BeagleBone Black Interfacing: hardware and software

The BeagleBone Black being an embedded Linux development board can be an excellent choice for building various measurement and control systems by developers and hobbyists.

This book is thought as a highly practical guide which can help readers to design measurement and control systems driven by the BeagleBone Black. These systems can comprise external electronic circuits controlled by programs written in Python. Since many measurement systems process analog signals, the guide contains a brief theory and practical applications dedicated to use of popular high-resolution analog-to-digital converters. The guide covers processing small signals with instrumentation amplifiers and measuring frequencies of digital signals using high-precision PWM-To-Voltage converters.

The material of the book also covers digital signal synthesis with digital potentiometers and digital-to-analog converters. The readers will find practical designs of digitally programmable wide-band oscillators, signal amplifiers and PWM circuits. The guide describes practical aspects of interfacing and programming high-precision wide-band sinusoidal and rectangular waveform generators using a popular high-resolution Direct Digital Synthesizer AD9850.

A few projects are dedicated to designing network and distributed systems using the BeagleBone Black and Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad. The guide also covers interfacing the BeagleBone Black with popular Arduino Uno and Arduino Due boards. A few measurement and control systems with Arduino boards are presented as well.

The BeagleBone Black can be easily fitted into wireless systems using the Wixel Programmable USB Wireless modules from Pololu Corp., so the readers can explore a couple of projects presented in this guide. A few projects illustrate using a Bluetooth protocol in simple wireless systems built around the BeagleBone Black, desktop PC and Arduino Due.

Each project is accompanied by a brief description which helps to make things clear. Most projects described in the book can be improved or modified if necessary. Each project includes a circuit diagram accompanied by the Python source code. The projects with Arduino Uno and Arduino Due also include the source code written in the Processing language. All projects were designed and tested on the BeaglBone Black Rev.C running Debian Linux.

Table of Contents

1. BeagleBone Black GPIO pins
2. Powering external circuits
3. Configuring software
4. Connecting GPIO outputs to DC loads
5. Connecting GPIO outputs to AC loads
6. Interfacing digital input signals to the BeagleBone Black
7. BeagleBone Black Networking: project 1
8. BeagleBone Black Networking: project 2
9. Distributed systems using Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad: project1
10. Distributed systems using Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad: project 2
11. Measuring a frequency of digital signals
12. Measuring high frequency signals
13. Pulse width measurement using the PWM-to-DAC converter LTC2645
14. Simple control systems
15. Generating PWM signals
16. Simple PWM-to-DC converter
17. Generating high precision analog voltage using an LTC2645 device
18. Processing analog signals
19. Measuring analog signals with the MCP3201 A/D converter
20. Using low-pass filters in data acquisition systems
21. The simple thermostat system using the MCP3201 A/D converter
22. Processing small analog signals with instrumentation amplifiers
23. Using high-resolution Delta-Sigma analog-to-digital converters
24. Digital potentiometers in programmable systems
25. The wide-band oscillator LTC1799 using a digital potentiometer
26. The digitally programmed wide-band oscillator with LTC6903
27. Using a digital-to-analog converter as a precision DC voltage source
28. The digital-to-analog converter in the LTC6992 PWM circuit
29. Generating analog waveforms using the Direct Digital Synthesizer AD9850
30. Processing DDS waveforms
31. Using serial interfaces of the BeagleBone Black
32. Interfacing BeagleBone Black to Arduino Uno
33. Interfacing BeagleBone Black to Arduino Due
34. Measuring the frequency of digital signals with Arduino Due
35. Measuring the pulse width of digital signals with Arduino Due
36. Control of PWM signals of Arduino Due using a serial interface
37. Control of sawtooth signals of Arduino Due using a serial interface
38. Wireless systems using Wixel Programmable USB Wireless Modules: project 1
39. Wireless systems using Wixel Programmable USB Wireless Modules: project 2
40. BeagleBone Black in wireless systems using Bluetooth
41. BeagleBone Black and Arduino Due in measurement systems using Bluetooth
42. BeagleBone Black and Arduino Due in measurement systems using Bluetooth: project 1
43. BeagleBone Black and Arduino Due in measurement systems using Bluetooth: project 2