[HN Gopher] BeaglePlay from BeagleBoard brings fun to building w...
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BeaglePlay from BeagleBoard brings fun to building with computers
Author : thinkmassive
Score : 51 points
Date : 2023-03-08 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beagleboard.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (beagleboard.org)
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Didnt realise beagleboard still made stuff.
| shodan757 wrote:
| This looked pretty cool until I found a price: ~$100.
|
| Lots of cool features, and it's a beagleboard, so there will be
| actual support/documentation/source. But I'm not sure $100 is
| "affordable" for the SoC you get and the small 2GB of RAM.
| joezydeco wrote:
| As a development board, $100 is a bargain.
| noncoml wrote:
| Nice, Beagle is becoming what Raspberry failed to live up to
| MrFoof wrote:
| I do thoroughly enjoy my RPis, but even though we're supposedly
| heading towards the shortage ending in late 2023, availability
| of the normal boards feels as it continues to dwindle further.
|
| The A53 is about 1/2 - 2/3rds of the performance of the A72
| *(depending on the task), so it's no slouch.
|
| At $100 it's certainly not cheap, but the feature set of the
| board is packed. Moreover, you can buy one in a straightforward
| manner.
| noncoml wrote:
| Not only that, it's also Open Source Hardware. You can find
| all the design documents here:
| https://git.beagleboard.org/beagleplay/beagleplay
|
| Unlike RPi:
| https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/issues/2233
|
| "The Raspberry Pi is not open source. However, reduced
| schematics are made available on a best efforts basis."
| zokier wrote:
| * * *
| joezydeco wrote:
| It's interesting that TI has dumped the PRUSS from this part of
| the Sitara family and gone with a Cortex-M4 as the coprocessor
| instead. It's certainly a more comfortable development
| environment.
|
| I also like the single-wire ethernet interface. That's going to
| be really useful looking forward.
| Pixelbrick wrote:
| Take another look at the spec, looks like it has the dual core
| PRUs, an R5 & the A4 - whoops M4
| bradfa wrote:
| It depends on what you want to do in terms of which type of
| coprocessor is more useful. The PRUs are quite amazing in what
| they can do, but the development environment is let's say less
| than ideal. The AM6xx series SOCs do have the PRU subsystem in
| them along with the Cortex-M4.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Oh yeah I see it now. My bad.
| meatmanek wrote:
| > but the development environment is let's say less than
| ideal.
|
| I agree - lots of wasted potential there. I wish they had
| implemented an Arduino plugin for the PRUs, as well as a
| library for both the PRU side and the Linux side for using
| shared memory with common patterns (FIFOs, etc.).
|
| Something newbie-friendly like that would've made the
| Beaglebones way more popular, IMO.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Looks like an interesting open source SBC, with a wide variety of
| connectors for sensors and other devices/connectivity. At $99
| it's definitely not competing based on cpu/memory.
|
| It's in stock at all 3 distributors they link from the product
| site.
| toast0 wrote:
| This is the least expensive device I've seen with single pair
| ethernet (specifically 10Base-T1L), so that's pretty neat. And
| it's a source for power over the single pair too, which is
| neat. I have yet to see a PoDL powered device though.
|
| If I can finagle some power at the remote end, two of these
| could get me 10M ethernet to my gate controller where I don't
| have quite enough pairs to do what I want.
| myself248 wrote:
| It's more than that: This whole device with 802.3cg and PoDL
| as a side-feature, but oh by the way it has a whole CPU and
| radios and eMMC and stuff, is cheaper than most 802.3cg dev
| boards that're just the MAC/PHY and you still need to glue
| 'em to a computer of some sort.
|
| That alone justifies it for a lot of applications, and I
| expect a PoDL injector to emerge from the DIY scene in a
| matter of days.
| myself248 wrote:
| Hmm, this is 802.3cg which is 10Mbps single-pair, which doesn't
| seem to be compatible with the 802.3da multidrop iot stuff, and
| definitely not the 802.3bw 100Mbps single-pair being used in
| automotive.
|
| Whyyyyyyyyy, IEEE, do we have so many single-pair singletons
| floating around out there, none of which work with each other?
| wolrah wrote:
| > Hmm, this is 802.3cg which is 10Mbps single-pair, which
| doesn't seem to be compatible with the 802.3da multidrop iot
| stuff
|
| 802.3cg supports multidrop as part of 10Base-T1S.
|
| 802.3da is a draft intended to enhance these capabilities with
| longer segments, support for more devices in a segment, and
| support for powered multidrop segments. It's far from final at
| this point so I wouldn't expect hardware to support .3da any
| time soon.
|
| That said one of the main objectives of the .3da group is to be
| backwards compatible with .3cg multidrop networks. Obviously
| the enhanced features are not guaranteed to work with older
| devices, but .3da devices should always be able to connect to a
| .3cg multidrop network.
|
| > Whyyyyyyyyy, IEEE, do we have so many single-pair singletons
| floating around out there, none of which work with each other?
|
| They all have different use cases that rarely need to interact.
|
| The 10 megabit varieties are primarily focused on being able to
| operate on existing wiring that was not intended for Ethernet
| use. They're intended to bring Ethernet in to environments
| where CAN, Modbus, PROFIBUS, etc. have long dominated with as
| little external impact as possible.
|
| The faster varieties are mostly for adding high-speed ethernet
| to wiring harnesses in environments where using one pair over
| four pairs is advantageous, usually where weight matters like
| automotive and aerospace applications.
|
| Either way, users are not expected to be mixing and matching
| single-pair ethernet devices in the same way as you would for
| "normal" ethernet. They're all still ethernet on top of the
| physical layer and can be bridged/switched to other varieties
| in the same way as any other varieties have been for years if
| someone wants to build a device with both kinds of ports. You
| just can't physically plug them in to the same cables.
| amluto wrote:
| I tried to look these up.
|
| 802.3cg seems to specify 10BASE-T1S and -T1L. T1S is short
| range and multidrop. T1L is longer range but point-to-point.
| 802.3bw is 100BASE-T1 and is (I think) point-to-point. 802.3da
| seems to be working on enhancements to the cg spec.
|
| It seems reasonable to me to have three standards here. They
| support rather different use cases. Also, 100BASE-T1 seems to
| be getting a bit less traction -- for automotive and industrial
| uses, 10Mbps seems like more than enough, and improved
| reliability on less fancy cable seems like a win.
|
| The BeaglePlay is 10BASE-T1L, which seems like a fine choice to
| me. -T1S is a bit short range to use for a house-wide network
| depending on the size of a house and how straight the wires
| are. Of course, for -T1L to be of much use, we need cheap
| switches, preferably powered with PoDL.
|
| edit: a better end game would be for all the gadgets to have
| internal switches and at least two ports.
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