(BeagleBone Rev C)

The major improvements are that the Debian rather than the Angstrom Linux distribution is used and that this is now pre-installed on the 4 GB eMMC flash memory. No longer must the operating system be installed as a system image on a micro SD card. I am using this with a Windows 10 laptop with USB tethering. It can also be used standalone with a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, but I have not done this. It makes for a convenient way to learn unix. Here are some tips that might help a first time user with this mode of operation. These tips all address problems that I ran into. The mini USB connector on the Beagle Bone Black C board is used to provide 5 V power and for client connection and is what should be connected to the host computer for power and USB tethering. The full size USB connector is for server side connections, usually to a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The board should automatically appear as a device in This PC in the file system about ten seconds after connecting the usb cable. There should be an icon titled BeagleBone Getting Started. There will be helpful information in this folder. Then in a remote unix or Linux terminal window, the unix commandssh -Y -l root 192.168.7.2can be used to establish a remote connection. This can be done either with Cygwin, MinGW, or Fedora installed as a virtual machine with the free VMWare Player. All of these are free software. MinGW is the quickest to install and requires the least storage space. However, one will have to manually add two paths to the Windows path environment variable. These two paths areC:\MinGW\bin\C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin\To do this, go to Advanced system settings in the System control panel, then click on Environment Variables. Path is listed in the system variables.The MinGW commands can then be used in a Windows Command Prompt window. There is a MinGW Installer desktop program to add or remove packages. By the way, MinGW is usually used to build executables and dll's that are windows compatible using a Linux environment and the GNU gcc, g++, and gfortran compilers and linkers. With both Cygwin and MinGW, the correct packages to install must be chosen. In particular, for Cygwin, openssh and openssl from the Net package list must be installed. A separate unix terminal window can be used to transfer files. As an example:scp -p examplefile.txt root@192.168.7.2:/root/will transfer the file examplefile.txt from the current Windows directory to the root Beaglebone Black directory..To set up an Ethernet internet connection using the Beaglebone Black C board, use the terminal window that has the ssh remote connection and type or docd /etc/network/vi interfacesENTER INSERT MODEauto eth0iface eth0 inet staticaddress 192.168.1.122netmask 255.255.255.0gateway 192.168.1.1#netmask and 192.168.1.x obtained using ipconfig on host computer with internet connection#last field in address is arbitrary except must be greater than used by any other device on the networkLEAVE INSERT MODE AND SAVE AND QUITLastly, if one uses more than one Beaglebone Black board on the same host computer, the c:/cygwin/home/don/.ssh/known_hosts file will need to be edited. Remove the line or lines containing 192.168.7.* and append the textHost 192.168.7.*UserKnownHostsFile /dev/nullStrictHostKeyChecking no

this is an excellent little single-board computer (SBC); the ARM CPU has really come a long way and now provides a great hardware platform for experimenting and prototyping...first, i highly recommend getting Prof. Molloy's Beaglebone booknext, your first accessory, even before a case or microsdhc card, should be an Adafruit FTDI UART USB serial cable to plug into the serial debug header pins on the BBB's topside... run your favorite terminal app (i use Zterm on the mac: 1152008N1; if you use minicom under Linux - HINT: turn off hardware handshaking!)i plugged Adafruit cable into my BBB, fired up Zterm on my Mac, then applied power via the mini-USB port... you can then watch the boot process... login as 'root' and press Enter - no password required..the Debian distro installed on the eMMC is from Oct. 2015 - obviously needs upgrading, but good enough for my initial purposes...i also have a Beaglebone Green Wireless (BBGW)... have been very pleased with that SBC as well... wifi and Bluetooth onboard with four USB 2.0 ports makes life easierhowever, i like the BBB due to its companion book by Molloy (who has also just released a similar book for the Raspberry Pi 3)...will the BBB last in the marketplace? who knows? at this point, credit must be given to a singularly talented individual who has contributed untold hours and effort to the Beaglebone family: Mr. Robert Nelson of DigiKey - you'll find weekly new releases you can flash onto the eMMC or boot via the miniSD card port (my BBGW is dual-boot)btw, it was very easy to port support for SSD1306 128x64 OLEDs to the BBGW, and i'm sure the BBB would be the same... my Beaglebone provides a readout of:- date, time of day- IP address- free memory- free SD card storage- uptime- wifi signal strength- local weather conditionsTIP: download the file 'BeagleBonePinGuide.pdf' then print it out, cut the images, then cover both sides with tape, and then tape or glue onto the side of P8 and P9 - you'll have a handy guide to the pins - for the life of me, i don't know why the Beaglebone folks didn't pick up a clue from the Arduino folks, who screen print the numbers on the PCBs (take a look at an Uno R3) - seriously simple and stupid, eh?anyhow, you'll like this little computer - it comes with a USB cable but you'll want to find a barrel-connector power supply...what can you do with this computer? well, you're limited only by your imagination... i have my BBGW already working as a printer server, a media server, etc.. you may want to craft a home-security system or home environmental alarm...