Beagleboard Kitchen PC – Hardware

After choosing the Beagleboard C4 as the platform for my kitchen PC project I had to search for the needed components. The beagleboard comes as single board pc without any other components. To be able to use it additional components are needed. For example a power supply, a serial connector and a usb to serial converter for programming the beagleboard, a memory card (SD) for storing the OS components on it and so on … And for this special use case a screen and speakers are needed.

For those who don’t know the beagleboard a quick introduction: The Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer. The design and specifications of the boards are open source and available to the public. The documentations of the board are very detailed.

There are a lot of different beagle board based projects out there, for example robots, home automation projects.

Here a list of the components I used to build the system round the beagleboard:

Common needed components

• AC Power Adapter, 15W, out 5V with 5.5mm Plug for Beagleboard
• SDHC-Card, 4GB, SanDisk Ultra
• USB2 Hub (4 Ports)

For programming the board

• IDC10 to DB9M bulkhead (RS-232) cable
• DB9F Null Modem (RS-232) cable 1,8m
• Delock USB2.0 to DB9M RS-232 (Serial) adapter

Special components for the project

• Speaker: LogiLink SP0006, USB, White
• HDMI to DVI Kabel 1,5m
• Touchscreen 7″ LCD Monitor with mounting frame
• TP-Link 54Mbps Wireless USB Adapter

A lesson I learned during putting the components together: The HDMI plug at the beagle board outputs a pure digital signal (-> DVI-D). It is not possible to attach a VGA display directly to that board. So it is important to have a display which can handle HDMI/DVI-D signals.

Another note: Be careful when plugging/unplugging things from the board. Always detach the power supply from both devices before e.g. pluggin/unplugging the display connection.

And please, don’t ask me why I did not buy an iPad and have a lot more functionality with it… guys, it is a lot less fun!

Okay. This was the hardware now. On the next post I’ll write about putting the components together and the first starts of the board. So stay tuned…