BeagleBone Enhanced Adds Gigabit Ethernet, More Memory & USB Ports, and Sensors (Crowdfunding)

It’s nice to see BeagleBone Black‘s open source hardware  being leveraged by third parties, as we’ve already seen designs such as BeagleBone Green and BeagleBone Black Industrial 4G in the past, and now UK based SanCloud has decided to launch BeagleBone Enhanced on Indiegogo (flexible funding).

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Click to Enlarge

BeagleBone Enhanced board specifications with bold highlights showing improvements over the BeagleBone Black Rev. C:

  • SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz + PowerVR SGX530 GPU
  • System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM @ 800 MHz
  • Storage – 4GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot, optional 1MB SPI NOR flash
  • USB – 2x USB 2.0 host port (A type), mini USB OTG port, 2x USB interfaces via expansion header
  • Serial Port – UART0 via 3.3V TTL header
  • Ethernet – Gigabit Ethernet
  • Video Output – micro HDMI with EDID support, up to 1280×1024 resolution.
  • Audio Output – Via HDMI
  • Sensors
    • Optional 6 axis gyro + accelerometer (9-axis adding compass will be used instead if funding target is reached) – InvenSense MPU-6050 or MPU-9250
    • Optional barometer, pressure, and temperature sensor (ST Micro LP331)
  • Expansion Connectors – 2x 46-pin headers
  • Debug Ports – Optional onboard 20-pin CTI JTAG + Serial Header
  • Indicators – 1 for Power, 2 for Ethernet, and 4 user’s LEDs
  • Input – Reset, boot, and power buttons
  • PMIC – TPS65217C PMIC regulator and one additional LDO
  • Power – mini USB, DC Jack, or 5VDC via expansion header
  • Dimensions: 86.4 x 53.4 mm

BeagleBone_Enhanced_BackThere are optional items because two versions of the board will be manufactured: BeagleBoard Enhanced Light, and BeagleBoard Enhanced, with the latter including all optional items. Both boards are  fully supported and licensed by beagleboard.org, and are software compatible with BeagleBone Black, so you can run Debian, Android, Ubuntu, Cloud9 IDE, etc… on the board . A separate module with RealTek RTL8723 for 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1/4.0 LE can also be added to the board.

BeagleBone_Enhanced_Wireless_Module
BeagleBone Enhanced with Wireless (WiFi+Bt) Module

 

The company aims to raise $32,500 to go ahead with manufacturing. A $52 early bird pledge should get you a BB Enhanced Light and $57 a BB Enhanced, and $65 BBE with WiFi and Bluetooth, once all early bird rewards are gone, pricing ranges between $63 and $77. Shipping is not included, but only adds $7 to the total. Delivery is scheduled for September 2016.

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14 Comments
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Dr. Azrael Tod
8 years ago

so since that suddenly appearing gbit-ethernet probably isn’t something that comes from the SoC and just was forgotten to be connected… I guess it’s implemented via USB?

JM
JM
8 years ago

Interesting on paper but I personally wouldn’t touch Indiegogo + Flexible Funding projects. Also I don’t believe they could release this product with FCC and CE certifications they are proposing for the $32K base funding, let alone less than that, on the slim margins they seem to be looking at.

I don’t understand how so many UK projects set such unrealistic goals.

TLS
TLS
8 years ago

Well, in as much as the AM335x has a native Gigabit MAC, it can’t actually do Gigabit speeds.
It peaks at less than 300Mbps using UDP and about 260Mbps using TCP (the latter at almost 99% CPU load) – http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x-PSP_04.06.00.07_Features_and_Performance_Guide#Performance_and_Benchmarks_2

Anyone getting this for the Gigabit Ethernet is wasting their money.

TLS
TLS
8 years ago

@JM
This would only need basic FCC and CE certification, as it doesn’t have any kind of built in wireless transmitter and it’s DC powered. It makes for a lot less complex certification that also costs less. The costly part is for AC/DC power and wireless certifications.

Jason Kridner
8 years ago

we launched with 10/100 to both save cost and to release with a broad-market PHY that didn’t require an NDA to get documentation. That situation has changed now with gigabit PHYs.

Dirk Broer
Dirk Broer
8 years ago

Please let go of that ancient single-core Cortex-A8!

cortex-a72
cortex-a72
8 years ago

@Dirk Broer
they did. beagleboard x15 has dual core cortex-a15. it just right now is passing FCC. and will cost something >200$. do you like it? not all applications need deca core tri-cluster thingies. many are happy with just an ancient a8 at 1GHz. the only thing not clear, why such boards cost more than chinese ott boxes with far better numbers under hood. people say this is because of looooong support and industrial orientation of TI’s and Freescale’s based gizmos. read – because two last have big balls and just can do this way with pricing. xD

JM
JM
8 years ago


If you know where to do even basic FCC / CE certification for less than $5k please let me know..

Also they are offering a wireless wifi/BT expansion board too, I’d assume that would also be certified.

FergusL
FergusL
8 years ago

One of the most interesting project making extensive use of the BB : http://bela.io/ (audio/music inside 🙂
Including realtime framework, bypassing the linux audio stack to access low level IOs and using the integrated “Programmable Realtime Unit”.

TLS
TLS
8 years ago

@JM
Looks like a pre-certified module for the Wi-Fi/BT board if you look carefully.

No idea where you’re from so no, I can’t give you any suggestions on where to have that done.

Marc Murphy
7 years ago

@JM
We are trying to get this to market and have priced the funding goal on Indiegogo carefully so it will allow us to cover the cost of CE and FCC approval, not to make a profit. As you state the cost of approvals is ~$5k and I don’t see how that would prevent us from succeeding, we have factored in the cost of approval.

The goal of this is to get an open hardware/ open software platform to the community supported by the community.

Juan Sierralta
Juan Sierralta
7 years ago

@Marc Murphy In my case a BB with internal USB is an enormous plus since there are lot of expansion that needs USB besides the usual I2C/SPI/GPIO stuff we see on the BB capes. Lots of comercial applications don’t mind to pay $20 more for that. Right now I made cape that uses USB and I’m using a cable between BB and cape which is awful 🙂 @TLS And 260Mbps is better than 100Mbps; for example in my business I use little ARM boxes (including BBB) to measure network speeds of comercial offerings and lots of network links and network… Read more »

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