beagleboard
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About BeagleBoard.org and the BeagleBoard.org Foundation
The BeagleBoard.org Foundation is a US-based non-profit corporation
existing to provide education in and
promotion of the design and use of open-source software and hardware in embedded
computing. BeagleBoard.org provides a forum for the owners and
developers of open-source software and hardware to
exchange ideas, knowledge and experience. The BeagleBoard.org community collaborates on
the development of open source physical computing solutions including robotics, personal
manufacturing tools like 3D printers and laser cutters, and other types of industrial
and machine controls.
BeagleBoard.org is the result of an effort by a collection of passionate
individuals, including several employees of Texas Instruments, interested in
creating powerful, open, and embedded devices. We invite you to participate
and become part of BeagleBoard.org, defining its direction.
Support for BeagleBoard.org boards comes from the very active development
community through this website, the mailing list, and the IRC channel.
Original production funding was provided by
Digi-Key, a major international distributor, but distribution has now
been opened up to dozens of distributors across the world. On-going funding
for board prototypes has been provided by manufacturing partners. Texas
Instruments generously allows Jason Kridner, community manager
and software cat herder, to spend time
to provide support and development of the BeagleBoard.org project as part of
their duties at TI. Manufacturing partners pay volume prices for the TI (and all other)
components. BeagleBoard.org licenses the use of BeagleBoard.org logos
for use as part of the Manufacturer, Compliant and
Compatible logo programs
. BeagleBoard.org also participates as a mentoring
organization for Google Summer of Code
which pays a small fee for mentoring
students. The first five BeagleBoard.org designs (BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM,
BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black and BeagleBoard-X15) where all executed by
BeagleBoard.org co-founder Gerald Coley of EmProDesign.
All the designs are fully open source and components are
available for anyone to manufacture compatible hardware. We do request
contact and permission before considering the use of the BeagleBoard.org
name on any products.
The boards are low-cost, fan-less single-board computers based on low-power
Texas Instruments processors featuring the ARM Cortex-A series core with
all of the expandability of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk,
expense, or noise. Initially, development was targeted at enabling Linux
distributions to improve support for ARM devices. With tremendous success
and support by numerous Linux distributions, development has become more
focused on enabling simplified physical computing on advanced GUI-enabled
and/or networked-enabled devices with a super-simple out-of-box learning
experience and support for development environments familiar to just about
every developer, from Ubuntu, QNX, Windows Embedded, Android and web tools
to bare metal and even Arduino/Wiring-style programming.
For some additional background, you can look at the
BeagleBoard brief.
