The BeagleBone is a mini computer, in the size of a credit card. Very similar to a Raspberry Pi.
You can connect a mouse, a keyboard and a display – and you’ll have a fully functional computer.
But most people don’t buy it to use as a normal computer…
…so, what is BeagleBone aside from this?
There’s much more exciting things to make from it… Like:
I just finished reading Getting Started With Beaglebone by Matt Richardson.
I’m working on a coffee-related project where I need something more powerful than just the Arduino.
The BeagleBone with its HDMI-output and whatnot, is perfect! But I had only used it a little bit several years ago. So I needed a brush-up.
I didn’t want a “here is EVERY technical detail of the BeagleBone” type-of-book.
I know that I learn much faster if I start with an overview, then dig into details later on as I need them.
That’s why Getting Started With Beaglebone caught my eye.
If you’re new to the BeagleBone, it can seem complex to get started. I’ve put together this BeagleBone Black getting started guide to help you over the first hurdle.
And as you’ll see, it’s really not that hard.
Confused? Check out What Is BeagleBone?
My intention with the BeagleBone Black now is to use it to develop electronics for a coffee-related project. With the BeagleBone, I can add a beautiful touch screen to the project, because it has HDMI output.
I have only barely tried the BeagleBone before, and that was a few years ago. So I’m writing this guide with a beginner’s mindset.
The resistor color code (color bands) on your resistor tells you what value the resistor has. There are usually 4 or 5 bands. Use our simple resistor color code calculator tool below to easily find the value of any resistor.
The color bands on your resistor tells you what value the resistor has. Click on a color band below to change its color and the value and tolerance will automatically update to the correct value.
Experiment with the tool above by clicking on a color band to change its color. Then see the resulting value and tolerance. If you want to know what each color and resistor color band represents, check out the table below.
You can find the color bands and the values they represent in the table below:
Further down this page, you’ll find examples of how to use the color table.
The Knight Rider light bar circuit creates a running light similar to the light bar on the car from the television show Knight Rider.
It’s a really fun circuit to build. I once built a larger version of this for the inside of a party bus I was a part of. Unfortunately, I broke it the first day because I increased the voltage too much, but that’s another story.
You can build this circuit if you’re a total beginner, but of course, it’s a bit easier if you have already built a few circuits before.
Electronics For Kids is the ultimate book for kids that want to learn how to build cool things with electronics.
I wrote it as the book I would have loved to have when growing up.
It’s suitable for all “kids” that are interested in electronics, even if you’re 8 or 100 years old.
The book is very hands-on, and you’ll get to build projects like a motor, a lemon-powered LED light, an electronic coin-tosser, a really cool LED reaction game, and much more.
It has been praised in several magazines such as The MagPi magazine (issue #50), the Wall Street Journal and Geekdad.
Electronics For Kids is available from:
Here’s a fun project.
Build a cool touch-sensitive lamp you can have on your desk.
Once you’ve built this project you can also apply the touch control to other things like a fan or a door bell.
The first thing you need to figure out is how to sense touch from a finger.
I like math.
But, I’m not an expert.
I know the basics.
But when it comes to more complicated stuff, like heavy derivation and integration, I think I’ve forgotten most of what I learned at the University.
These sensors are usually cheap.
And really easy to use!
An analog sensor is a sensor that gives you a voltage value that represents the measured value.
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Per wrote me:
“What’s the easiest (cheapest) way to transfer a C program to a chip?”
Here’s my reply:
It depends on what chip it is.
Most microcontrollers require a programmer. This is a little thing you plug into the USB port that makes it possible to program the chip.
In this tutorial I will show you how to install Whatsapp on your Intel Galileo. I’ll also show you how to read sensor data easily from your mobile phone through Whatsapp.
You can easily extend this into whatever you want, so that you can control your DIY electronics with your smart phone.
I used a Grove Soil sensor together with an Intel Galileo for this project. But you can use whatever sensor you want, as long as it connects to the ADC of your Intel Galileo.
Your own DIY weather station is very useful if you for example want to optimize the growing process of your plants.
It gives you the possibility of getting real-time data or statistics about things the soil moistness, or the temperature around your plants.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to build your own DIY weather station using the Intel Galileo and a few sensors.
In this Intel Galileo board sensors tutorial you’ll learn how to use analog sensors. I’ll show you how to use a simple rain sensor and a soil moisture sensor.
This project could be used on a farm: To make better decision about when to water the crops, it’s very helpful to have information about how much it has rained, and the moisture level in the soil.
Even though I used an Intel Galileo here, you could just as well use the same code and connections with an Arduino.
The components I used:
To get access to more interesting functionality, you need to boot Intel Galileo from an SD-card.
The on-board Linux version running on the Galileo is very limited. So to get access to things like WiFi communication (through Mini-PCIe), you need to install a proper Linux version on an SD-card.
This will also give you access to lots of other libraries, so that you can create programs for example in Python or Node.js.
Another advantage is that if you boot from an SD-card, the sketch you upload to the board does not get erased when you power off the board (as it does if you are using the on-board Linux).
I wanted to try this, because I wanted to build a more advanced weather station than my simple weather station. When booting from an SD-card, I can easily create a web server that runs in the background. Then give easy access to sensor values from an external computer.