The BeagleBone Black boasts a $45 price tag along with a 1GHz Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor.
The Linux device is capable of running various flavors of the open source OS, along with Google’s popular mobile Android OS. In addition, the BeagleBone device offers more I/O capability than an Arduino Uno, although not as much as the Arduino Due.
According to BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner, 100,000 boards will be made in the first production run of BeagleBone Black. It should be noted that the previous generation sold about 50,000 to 60,000 units at twice the cost and less performance.
“You can build 3D printers, you can build rovers, you can build drones, you can build art projects, street lighting,” Kridner told the folks at Ars Technica.
“Beagle users are doing software-defined radio, inspecting the spectrum and wardriving, and searching for faults in the wireless communications systems. I cannot possibly keep up with what everybody’s doing with this board.”
Key BeagleBone Black specs include a MicroHDMI hookup, a pre-installed Linux distribution, an upgraded Web interface for controlling Arduino-like functionality, 2GB on-board storage, microSD and 512MB DDR3.
Interested? The BeagleBone Black can be purchased here or here, either later today or tomorrow.
