Beagle-Pi Raspberry Pi Emulator Using Beagle Bone Black

SKU:

Regular price

FEATURES

Replace Raspberry Pi with Beagle Bone Black/Industrial Cards
Map all Raspberry Pi GPIO pins to Beagle IO's
Maps I2C, SPI and UART to corresponding Beagle Bone ports
Brings out the Beagle Bone serial debug connector
Includes 30 pin FFC connector for external display
Runs all Raspberry Pi software: Command line, Python, Node-RED
No SD-CARD needed! Runs Linux on internal flash.
Beagle Raspberry Pi Emulator

DESCRIPTION

Raspberry Pi Emulator using Beagle Bone Black

Beagle Bone cards are readily available, from $50 to $100. They have lots of GPIO pins, I2C, SPI and serial interfaces. The boards run Linux and Node-RED, and could run all Raspberry Pi software.

The Beagle-Pi is a passive adapter which maps all the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins to corresponding pins on the Beagle Bone Black interface. The I2C, SPI and serial ports are mapped to the identical interfaces. The other I/O pins are mapped 1 to 1. PWM pins on the GPIO connector are connected to PWM capable pins on the Beagle Bone.

LAYOUT

RaspberryPi Replacement using BeagleBone Black

The board plugs into the Beagle Bone Black board using P8 and P9 connectors, and emulates the Raspberry Pi GPIO connector J1. Any IO board designed for Raspberry Pi can be plugged into the Beagle Pi adapter. The adapter mounts on the Beagle Bone card using the four outside holes. Raspberry Pi HATs can be plugged into the J1 connector and secured using the four inside holes.

Connector J5 selects the source of power for the BeagleBone, from the barrel or the USB connector.

Connector J3 brings out the serial debug port, and J2 brings out the display port of the BeagleBone.

GPIO MAP

The tables bellow shows the correspondence between the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins and the Beagle Bone pins.

DOWNLOADS

Open Source Hardware Schematic V2

Open Source Hardware Schematic V3

2D CAD drawing

SOFTWARE

All the Sequent Microsystems drivers have been compiled for Beagle Bone and can be downloaded from GitHub. GPIO pin mapping commands will be available soon.

To temporarily enable the I2C on Beagle Bone, open a terminal and type the following commands:

config-pin P9.17 i2c

config-pin P9.18 i2c

Depending on your OS, you might have to use the commands:

config-pin p9-17 i2c

config-pin p9-18 i2c

To enable the I2C permanently at startup, edit the file /etc/rc.local and add the same two lines. All the command "exit 0" on the last line.

To use the Node-RED, which comes preinstalled on the Beagle, add the Node-RED to the I2C group with the command:

sudo usermod -a -G i2c node-red

The Raspberry Pi serial port on GPIO pins 8 and 10 is mapped to the Beagle UART4, which can be enabled by adding the following lines to the "etc/rc.local" file:

config-pin p9.11 uart
config-pin p9.13 uart

Restart the Beagle after changing the "etc/rc.local" file.

To check the available serial ports type the command:

dmesg | grep tty

YOUR KIT

When you purchase the Beagle Pi Raspberry Emulator you will receive the following items:

1. Beagle Pi Board

2. Mounting Hardware

APPLICATIONS

Sample applications coming soon. Cards are in production right now.

NEWS

Beagle-Pi Emulator is a Raspberry Pi HAT adapter for BeagleBone Black

Works as described

In a world where nothing really works as the marketing departments describe, what a surprise. Plug it in, that's it. Only one advice I did not follow, for I2C a simple command to make it work.

Careful of 3.3v versus 5 volt systems

I’ve successfully used three of the Beagle-Pi emulators. They work well. But I have two suggestions:
1. For added insurance, I put a 3-to-5 volt level converter between the 3.3V BBB and the 5 volt devices. Arduinos and I2C LCD modules are 5 volt based. Some of the Sequent Microsystems boards are 5 volt based so you need to be careful not to fry the BBB. It would be nice if this level conversion circuit was designed into the Beagle-Pi board. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/bi-directional-logic-level-converter-hookup-guide/all https://www.adafruit.com/product/757

2. Version 2 schematics are available on the Sequent Microsystems site. However, the boards I received are version 3.0.