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Frequently Asked Questions

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Jason Kridner edited this page May 19, 2020 · 25 revisions

Is USB type-C only for power?

No, the dual-role controller offers USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connections at 5,000Mbps, over 10 times faster than USB 2.0 high-speed connections at 480Mbps.

How do I enable USB Type-C host mode?

You'll need a USB Type-C hub with "pass-through power" or a multiport adapter. Then, you might need to force the USB into host mode.

echo "host" | sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/48890000.usb/mode

Will the board cost over $200 like BeagleBoard-X15?

No, the board will be around $100, despite having similar features. Much of the savings comes from fewer USB 3.0 ports, removal of SATA and PCIe and lower-speed board interconnect. The RAM is also reduced from 2GB to 1GB and from 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports to just 1. We feel this is a good tradeoff for many people looking to experiment. The additional flash and addition of WiFi can largely be covered by the newer design and larger expected sales.

Note that tariffs may be applied to the price of your board by distributors, making the price somewhat over $100.

The lowest cost today is around £80 (US$99) at https://uk.farnell.com/beagleboard/bbone-ai/beaglebone-sbc-arm-cortex-a15/dp/3132825.

Octopart seems to be reasonably accurate as to where is stock for now: https://octopart.com/bbone-ai-beagleboard-104819291

Why did my board shut down unexpectedly?

By default, the boards may run warm and shutdown. Please keep adequate ventilation on your board and update your software.

Where are the AI training materials?

We've got a path to deliver the best AI training platform available, but, the actual materials are deeply lacking today. The https://github.com/beagleboard/cloud9-examples repository has a starting point for using the TIDL library, but that library is based on C/C++ and requires separate information on training and converting the model from Tensorflow/Caffe/etc. The TI Tensorflow Lite support is coming around the first quarter of 2020.

So, this is a work in progress. We'll be integrating a ton of examples (and associated software tools) to work with stuff like Tensorflow and Coral Accelerator in the short term. The expectation is to both crowd source this around the cloud9-examples repository and grow this over time. The hope is the Cloud9 development environment and mjpg-streamer presentation layer is enough inspiration and platform to get this moving quickly.

Today, conversion from Tensorflow or Caffe models to TIDL such that you can run them accelerated is covered at http://software-dl.ti.com/processor-sdk-linux/esd/docs/latest/linux/Foundational_Components_TIDL.html. You can also choose to run Tensorflow or Caffe natively on ARM.

Accessories

Power cable

A 5V 3A (15W) adapter should be sufficient. It needs to be type-C. Most laptops with type-C should put out enough power to provide both power and a super-speed data connection over this cable.

Serial cable

The 3-pin serial JST-ZH header (1.5mm pitch) has ground closest to the mounting hole with RX next and TX furthest away. There are several cable options available. Further, Embest has developed a JTT-ZH to 100-mil male header for connection to a standard FTDI cable.

Fans

Kernel status

Upstream

-ti LTS kernels

4.9.147-ti-r120

  • Works pretty well, with some gaps to be documented here
  • Requires an out-of-tree build of WiFi driver, currently being built with buildroot, but working on integrating the build in with Robert's patches

Extra included software

Pinmux status script: show-pins.pl

show-pins.pl is a Perl script that provides the easiest way to observe the status of the pinmuxes. It reads the kernel debugfs information on the pinmux status and maps it against a table of the modes matched with the cape header pins or other board function.

sudo perl /opt/scripts/device/bone/show-pins.pl -vv
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