Google starts accepting applications for potential mentoring organizations on today, February 9th. BeagleBoard.org is going to send in an application. Your help is needed to make that application as strong as it can be!

As many of you might have heard, Raspberry Pi launched their next board, the Raspberry Pi 2. There have been noticeable differences in the primary processor performance from the original Pi to Pi 2. This has cause a lot of people to revisit the question of how the BeagleBone Black compares to Raspberry Pi.

With browsers and rich applications available to us everywhere, desires for information and control are growing astronomically. Entrepreneurial, design and cross-discipline engineering skills are all required to launch a successful connected device. Thankfully, Brian DeLacey with other technology enthusiasts around Cambridge and Boston are exploring what it takes to educate individuals and teams on the required skills in the most expedient ways possible. I was fortunate to be a guest speaker at an IoT event he hosted at MIT and to participate in his week long Independent Activities Period (IAP) class, supporting use of BeagleBone Black.

It was April last year when I wrote about how we were going to fix the board shortage. Demand and activity have only increased since then, but the additional production capacity has paid off and there is now inventory of both the official BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone Black manufactured by CircuitCo and the logo-compliant BeagleBone Black manufactured by Element14 in every major region. In the US, major electronics retailers are stocking BeagleBone Black including a Make-produced getting started kit at Radio Shack and a $39.99 sale at Micro Center for most of this month.

2014 has been an amazing year for BeagleBoard.org and BeagleBone Black, the most successful open hardware computer ever invented. I know what you are thinking; “Jason, didn't that board from the UK outsell BeagleBone Black?” Sure, but that board isn't open hardware: there aren't open source layout files or open source editable schematics and the components in the bill of materials aren't readily available. With boards from BeagleBoard.org, anyone can make them, and if they make enough of them, they can be made at a similar or even lower price point. That's only part of the beauty of open hardware.

Not only man’s best friend, the Pick ‘n Paste is now a maker’s best friend!

TL;DR - $99 BeagleBone Black GamingCape from CircuitHub

It’s amazing what you can create when you pair a few spare parts lying around and an inventive imagination. In this instance, these ingredients gave birth to BeagleBot – a small test robot for localization algorithms!

Oh, the places you’ll go when using three BeagleBone Blacks!

Picture this: You’re lying in bed, exhausted from a long day of work; your eyelids are heavy, but you’re devoted to finishing the last page of your favorite novel. You conclude the last page, set the book down on your nightstand, get in the perfect sleeping position and then regrettably realize that your bedroom lamp is still on. With a sigh, you get out of your cozy bed and turn off the light, but not after aggressively stubbing your toe on your nightstand on the way back to bed.

Pantelis Antoniou originated device tree overlay support for the purpose of enabling dynamic hardware configuration under Linux on devices like BeagleBone that use device tree for hardware configuration. Device tree was introduced to Linux for the purpose of putting the description of hardware into data structures, rather than building it up programmatically, greatly reducing the amount of code required to be maintained within the Linux kernel sources. Until now, the device tree data structure was only processed at boot time and that simply can't work for devices that might change hardware configurations after boot. While many BeagleBone capes can be probed by the bootloader, a common use-case is hardware that is reconfigurable. The most obvious example is a cape with an FPGA on it.

You don’t have to be a child to play with remote-controlled cars. The BeagleROV is an exciting toy that would bring any adult Maker back to the good ole’ days – except this robot packs a bit more punch than the classic Nascar minis. Powered by the TI Sitara AM335x processor-based BeagleBone Black, the BeagleROV has a multitude of capabilities that are all controlled remotely via the robot’s web application.

Standing in line for coffee, a commercial break, boiling water – all things that only take a matter of minutes. What if building circuit boards were that easy and time efficient? At New York startup company BotFactory, devices print and assemble electronic circuit boards from your desktop in a matter of minutes. Creating electronic devices has never been easier.

Computer numerical control (CNC) milling machines have been around for decades. Most are industrial-sized, and are used create everything from the shaped trim on a house to the mechanical components of a space shuttle. Over the last decade, a large do-it-yourself community has emerged giving a new market to CNC milling machines as personal, rather than solely industrial applications.

Commuting in a big city is a tough task, especially when public transit and traffic congestion make the process even more difficult. For someone who is blind, finding your way around the city on public transportation in these conditions can seem daunting, or nearly impossible. Marcelo Gutierrez recognized this issue and wanted to do something about it.

Ringing a bell, throwing some cash, snapping your fingers and maybe even showing a little extra cleavage have all been used to flag down bartenders. But Sean Carney, creator of Barbot, can catch the attention of his bartender with a quick click of the mouse and a remote Internet connection.

Did you know that The New York Times writes itself? No, not the newspaper-but objects at The New York Times R&D Lab have "thoughts" of their own that they journal for our reading pleasure.

I just got back from a meetup of Machinekit developers hosted by Tormach, a maker of professional CNC machines. There I got a glimpse into the future of personal CNC machines and 3D printers. Building on the long successful LinuxCNC project, Machinekit has added support for additional platforms, including BeagleBone Black, and additional real-time Linux strategies, including Xenomai and stepper motor driving using the on-board PRU microcontrollers.

Just a couple of weeks in, we already have our first image update. It doesn't include any major changes, but it should be noted that the LEDs will now turn OFF at the completion of the execution of the eMMC flasher as the board will be shutdown. This avoids any cruft to build up on the uSD card that might cause subsequent uses of that uSD card to flash other boards to be slowed down as the journaling file system is explored. This isn't likely something you need to think about if it sounds confusing----just realize the LEDs will be OFF instead of ON at the end of the flashing operation.

Arduino Tre is the next-generation Arduino developed in partnership with BeagleBoard.org featuring Arduino ease-of-use and the high-performance, low-power Linux capabilities of BeagleBone. Read their announcement here.

The SoundsCape adds a codec to the McASP bus for Line In, Line Out, and Headset (microphone in + headphone out). It also adds an HCI Bluetooth 4.0 Module for Bluetooth Audio (A2DP), BT Hands free (HFP), or SPP, with all Bluetooth profiles are supported by the cape.

Yesterday, Google announced the project proposals accepted for this year's Summer of Code! 7 of those projects are being mentored by BeagleBoard.org. See the full list of approved projects at https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/projects/list/google/gsoc2014

I hear that question a LOT. No, we weren't sleeping, but sometimes it takes a minute for a plan to come together. And don't you love it when a plan comes together?

Some unlikely combinations just seem to work: Oreos and peanut butter, Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott and now Arduino and BeagleBone Black!

We are getting great interest from students this year for Google Summer of Code, but we could use a bit of help from our community getting a great feedback on their proposals. I encourage you to engage with them on #beagle-gsoc and the beagleboard-gsoc mailing list even if you don't plan to be a mentor, simply to make the proposals better for the community.

As posted earlier today on the BeagleBoard.org mailing list, the latest BeagleBone Debian beta images are now posted for broader testing at:
http://beagleboard.org/latest-images/

Don’t drink and drive, unless you are the driver of today’s featured Beagle project. That is, unless you are... a fish!

BeagleBoard.org has once again been selected as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code! This means it is time for students and potential mentors to check out the information on the program home page to find out about the program in general and discover the other organizations participating in mentorship this year. Once familiar with the program, you should check out the ideas pages for various organizations, including the BeagleBoard.org ideas page.

As working professionals, Michael Jones, Jonathan Piat and their team at Valent F(x) know that interfacing with FPGA boards can be a clunky and cumbersome process. With these complexities of electronic design in mind, they strove to devise a more user-friendly, plug-and-play method to, as Michael put it, “make even students and hobbyists smile.”

Imagine having the ability to personalize your Christmas tree lights. When the holiday is approaching and it’s time for your family tradition of picking a tree, baking cookies, and putting on the garland, lights, ornaments, and big star on top, it seems like there is always something wrong with the lights! A few bulbs have gone out, some are missing, and you find yourself scrambling around trying to find replacements to put in to make sure your tree still shines bright next holiday season.

Inspiration is not an easy thing to come by, and no one can predict when it will strike. The light bulb suddenly flashes on overhead, and the gears inside your brain start to turn. The excitement of the “Ah hah!” moment is great, but often short lived when the realization of the logistics come into play.

ForestDew Apiaries, located in Ottawa, Ontario, has been keeping, testing and trying 20 strains of bees from all over the world for 13 years.

As Alex Neskin slipped out the front door for work, he couldn’t help but feel the heartache as he heard the barks and cries from his Chihuahua, Rocky. It was the same routine every day. He would try to sneak out the door attempting to be unnoticed by Rocky, but every time the door would shut, the barking and crying would start. The separation anxiety not only took a toll on him and Rocky, but even the neighbors when they had to deal with the unnerving sound of a barking dog. This separation anxiety is what led Alex to create Petcube.

What is your go-to activity when you can’t sleep? For some it’s reading a book or counting sheep, but for music and technology enthusiast Michelangelo Guarise, it’s Volumio.

A quick survey of some BeagleBoard.org-based projects on Kickstarter that launched in 2013 provides some interesting lessons that are perhaps more intuitive than decisive. From 3D printers, home automation, robotic controllers, processing elements and accessories, designs using Beagle are starting to show up all over Kickstarter. Most of them are being successful, but not every project idea is a recipe for success. Perhaps the most critical lesson is to fully engage a developer community if you want your project to succeed.

Here we are, 2014. Expect a big year for Beagle! Unfortunately, I have to start out with an apology. LinuxGizmos.com recently hopped on the news that over 100,000 BeagleBone Blacks have now been sold. When they contacted me to confirm, I blundered a bit by repeating and confirming what I thought was a fairly broadly shared rumor---that we are looking to soon shift the Linux distribution that ships in the flash of the boards from Angstrom to Debian. The blunder wasn't the confirming of the news, but rather not doing a good job at communicating to the community about this move better ahead of time. It didn't help that I was taking off for vacation where my Internet access is spotty at best. So, I owe you all a big apology, but I hope you are still excited about the news.

If you went to Maker Faire New York this year, you could not have missed the Orbital Rendersphere. This “Big Giant Spinning Limb Slicer,” as the Hoboken MakerBar team affectionately calls it, displays images and videos on a four-foot diameter spherical surface using persistence of vision (POV) spinning at 450 RPM. It had a constant crowd surrounding it and earned five ribbons at the faire: four Editor’s Choice ribbons and one Educator’s Choice ribbon.

Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hachenberger, co-founders of NORDT Labs, have many secret talents. Addie can bake some mean chocolate chip cookies at 15,000+ feet in high winds on a mountain, and she can open a beer bottle with just about anything (like a lighter) thanks to Becky Stern. Stefan, on the other hand, makes the best kiserschmann in Austria, according to Addie. But their most recent project—the Lasersaur—shows their best talent yet.

Don't let the fun you had playing childhood video games disappear and decay as forgotten memories — give them an extra life! Help make sure that generations to come will still be able to run the same software you run today, including the video games of yesterday. Open source enables us to preserve the information to run those games, passing them on to the next generation. In fact, there's already a huge movement of people saving their old games using "retro-gaming systems," but not all of them are fully open source. Because the BeagleBone Black not only runs open source software, but is also open source hardware, taking the time to bring it your games your games up on BeagleBone Black means you'll be able to bring those games with you into the future.

You’ve heard of monkeys and apes being sent to space, but did you know a Beagle is also being launched into the ether? In 2014, Sam Sipe and his team at the U.S. Naval Academy are launching a BeagleBoard-xM into space as part of their Unix space server.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. My family usually runs a turkey trot together, makes and eats great food, and spends the evening playing board games. The one down side of Thanksgiving is all of those dirty dishes! Sometimes I think it takes more time to clean up than we even spend eating turkey dinner. The result? The family falls asleep on the floor (thanks tryptophan!) before all of the dishes are cleaned up, leaving a mess in the kitchen sink.

Planning to buy a sprinkler timer for your loved ones this holiday season? Have no fear, OpenSprinkler is here! Developed by Ray Wang at Rayshobby LLC, OpenSprinkler Beagle—nicknamed OSBo—was released last week. It is an open-source sprinkler/irrigation extension board for the Sitara-processor-based BeagleBone Black. The board helps you easily develop BeagleBone Black into a low-cost, web-connected smart sprinkler controller. It comes with a full-featured sprinkler scheduling program, uses online weather data to help regulate water time, and enables users to remotely change setting and programs while away from home. It works with the standard 24VAC sprinkler valves commonly found in household watering and irrigation systems and allows for an unlimited number of water zones to be individually controlled. Because it’s open source, it offers a lot of flexibility in features and functionality. Users are encouraged to hack the hardware and/or software (written in Python, which is easy to learn).

Whether you want to explore the seas for science and education, “snorkel” for fish and coral without getting wet, or hunt for buried treasure in unexplored seas, OpenROV is something you need to check out!

Open-source technology is all about getting the power of technology into the hands of everyone. That’s why we at BeagleBoard.org really like the idea of GrowCubes —stackable, modular farming environments that use mobile technology and aeroponics to grow delicious, organic produce indoors—using 90% less water. Developed by a team at NYC Resistor (NYCR), GrowCubes democratize agriculture by placing the power to grow back into the hands of individuals and communities. “It’s based on the radical idea that food should be healthy, tasty and accessible to all,” said Chris Beauvois, founder of GrowCubes. This idea of open-source agriculture has implications not only for culinary culture, but for some of the urgent public health issues facing us today.

by Jason Kridner

The holidays are around the corner, and with them come the fun and excitement of big family gatherings. However, a lot of families are spread across the country and not able to get together for the holidays. That’s why Charles Hamilton developed GrannyCam, a safe, durable videophone that his kids can use to stay in touch with their grandparents, not only during the holiday season but throughout the year. In September, the device received great response and an Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon from Make Magazine at Maker Faire New York.

What’s your perfect vacation? Mine involves sitting out by the pool under the sun as people deliver me ice-cold drinks. Andy Gikling seems to have a similar dream, and he figured out a way to live the good life every weekend—by developing the BBot robot!

New York is one of the brightest places on Earth. Times Square is definitely a large factor, but now a new BeagleBone Black-based project—the Octoscroller—is adding to the glow.

When you think of Pyramids in the middle of the desert, you think of Egypt—not Nevada. The Disorient Pyramid, which was on display at Burning Man 2013 this year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, is changing all that.

Phil Polstra had a problem. He had a vision for a portable penetration testing (pentesting) and forensics device, but he didn’t have the technology he would need to do it. One fateful day at Maker Faire Detroit, Polstra found himself right next to Jason Kridner, who was showing off the (then) new BeagleBoard-xM. “This was my first introduction to the Beagles. I was very impressed with the xM and thought I might use them in some future project,” said Polstra.

#ArduinoTre enables Web-based programming of all your sensors http://bit.ly/18FvhfC

Two open hardware pioneers have combined forces to bring the famously easy-to-use experience of Arduino to a high-performance ARM^®-based Linux computer and prototyping platform derived from the open hardware designs of BeagleBoard.org and Arduino Leonardo. As an open hardware project, BeagleBoard.org's collaboration with Arduino helps to advance accessible technology for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments everywhere.

Here’s something we are sure you will ‘Like.’ While at Maker Faire Bay Area this year, we gave away a few BeagleBone Black open-source computers to some lucky faire attendees. We heard back from one of the winners, Christopher Berg, about a creative but functional project he’s created on the board over the past few months that would make Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg quite proud.

There wasn't enough time to really discover all of the BeagleBone Black projects at World Maker Faire in New York. I did post some quick pictures on Google+, but I barely had time to breathe at the Faire!

Embedded Computing Design magazine recently announced its 2013 Top Embedded Innovator awards. BeagleBone Black was announced as a winner in the Top Products Silicon category. Hardly surprising, given the waves BeagleBoard.org has been making in the embedded industry for the last five years.

It has been a busy week for BeagleBoard.org, which has now been around for five years! Drew Fustini of Element14 was nice enough to bring cake to the Southeast Michigan Friends of Boris (the Beagle) meet-up. A notable point of discussion was the fact that BeagleBoard.org got its name from Gerald's dog Jake, but yet the cartoon mascot for BeagleBoard.org was named 'Boris' by Philip who paid to get the logo created. Seems like it is the little things that give character to a community.

BeagleBoard.org is just about to kick-off coding on our second time as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. This is an amazing program that pays students for writing open source software over Summer. Seven (7) students will be participating in projects that advance the state of open source software for Beagle users and will earn them each US$5,000 if they are successful. Twenty-three (23) qualified mentors from the BeagleBoard.org community have volunteered to help the students reach their goals.

At #makerfaire? Give @jadon your card for the chance to win @beagleboardorg #beagleboneblack or #badtothebone! twitter.com/BeagleStache/s…

Status of action items:

On your PC you might use Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, or another distro out there, and Beagle needs one as well. Currently, Beagle is already running Angstrom (OE) (thanks Koen!), but why not get involved early and help Beagle run Ubuntu ARM (Mojo), Fedora ARM, Gentoo ARM, or even ARMedslack?