Prerequisites

This topic will cover what parts you need to get started with BeagleBone Black. You can buy them online or pick them up from any electronics store that is available in your locality.

The following is the list of materials needed to get started:

• 1x BeagleBone Black
• 1x miniUSB type B to type A cable
• 1x microSD Card (4 GB or More)
• 1x microSD Card Reader
• 1x 5V DC, 2A Power Supply
• 1x Ethernet Cable

Note

There are different variants of BeagleBone boards like BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Green and some more old variants. This book will mostly have the BeagleBone Black shown in the pictures. Note that BeagleBone Black can replace any of the other BeagleBone boards such as the BeagleBone or BeagleBone Green for most of the projects. These boards have their own extra features so to say. For example, the BeagleBone Black has more RAM, it has almost double the size of RAM available in BeagleBone and an in-built eMMC to store operating system instead of booting it up only through operating system installed on microSD card in BeagleBone White. Keeping in mind that this book should be able to guide people with most of the BeagleBone board variants, the tutorials in this book will be based on operating system booted from microSD card inserted on the BeagleBone board. We will discuss about this in detail in the Setting up your BeagleBone board and installing operating system's topics of this chapter.