BeagleBoard Gets a More Compact and Cheaper Sibling, the BeagleBone

The creators of the highly-successful BeagleBoard open-source ARM development platform have just announced the introduction of a new similar solution that features a more compact layout as well as a lower acquisition price, which is dubbed the BeagleBone.

At the heart of the BeagleBone stands a Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor built by Texas Instruments with support for the NEON SIMD instruction set and an SGX350 graphics engines.

The TI system-on-a-chip (SoC) device can run at speeds up to 720MHz, but the exact CPU frequency wasn't provided.

The rest of the board's specifications include a microSD connector, on-chip 100Mbps Ethernet, and support for all sort of peripherals via the included USB 2.0 host port.

In addition, the USB port can also be used to power and also debug the BeagleBone as it comes with an included USB-to-serial/JTAG conversion device with software reset support.

Two 46-pin, two-row, 0.1-inch spaced female expansion headers are also available on the board for connecting a variety of off-the-shelf expansion hardware or directly breadboard connections.

"It's exciting to see BeagleBoard.org developers release more amazing open-source hardware for the community to use and share," said Limor Fried, engineer, Adafruit Industries.

"BeagleBoard, and now the BeagleBone, are fantastic platforms for any open-source hardware developer to learn from and build upon," concluded the company's rep.

Pricing for the ARM-powered BeagleBone has been set at $89 US (about 65.5 EUR) and the development board is being shipped with a 2GB microSD card including the Angstrom Linux distribution as well as the node.js server-side JavaScript environment and Cloud9 IDE.

Some distributors have already started to take orders for the BeagleBone, but these won't start shipping until the end of November as this is when the Rev A3 boards (the production version) will be ready.

Until then, active community members can order the A2 revision of the BeagleBone.