Getting Started with BeagleBoard, with Angstrom distribution

Beagleboard is very small but powerful, with the nice integrated Anstrom distribution, you can turn this little board to a desktop like environment! I followed the beginner guide "HowToGetAngStromRunning" and successfully make it works within 30 minutes!

The good things are that all the drivers are pre-built, so whatever I plugged a USB ethernet, or a USB mouse or keyboard, all works like a charm.

Let's check out some screenshots:



1. Firefox running, I copied my Chinese TTF from my Desktop Linux to it, so it can display Chinese as well.


2. WORD processor & Game.



3. Native ARM development, with the GNU toolchains built-in the distribution, you can work in a complete ARM development environment.

Link:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard

BeagleBoard from Digi-Key.

I received the beagleboard from digi-key. Beagleboard is a low-cost TI ARM development board, featuring ARM Cortex A8, only $149 US. I haven't play it yet, Let's put some unbox photos here first:


1. Very small, but powerful!


2. With SD card slot, USB OTG, USB host, HDMI and audio!


3. a small box with cute beagle sticker.

AVR Serial (UART) communication get explained.

Evil Mad Scientist Labs presents an in-depth tutorial on AVR serial communication, provided with ATiny2313 and ATmega example codes. Another must-read article from them!


Link:
Basics: Serial communication with AVR microcontrollers

Easy 4 Legged Walker bot.

Recently I am studying on servo motors with AVR, one of the basic element of making robots. I am thinking to start a simple project to play around with servo motors, a simpleWalker: 4-legged 2 servo walking robots may be a good choice. The full instructions are on instructables.

Video: