BeagleBone hardware interfaces

Hi from Steve Stallings of PMDX.com

I am quite interested in the BeagleBoneBlack as a LinuxCNC platform and am working on a cape to use as a developers platform.

what type of interfacing are you looking at?

-m

For now, a developers test bed, later we will consider a more targeted user version.

Intended to work for both BB White and BB Black, but expect Black to matter more.

Provides access to all digital pins and several analog pins and protects them from
external shorts or overvoltage. Digital I/O is 3.3 volt logic but is 5 volt input tolerant.

There are 3 parallel port equivalents plus some off board RS232 or RS422 serial,
PWM out, one encoder input, temp sensing for 3D printer crowd, and a few more
things that may or may not make the cut.

There is also some power management, and support for Power, Boot, and Reset
buttons to allow access to the buttons that get hidden when the Bone is mounted.

Hi, Steve.

It's nice to see PMDX getting into this space.

A cape with the functionality you outline here is just the sort of thing I was asking about recently among the LinuxCNC/BeagleBone developers...more than a raw prototyping board and less than the full-up stepper-driving BeBoPr and RepliCape boards.

Any ETA yet?

Regards,
Kent (long-time CAMS lurker)

PS - If I can figure out why the forum software isn't displaying my uploaded image I'll stop masquerading show y'all the real me.

Hi Kent,

The goal is to have a sample in time to take it to the fest in Wichita.

Regarding the self portrait..... I don't know why but I also had problems
with Firefox and had to resort to IE in order to get my image to upload.
Perhaps it was just coincidence or an overloaded server. I have been
getting lots of 503 errors stating operation was aborted due to server
congestion.

Steve Stallings

Steve:

You should be in good company in Wichita. If their plans work out, principal co-conspirators in the LinuxCNC-on-BeagleBone effort will be there. If wishes were horses, I'd be there too, but my wife is too ill to travel and I'm her 24/7 care giver.

Eww, the image now appears, so I guess it just took the server a while to chew on the uploaded file. Now I should get my granddaughter to take a more flattering picture.

Regards,
Kent

Andy:

I figured this out when the confirmatory email showed up. I suppose this approval feature is intended to prevent site defacement but since all of us are already approved to write whatever we want this seems a variation on the theme of wearing both a belt and suspenders, er, braces.

Anyway,I've uploaded a granddaughter-approved image which I hope makes me look more like my affable father and less like my authoritarian grandfather. I expect to see it soon.

Regards,
Kent