Cascada and the BeagleBoard

Readers who are interested in embedded development may recall Diminuto and Arroyo, my projects to develop a simple Linux and GNU-based teaching environment around the Atmel AT91RM9200EK evaluation board. That evaluation board uses the AT91RM9200 System on a Chip (SoC) based on the 32-bit ARM9 processor core. This SoC and other AT91 variants have been very popular over the years in embedded systems in my experience. My only complaint about the AT91RM9200EK was it's price tag: around US$1200, which made it a little pricey for outfitting a lab with several workstations for teaching a class.

Some time ago, Texas Instruments introduced a new SoC family, the OMAP (Open Multimedia Application Platform). The BeagleBoard is a single board computer that uses the OMAP 3530 SoC, which is based on the 32-bit ARM Cortex-A8 processor core. The OMAP 3530 is an asymmetric multi-core system which includes a digital signal processor (DSP) core and a graphics processor, making it very popular in hand-held devices like mobile phones. The BeagleBoard retails for around US$150, and is trivially capable of running Linux, not to mention Linux-based systems like Google's Android. It includes peripherals such as USB ports, an SD card slot, video out, and audio in and out. All of this is in a form factor that will fit in your shirt pocket.

Several vendors have produced daughter cards for the BeagleBoard that provide additional peripherals. Digi-Key along with chip vendor Micrel produces one such daughter card, the Zippy2, which adds an RJ45 Ethernet jack, a second serial port, a real-time clock, a second SD card slot, and other useful stuff, all in a form factor identical to that of the BeagleBoard. The Zippy2 retails for about US$100. Add a few tens of dollars of cables and other miscellanea and you have yourself a real system.

I just completed soldering the expansion connector onto my very own BeagleBoard, joining the BeagleBoard to my Zippy2, installing the pre-built U-Boot and Linux images onto an SD card using my Linux server, and booting it all up. Entire process: about two hours. Seriously. That includes opening the boxes and setting up my soldering iron.

I expect to spend the next few months playing with this new project, which I have dubbed Cascada. This will include porting some of my Diminuto, Arroyo, and Desperado software over to it. You may expect to be subjected to an article or two on this effort.

Never has learning systems programming and embedded development been so easy or so cheap.