 Str_Comp: O.K. DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, SOME STRING
Int_1_Loc: O.K. 5 Int_2_Loc: O.K. 13
Int_3_Loc: O.K. 7 Enum_Loc: O.K. 1
Str_1_Loc: O.K. DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, 1'ST STRING
Str_2_Loc: O.K. DHRYSTONE PROGRAM, 2'ND STRING


From File /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
BogoMIPS : 198.72
Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x3
CPU part : 0xc08
CPU revision : 2

Hardware : Generic AM33XX (Flattened Device Tree)
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000


From File /proc/version
Linux version 3.8.13-bone18 (root@imx6q-sabrelite-1gb) (gcc version 4.7.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.3-1ubuntu1) ) #1 SMP Thu May 16 21:04:48 UTC 2013


Nanoseconds one Dhrystone run: 301.21
Dhrystones per Second: 3319960
VAX MIPS rating = 1889.56

OpenSSL

This benchmark shows numbers that are 2-10x faster than those on the Raspberry Pi . However, Angstrom is faster by about 10%. The difference? Perhaps this package has no NEON FPU optimizations on Ubuntu. I also believe the BeagleBone has a special cryptography processor which might not be taken advantage of in this test. The Dhrystone test was compiled, this OpenSSL and is probably missing some optimization argument that the Angstrom package had.

OpenSSL 1.0.1c 10 May 2012
built on: Tue Mar 19 19:30:47 UTC 2013
options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: cc -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -DOPENSSL_NO_TLS1_2_CLIENT -DOPENSSL_MAX_TLS1_2_CIPHER_LENGTH=50 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
md2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
mdc2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
md4 7130.44k 28511.10k 79135.70k 142166.02k 185522.60k
md5 6735.29k 22954.62k 61948.74k 107186.00k 136339.07k
hmac(md5) 6964.12k 23296.17k 62451.29k 107847.13k 136203.64k
sha1 6698.12k 20571.23k 46889.18k 69689.54k 81622.11k
rmd160 5756.90k 16751.42k 36409.79k 51751.17k 58911.17k
rc4 64964.35k 72925.41k 76732.39k 77427.41k 77922.96k
des cbc 17184.97k 18237.05k 18618.82k 18752.60k 18739.89k
des ede3 6574.42k 6735.54k 6804.62k 6794.36k 6817.50k
idea cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
seed cbc 21670.10k 22990.09k 23573.99k 23608.01k 23745.80k
rc2 cbc 12701.57k 13378.96k 13576.59k 13579.82k 13613.01k
rc5-32/12 cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
blowfish cbc 27309.24k 29968.99k 30775.05k 31125.82k 31069.32k
cast cbc 26848.41k 29213.50k 30071.18k 30396.65k 30340.54k
aes-128 cbc 37250.31k 40851.65k 42063.71k 42548.23k 42491.55k
aes-192 cbc 31962.79k 34354.75k 35324.32k 35672.31k 35698.43k
aes-256 cbc 28581.52k 30449.05k 31271.64k 31611.70k 31551.61k
camellia-128 cbc 26676.56k 28496.71k 29167.33k 29344.13k 29277.50k
camellia-192 cbc 21532.49k 22621.60k 23114.57k 23195.84k 23143.08k
camellia-256 cbc 21538.22k 22695.82k 23031.27k 23209.75k 23145.82k
sha256 9965.51k 24221.62k 43539.86k 54826.95k 58500.20k
sha512 4207.69k 16757.43k 25271.78k 35145.54k 39798.78k
whirlpool 1579.78k 3265.95k 5289.78k 6313.06k 6654.97k
aes-128 ige 34714.63k 38142.11k 39508.96k 39855.59k 39798.33k
aes-192 ige 29820.66k 32531.41k 33528.70k 33661.52k 33790.63k
aes-256 ige 27038.57k 29091.23k 29929.06k 30019.98k 30137.21k
ghash 49881.45k 60961.91k 65236.19k 66256.57k 66803.29k
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.001070s 0.000107s 934.7 9379.4
rsa 1024 bits 0.006119s 0.000332s 163.4 3009.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.039563s 0.001208s 25.3 827.6
rsa 4096 bits 0.285143s 0.004634s 3.5 215.8
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.001092s 0.001191s 915.9 839.5
dsa 1024 bits 0.003264s 0.003762s 306.3 265.8
dsa 2048 bits 0.011669s 0.013505s 85.7 74.0
sign verify sign/s verify/s
160 bit ecdsa (secp160r1) 0.0006s 0.0024s 1577.7 416.5
192 bit ecdsa (nistp192) 0.0008s 0.0033s 1219.0 301.0
224 bit ecdsa (nistp224) 0.0010s 0.0045s 959.1 224.2
256 bit ecdsa (nistp256) 0.0013s 0.0058s 770.0 171.2
384 bit ecdsa (nistp384) 0.0030s 0.0155s 331.5 64.4
521 bit ecdsa (nistp521) 0.0064s 0.0351s 156.9 28.5
163 bit ecdsa (nistk163) 0.0020s 0.0067s 495.7 149.8
233 bit ecdsa (nistk233) 0.0042s 0.0122s 238.0 82.2
283 bit ecdsa (nistk283) 0.0064s 0.0219s 155.9 45.6
409 bit ecdsa (nistk409) 0.0171s 0.0488s 58.4 20.5
571 bit ecdsa (nistk571) 0.0409s 0.1130s 24.4 8.9
163 bit ecdsa (nistb163) 0.0020s 0.0072s 505.1 138.4
233 bit ecdsa (nistb233) 0.0042s 0.0134s 239.8 74.5
283 bit ecdsa (nistb283) 0.0064s 0.0247s 155.1 40.5
409 bit ecdsa (nistb409) 0.0172s 0.0549s 58.3 18.2
571 bit ecdsa (nistb571) 0.0410s 0.1288s 24.4 7.8
op op/s
160 bit ecdh (secp160r1) 0.0020s 501.6
192 bit ecdh (nistp192) 0.0028s 358.5
224 bit ecdh (nistp224) 0.0037s 272.1
256 bit ecdh (nistp256) 0.0050s 201.4
384 bit ecdh (nistp384) 0.0130s 77.2
521 bit ecdh (nistp521) 0.0295s 33.9
163 bit ecdh (nistk163) 0.0033s 301.6
233 bit ecdh (nistk233) 0.0060s 167.9
283 bit ecdh (nistk283) 0.0109s 91.5
409 bit ecdh (nistk409) 0.0241s 41.4
571 bit ecdh (nistk571) 0.0559s 17.9
163 bit ecdh (nistb163) 0.0036s 281.4
233 bit ecdh (nistb233) 0.0066s 152.2
283 bit ecdh (nistb283) 0.0122s 81.9
409 bit ecdh (nistb409) 0.0274s 36.5
571 bit ecdh (nistb571) 0.0638s 15.7

7z

A Raspberry Pi would be expected to run 321 MIPS. Ubuntu BeagleBone gets 502 with the standard package, and 510 if you compile p7zip, showing that compiling is not really worth the effort unless it is a very important library that is proving to be a bottleneck for you.

ubuntu@arm:~$ 7z b

7-Zip 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,1 CPU)

RAM size:     495 MB,  # CPU hardware threads:   1
RAM usage:    419 MB,  # Benchmark threads:      1

Dict        Compressing          |        Decompressing
      Speed Usage    R/U Rating  |    Speed Usage    R/U Rating
       KB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS  |     KB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS

22:     345    99    341    336  |     7291    99    662    658
23:     329    98    341    336  |     7176    99    661    657
24:     315    98    344    339  |     7061    99    659    655
25:     304    98    354    347  |     6929    99    655    651
----------------------------------------------------------------
Avr:           98    345    339                99    659    655
Tot:           99    502    497

Switching Back to Angstrom

To revert to the default install, the image it shipped with is available here: http://beagleboard.org/latest-images. I like the one that comes with GNOME though.

# backup
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX bs=8M | xz -c > myBeagleUbuntu.img.xz
# re-image
xz -cd Angstrom-Cloud9-IDE-GNOME-eglibc-ipk-v2012.12-beaglebone-2013.04.13.img.xz > /dev/sdX
Evan Boldt Tue, 05/28/2013 - 22:13

BeagleBone Black Built-In LEDs

BeagleBone Black Built-In LEDs

About each LED

There are four user LEDs on the BeagleBone. You can modify them, but they each have their own purposes by default. USER0 is the closest to the top in the picture at the right, and USER3 is the bottom one closest to the ethernet port.

 

  • USER0 is the heartbeat indicator from the Linux kernel.
  • USER1 turns on when the SD card is being accessed
  • USER2 is an activity indicator. It turns on when the kernel is not in the idle loop.
  • USER3 turns on when the onboard eMMC is being accessed.

You can change each of the LED's behaviors at the following locations:

/sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr0/
/sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr1/
/sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr2/
/sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr3/

Yeah, the LEDs are blue, but the folder is called green for some reason. Also, those colons make BASH freak out a bit, so pay attention to escape them.

If you explore those directories, things start to get interesting.

First, any write operatoins will require root privileges. The use of IO redirection will require that you be the root account, not just use sudo. This is only really applicable if you are not using Angstrom, where the root account is the default account.

root@beaglebone:~# cd /sys/class/leds/beaglebone\:green\:usr0/
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0# ls -l 
total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:08 brightness lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 00:08 device -> ../../../gpio-leds.8 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:08 max_brightness drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jan 1 00:08 power lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 1 00:08 subsystem -> ../../../../../class/leds -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:08 trigger -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Jan 1 00:00 uevent

root@beaglebone:/sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0# cat trigger
none nand-disk mmc0 mmc1 timer oneshot [heartbeat] backlight gpio cpu0 default-on transient

You can see that USER0 is in hearbeat trigger mode. I find that heartbeat to be annoying (it's so bright!). Let's get rid of it

Take Over a USER LED

You can change what LED blinks to indicate by changing the trigger. For example, GPIO would indicate GPIO activity.

In order to change these, you will need to become root by either using sudo bash or sudo su

Sudo alone will not help because of the I/O redirection used in these commands. You could do sudo nano trigger instead.

root@beaglebone:/sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0# echo none > trigger
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0# cat trigger
[none] nand-disk mmc0 mmc1 timer oneshot heartbeat backlight gpio cpu0 default-on transient
root@beaglebone:/sys/class/leds/beaglebone:green:usr0# echo 0 > brightness

Blinking a USER LED

Just a simple BASH loop:

while true; do echo 255 > brightness ; sleep 1; echo 0 > brightness; sleep 1; done;

OR you can use the timer built-in trigger

echo timer > trigger
echo 500 > delay_off
echo 50 > delay_on

You can even use it as a sort of PWM to dim the LED. There should be another way to do this, but this is all I've found.

echo timer > trigger
echo 1 > delay_on
echo 12 > delay_off

Interestingly, I think this should behave similar to the heartbeat. If the system crashes it would turn on or off completely.

Evan Boldt Sat, 06/01/2013 - 17:46

BeagleBone Black Pins

BeagleBone Black Pins

Pinout Tables

These tables are based on the BeagleBone Black System Reference Manual (Creative Commons) by Gerald Coley of BeagleBoard.org. They aren't really available anywhere else on the internet, so I thought I'd transcribe them into a more available format.

The PROC column is the pin number on the processor.

The PIN column is the pin number on the expansion header.

The MODE columns are the mode setting for each pin. Setting each mode to align with the mode column will give that function on that pin. Each pin's mode can be set individually.

Note that the MODE5 column is absent. That is not a typo. It just doesn't do anything. The only exception is GPIO0_7 in expansion header P9 has a mmc0_sdwp

Expansion Header P8 Pinout
PINPROCNAMEMODE0MODE1MODE2MODE3MODE4MODE6MODE7
1,2 GND
3 R9 GPIO1_6 gpmc_ad6 mmc1_dat6         gpio1[6]
4 T9 GPIO1_7 gpmc_ad7 mmc1_dat7         gpio1[7]
5 R8 GPIO1_2 gpmc_ad2 mmc1_dat2         gpio1[2]
6 T8 GPIO1_3 gpmc_ad3 mmc1_dat3         gpio1[3]
7 R7 TIMER4 gpmc_advn_ale   timer4       gpio2[2]
8 T7 TIMER7 gpmc_oen_ren   timer7       gpio2[3]
9 T6 TIMER5 gpmc_be0n_cle   timer5       gpio2[5]
10 U6 TIMER6 gpmc_wen   timer6       gpio2[4]
11* R12 GPIO1_13 gpmc_ad13 lcd_data18 mmc1_dat5* mmc2_dat1 eQEP2B_in   gpio1[13]
12* T12 GPIO1_12 gpmc_ad12 lcd_data19 mmc1_dat4* mmc2_dat0 EQEP2A_IN   gpio1[12]
13* T10 EHRPWM2B gpmc_ad9 lcd_data22 mmc1_dat1* mmc2_dat5 ehrpwm2B   gpio0[23]
14* T11 GPIO0_26 gpmc_ad10 lcd_data21 mmc1_dat2* mmc2_dat6 ehrpwm2_tripzone   gpio0[26]
15* U13 GPIO1_15 gpmc_ad15 lcd_data16 mmc1_dat7* mmc2_dat3 eQEP2_strobe   gpio1[15]
16* V13 GPIO1_14 gpmc_ad14 lcd_data17 mmc1_dat6* mmc2_dat2 eQEP2_index   gpio1[14]
17* U12 GPIO0_27 gpmc_ad11 lcd_data20 mmc1_dat3* mmc2_dat7 ehrpwm0_synco   gpio0[27]
18 V12 GPIO2_1 gpmc_clk_mux0 lcd_memory_clk gpmc_wait1 mmc2_clk   mcasp0_fsr gpio2[1]
19* U10 EHRPWM2A gpmc_ad8 lcd_data23 mmc1_dat0* mmc2_dat4 ehrpwm2A   gpio0[22]
20* V9 GPIO1_31 gpmc_csn2 gpmc_be1n mmc1_cmd*       gpio1[31]
21* U9 GPIO1_30 gpmc_csn1 gpmc_clk mmc1_clk*       gpio1[30]
22 V8 GPIO1_5 gpmc_ad5 mmc1_dat5         gpio1[5]
23 U8 GPIO1_4 gpmc_ad4 mmc1_dat4         gpio1[4]
24 V7 GPIO1_1 gpmc_ad1 mmc1_dat1         gpio1[1]
25 U7 GPIO1_0 gpmc_ad0 mmc1_dat0         gpio1[0]
26 V6 GPIO1_29 gpmc_csn0           gpio1[29]
27* U5 GPIO2_22 lcd_vsync* gpmc_a8         gpio2[22]
28* V5 GPIO2_24 lcd_pclk* gpmc_a10         gpio2[24]
29* R5 GPIO2_23 lcd_hsync* gpmc_a9         gpio2[23]
30* R6 GPIO2_25 lcd_ac_bias_en* gpmc_a11         gpio2[25]
31* V4 UART5_CTSN lcd_data14* gpmc_a18 eQEP1_index mcasp0_axr1 uart5_rxd uart5_ctsn gpio0[10]
32* T5 UART5_RTSN lcd_data15* gpmc_a19 eQEP1_strobe mcasp0_ahclkx mcasp0_axr3 uart5_rtsn gpio0[11]
33* V3 UART4_RTSN lcd_data13* gpmc_a17 eQEP1B_in mcasp0_fsr mcasp0_axr3 uart4_rtsn gpio0[9]
34* U4 UART3_RTSN lcd_data11* gpmc_a15 ehrpwm1B mcasp0_ahclkr mcasp0_axr2 uart3_rtsn gpio2[17]
35* V2 UART4_CTSN lcd_data12* gpmc_a16 eQEP1A_in mcasp0_aclkr mcasp0_axr2 uart4_ctsn gpio0[8]
36* U3 UART3_CTSN lcd_data10* gpmc_a14 ehrpwm1A mcasp0_axr0   uart3_ctsn gpio2[16]
37* U1 UART5_TXD lcd_data8* gpmc_a12 ehrpwm1_tripzone mcasp0_aclkx uart5_txd uart2_ctsn gpio2[14]
38* U2 UART5_RXD lcd_data9* gpmc_a13 ehrpwm0_synco mcasp0_fsx uart5_rxd uart2_rtsn gpio2[15]
39* T3 GPIO2_12 lcd_data6* gpmc_a6   eQEP2_index     gpio2[12]
40* T4 GPIO2_13 lcd_data7* gpmc_a7   eQEP2_strobe pr1_edio_data_out7   gpio2[13]
41* T1 GPIO2_10 lcd_data4* gpmc_a4   eQEP2A_in     gpio2[10]
42* T2 GPIO2_11 lcd_data5* gpmc_a5   eQEP2B_in     gpio2[11]
43* R3 GPIO2_8 lcd_data2* gpmc_a2   ehrpwm2_tripzone     gpio2[8]
44* R4 GPIO2_9 lcd_data3* gpmc_a3   ehrpwm0_synco     gpio2[9]
45* R1 GPIO2_6 lcd_data0* gpmc_a0   ehrpwm2A     gpio2[6]
46* R2 GPIO2_7 lcd_data1* gpmc_a1   ehrpwm2B     gpio2[7]

 * some pins are used by the internal storage (eMMC), and HDMI. 11-21 are used by eMMC.  27-46 are used by HDMI. 

Expansion Header P9 Pinout
PINPROCNAMEMODE0MODE2MODE3MODE4MODE6MODE7
1,2 GND
3,4 DC_3.3V
5,6 VDD_5V
7,8 SYS_5V
9 PWR_BUT
10 A10 RESET_OUT            
11 T17 gpmc_wait0 mii2_crs gpmc_csn4 rmii2_crs_dv mmc1_sdcd uart4_rxd_mux2 gpio0[30]
12 U18 gpmc_be1n mii2_col gpmc_csn6 mmc2_dat3 gpmc_dir mcasp0_aclkr_mux3 gpio1[28]
13 U17 gpmc_wpn mii2_rxerr gpmc_csn5 rmii2_rxerr mmc2_sdcd uart4_txd_mux2 gpio0[31]
14 U14 gpmc_a2 mii2_txd3 rgmii2_td3 mmc2_dat1 gpmc_a18 ehrpwm1A_mux1 gpio1[18]
15 R13 gpmc_a0 gmii2_txen rmii2_tctl mii2_txen gpmc_a16 ehrpwm1_tripzone gpio1[16]
16 T14 gpmc_a3 mii2_txd2 rgmii2_td2 mmc2_dat2 gpmc_a19 ehrpwm1B_mux1 gpio1[19]
17 A16 spi0_cs0 mmc2_sdwp I2C1_SCL ehrpwm0_synci     gpio0[5]
18 B16 spi0_d1 mmc1_sdwp I2C1_SDA ehrpwm0_tripzone     gpio0[4]
19 D17 uart1_rtsn timer5 dcan0_rx I2C2_SCL spi1_cs1   gpio0[13]
20 D18 uart1_ctsn timer6 dcan0_tx I2C2_SDA spi1_cs0   gpio0[12]
21 B17 spi0_d0 uart2_txd I2C2_SCL ehrpwm0B   EMU3_mux1 gpio0[3]
22 A17 spi0_sclk uart2_rxd I2C2_SDA ehrpwm0A   EMU2_mux1 gpio0[2]
23 V14 gpmc_a1 gmii2_rxdv rgmii2_rxdv mmc2_dat0 gpmc_a17 ehrpwm0_synco gpio1[17]
24 D15 uart1_txd mmc2_sdwp dcan1_rx I2C1_SCL     gpio0[15]
25 A14 mcasp0_ahclkx eQEP0_strobe mcasp0_axr3 mcasp1_axr1 EMU4_mux2   gpio3[21]
26 D16 uart1_rxd mmc1_sdwp dcan1_tx I2C1_SDA     gpio0[14]
27 C13 mcasp0_fsr eQEP0B_in mcasp0_axr3 mcasp1_fsx EMU2_mux2   gpio3[19]
28 C12 mcasp0_ahclkr ehrpwm0_synci mcasp0_axr2 spi1_cs0 eCAP2_in_PWM2_out   gpio3[17]
29 B13 mcasp0_fsx ehrpwm0B   spi1_d0 mmc1_sdcd_mux1   gpio3[15]
30 D12 mcasp0_axr0 ehrpwm0_tripzone   spi1_d1 mmc2_sdcd_mux1   gpio3[16]
31 A13 mcasp0_aclkx ehrpwm0A   spi1_sclk mmc0_sdcd_mux1   gpio3[14]
32   VADC
33 C8 AIN4
34   AGND
35 A8 AIN6
36 B8 AIN5
37 B7 AIN2
38 A7 AIN3
39 B6 AIN0
40 C7 AIN1
41# D14 xdma_event_intr1   tclkin clkout2 timer7_mux1 EMU3_mux0 gpio0[20]
D13 mcasp0_axr1 eQEP0_index   Mcasp1_axr0 emu3   gpio3[20]
42@ C18 eCAP0_in_PWM0_out uart3_txd spi1_cs1 pr1_ecap0_ecap
_capin_apwm_o
spi1_sclk xdma_event_intr2 gpio0[7]
B12 Mcasp0_aclkr eQEP0A_in Mcaspo_axr2 Mcasp1_aclkx     gpio3[18]

Selecting Modes

Using the "everything is a file" sys directory, you can use BASH or whatever to change the mode number for the pin in the NAME column.

echo 7 > /sys/kernel/debug/omap_mux/gpmc_ad4
echo 36 > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio32/direction
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio32/value

If you are using windows, TI has this GUI you can use called PinMuxTool / Pin Mux Utility. The BBB is AM335x r2 based.

The above only works if you're using the older kernel. The new 3.8 based kernel is missing this nifty pin mux feature. However, you can still check what they're muxed at even if you can't change them easily at runtime by looking at

/sys/kernel/debug/pinctrl/44e10800.pinmux/pingroups
root@arm:/sys/kernel/debug/pinctrl/44e10800.pinmux# cat pingroups 
registered pin groups:
group: pinmux_userled_pins
pin 21 (44e10854)
pin 22 (44e10858)
pin 23 (44e1085c)
pin 24 (44e10860)

group: pinmux_rstctl_pins
pin 20 (44e10850)

group: pinmux_i2c0_pins
pin 98 (44e10988)
pin 99 (44e1098c)

group: pinmux_i2c2_pins
pin 94 (44e10978)
pin 95 (44e1097c)

group: pinmux_emmc2_pins
pin 32 (44e10880)
pin 33 (44e10884)
pin 0 (44e10800)
pin 1 (44e10804)
pin 2 (44e10808)
pin 3 (44e1080c)
pin 4 (44e10810)
pin 5 (44e10814)
pin 6 (44e10818)
pin 7 (44e1081c)

group: pinmux_userled_pins
pin 21 (44e10854)
pin 22 (44e10858)
pin 23 (44e1085c)
pin 24 (44e10860)

group: mcasp0_pins
pin 107 (44e109ac)
pin 103 (44e1099c)
pin 101 (44e10994)
pin 100 (44e10990)
pin 106 (44e109a8)

group: nxp_hdmi_bonelt_pins
pin 108 (44e109b0)
pin 40 (44e108a0)
pin 41 (44e108a4)
pin 42 (44e108a8)
pin 43 (44e108ac)
pin 44 (44e108b0)
pin 45 (44e108b4)
pin 46 (44e108b8)
pin 47 (44e108bc)
pin 48 (44e108c0)
pin 49 (44e108c4)
pin 50 (44e108c8)
pin 51 (44e108cc)
pin 52 (44e108d0)
pin 53 (44e108d4)
pin 54 (44e108d8)
pin 55 (44e108dc)
pin 56 (44e108e0)
pin 57 (44e108e4)
pin 58 (44e108e8)
pin 59 (44e108ec)

group: nxp_hdmi_bonelt_off_pins
pin 108 (44e109b0)

Check Pin Statuses

root@beaglebone:~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/gpio
GPIOs 0-31, gpio:

GPIOs 32-63, gpio:
 gpio-52  (eMMC_RSTn           ) out lo
 gpio-53  (beaglebone:green:usr) out lo
 gpio-54  (beaglebone:green:usr) out lo
 gpio-55  (beaglebone:green:usr) out hi
 gpio-56  (beaglebone:green:usr) out lo
 gpio-59  (McASP Clock Enable P) out hi

GPIOs 64-95, gpio:

GPIOs 96-127, gpio:

Power Limitations

Be careful about this one, there are some much lower limits than you might be used to

Pin Type Maximum Voltage Maximum Current
AIN 1.8V  
GPIO 3.3V 4mA - 6mA
VDD 3.3 3.3V 250mA
VDD 5V 5V* 1000mA *
SYS 5V 5V 250mA
VDD ADC 1.8V 0?
SYS 5V 5V 250mA

* VDD only works when the 5V barrel jack is used

i2c

It is recommended that you use I2C2 on pins 19 and 20 with the /dev/i2c-3 device.

Mode Name Port Physical Pin Number Block Device
I2C1 P9 17 & 18 or 24 & 26 ?
I2C2 P9 19 & 20 or 21 & 22 /dev/i2c-3

To check which i2c interfaces are avaible, check

root@arm:~# ls -l /dev/i2c*
crw-rw---- 1 root i2c 89, 0 Jun 5 04:34 /dev/i2c-0 crw-rw---- 1 root i2c 89, 1 Jun 5 04:34 /dev/i2c-1

To see what addresses are being used, try the i2cdetect command. In the below example, I have a temperature sensor hooked up to pins 19 and 20 that is using 48. Also note that the UU addresses are being used by the system and are unavailable.

root@beaglebone:~# i2cdetect -y -r 3
     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- UU -- -- -- -- 
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 48 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
50: -- -- -- -- UU UU UU UU -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Evan Boldt Sat, 06/01/2013 - 13:44
Attachments

BeagleBone Internet over USB only

BeagleBone Internet over USB only

Sure, the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black come with an ethernet port on them, but why have to get another cable out? You might not even be anywhere near the router. The BeagleBone images automatically do network communcations over USB, as shown by how you can go to 192.168.7.2 from your browser to see the BeagleBone start page and http://192.168.7.2:3000/ to use the Cloud9 editor hosted on the BeagleBone. The problem is that the host computers do not usually relay network traffic to new interfaces. I don't know why not. It would be nice if you could just connect stuff to any connection and it'd always work, but it's not hard to set up NAT and such once you know how to do it. The connection over USB might be slighlty slower than the dedicated connection, since USB is slower and is sharing the connection with things JTAG communication and mass storage. For all I know, though, the ethernet on the BeagleBone is actually controlled by the same USB controller, so it might not be at all different!

On the BeagleBone

ifconfig usb0 192.168.7.2
route add default gw 192.168.7.1

On Linux computer:

sudo su
#eth0 is my internet facing interface, eth3 is the BeagleBone USB connection
ifconfig eth3 192.168.7.1
iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface eth0 -j MASQUERADE iptables --append FORWARD --in-interface eth3 -j ACCEPT echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

On a Windows computer, I would think you could use the graphical Internet Connection Sharing feature.

Evan Boldt Mon, 08/12/2013 - 14:23

BeagleBone Security System

BeagleBone Security System

Since the BeagleBone (and the Raspberry Pi) is Linux based, and has usb ports, it is actually very easy (and cheap) to make a security camera system. All you need are USB webcams. Just about any will do. I got four for $16 on Amazon. More expensive ones might say they have higher resolution, but what they are actually reporting is the still photo quality, not streaming video quality. Unless you get a USB 3.0 webcam, which would not be supported by either hobbyist computer, it is impossible to stream HD (1080) video, but some might be able to 720. Even if it were possible, it becomes difficult to store so many photos or videos of that size. So keep it cheap, but make sure it is Linux compatible (UVC/V4L), which can be difficult to find sometimes.

One major limitation of this kind of system is the cord length limit on USB, which is only 2-7 meters (6-17 feet). It should be possible to get around this limitation with the use of hubs and repeaters.

Motion Detection Software

Motion is a great system for security systems. It monitors the camera for any motion and saves pictures or video (or both) only when there is something happening, which is great for saving space.

Installation (BeagleBone)

Motion is actually in the Angstrom package repositories! Why does that surprise me so much? Oh wait. They're for the wrong architecture ARM7a vs ARM7l. Would it work anyway? No idea. Probably best not to try. Ok, so this isn't going to be as easy as it could be. Download the source from the motion homepage by finding a link to it in your web browser and then:

opkg install kernel-module-uvcvideo libavformat-staticdev
ln -s /usr/include/libv4l1-videodev.h /usr/include/linux/videodev.h
ln -s /usr/include/libavformat/avformat.h /usr/include/avformat.h
ln -s /usr/include/libavformat/avio.h /usr/include/avio.h
ln -s /usr/include/libavutil/avstring.h /usr/include/avstring.h
ln -s /usr/include/libavutil/attributes.h /usr/include/attributes.h
wget $URLGOESHERE
tar -xzf motion.tar.gz
#it will probably tell you the time is in the future.
#BeagleBone does not have the correct time. It has no clock.
cd motion-3.2.12/
./configure
make
make install

After all of that, I never got it to compile. I think it might be because the version of ffmpeg currently in the repo is old, but I'm not sure since this seems to have more to do with uvc.

track.c: In function 'uvc_center':
track.c:587:29: error: storage size of 'control_s' isn't known
track.c:589:24: error: 'V4L2_CID_PRIVATE_BASE' undeclared

If you use an older version of motion (3.2.6), you can get a different error involving jpeglib, but it's no easier to figure out.

This is a very good example of why Ubuntu on the BeagleBone is desirable. The installation process on Ubuntu is as easy as it is for the Raspbian (both are Debian based). So, even though I couldn't get it working in Angstrom, it is still possible to use a BeagleBone for this project

Raspberry Pi Installation

Motion is also in the Raspbian package repositories, which is not surprising since it's basically Debian.

sudo apt-get install motion

Isn't that easy? Why yes. Yes it is.

Configuration

Motion has a very usable configuration file in /etc/motion/motion.conf. Here are some useful configuration options:

width 640
height 480
framerate 10

# Threshold for number of changed pixels in an image that threshold 1500
# The quality (in percent) to be used by the jpeg compression (default: 75) quality 50

# Use ffmpeg to encode mpeg movies in realtime (default: off) ffmpeg_cap_new on

# Target base directory for pictures and films target_dir /var/log/security
#break into different folders based on days, not subdivided into hours
jpeg_filename %Y%m%d/camera-%t/motions/%H%M%S-%v%q movie_filename %Y%m%d/camera-%t/movie/%v-%Y%m%d%H%M%S # The mini-http server listens to this port for requests (default: 0 = disabled) webcam_port 8081
# Maximum framerate for webcam streams (default: 1) webcam_maxrate 10
# Restrict webcam connections to localhost only (default: on) webcam_localhost off

Saving movies instead of just images turns out to be surprisingly efficient. For example, a day in my setup yielded 7640 images and only 35 movies, which meant 210MB vs 55MB of storage space. So, to save space, "output_motion off" might be a good change. Saving both kinds of motions (video and stills) at 640x480, 2.3GB could be used on a busy day, but with an average of more like 100MB. Obviously, it will depend on how often things move in your cameras' field of view and what you have your threshold set at. In most cases, you will want a large SD card or maybe even an external USB HDD to store these on.

One really cool feature of motion is that it can stream the webcam image over HTTP as an mjpeg. So, by visiting the BeagleBone's address and webcam_port (ex http://beaglebone.local/8081), you can watch the in a browser from somewhere in your own network. However, if you do port forwarding, or the beaglebone has a public IP, you can keep an eye on things from anywhere in the world. It does not, however, have a way to password protect the stream. So keep that in mind before making it public.

Automatic Cleanup

To make sure that the local storage does not fill up, you can delete old data. This can be done automatically based on age using cron and the find program. The following crontab will search for anything over the specified age (in days) and delete it. Note that this does not guarantee that there will be enough disk space. For example, if a few days with lots of motion occur, it could fill up before influx ages enough.

crontab -e 
# m h dom mon dow command 45 1 * * * find /var/log/security/ -maxdepth 1 -ctime +145 -exec rm -rf {} \;
# delete anything (non-recursively) in /var/log/security older than 145 days
Evan Boldt Mon, 08/12/2013 - 12:17