The BeagleBone Black is a low-cost mini-computer featured enough to gain a lot of attention lately and make dreams come true for generations of makers.
With a retail price of $62.89, the BBB offer increased processing power and more features compared with Raspberry Pi. Given all the possibilities offered by this computing platform, here is a selection of projects that can make you understand the power of BBB and how to push the limits and build a variety of stuff with a wide range of parts and accessories. You will find that you can build a robot, automate your home, control the board with a smartphone or a tablet, and perhaps save a lot of time and money implementing your idea.
This project provides a simple demonstration of BeagleBone Black and ROS. The hexapod is an all-terrain robot controlled via a PS3 joystick.
This little quad walker robot has three infrared sensors so it can see the obstacles and find another path anywhere in the environment. The project uses the NUKE tool for inverse kinematic, which is familiar to many developers.
In this project, the Black has been used in order to build a walking robot based on servo motors. The board runs an algorithm able to control the speed and direction of mechanical legs.
The Prowlerbot starts from the idea to build a perimeter-patrol security robot able to detect the motion and sound. The patrol robot is engineered around the BeagleBone Black as the main control system for motors, sensors, and several other components.
Control a 3 Wheel Robot from a Tablet With BeagleBone Black
In this project, the BeagleBone Black has been used to control the torque and RPM of the motor in an efficient way. You can also use a web interface to control the robot by combining the Bootstrap framework with the JavaScript library jQuery.
Line Follower Robot – Build it from scratch
The Black board is on the right track in this project that show you how to build from scratch a robot able to follow a black or white line. The only one condition is to not have a discontinuity in the track. The robot has attached sensors engineered to detect the line while the BeagleBone Black control the motors to keep the direction of the robot according to information received from sensors.
Robotic Arm Control from the BeagleBone Black
This tutorial reveal the power of BeagleBone Black to control a robotic arm in order to manipulate objects with human-like abilities. The Lynxmotion AL5D robot arm is featured enough for repetitive tasks and uses five servos for rotation and holding things.
If you’re good with programming then you can build this robot that reached the second generation with improved features and more capabilities. The robot can turn at 45 degrees instead 90 degrees as the first generation and is capable of choosing the right path.
Chubby is an advanced wheeled robot able to detect obstacles with ultrasound sensors located in front and on both sides. The robot has attached a BeagleBone Black with Linux and ROS for communication and vision, and an Arduino microcontroller to control sensors and motors.
This is a good example and a cheap robot to start learn how to use the BBB to embed and drive servos.
Beaglebone Black with Lego Motors
How about using LEGO Mindstorms components and build an autonomous robot. BeagleBone Black gives you the power to do it.
LEGO NXT, BeagleBone Black, Raspberry Pi, and AR marker
This project will help you better understand how to combine a smartphone like Galaxy SIII or an iPad to got an efficient way to control and monitor a LEGO based robot. The robot is connected with a Raspberry Pi board for LAN connection and with a BeagleBone Black board with the role of network server.
The Robotics Cape is a self-balancing mobile robot platform whose take all the benefits in term of hardware and software from Black prototyping platform.
The BeagleBot is another useful robot that combine the power of BeagleBone Black with the high-level technical computing language Matlab.
Now you can consume cold drinks during summer days due to a robot developed for the perfect vacation. This robot is an open-source remote control platform with a screen attached to displayed data about prices of the drinks and advertisements.
This is a project suitable for beginner to intermediate BeagleBone enthusiasts where the weight of the BeagleBone Black is lifted in the air during a demonstration with a quadcopter.
This project, like the previous one, aims to use the BeagleBone Black to control a flying robot. The biggest difference is the ArduPilot system used together with BBB and creates a Linux-based autonomous drone. The flying robot operates more quickly or powerfully than any other control system implemented in homemade quadcopters.
This project is a good introduction to the BeagleBone Black as a platform for underwater exploration. The OpenROV is a DIY low-cost teleoperated submarine build with off-the-shelf parts and controlled via Black board.
Beaglebone: Video Capture and Image Processing on Embedded Linux using OpenCV
This project is a good introduction in video capture and image processing, and it could be used as an ideal school project.
SortME the Computer Vision Robot
Combine a Beaglebone Black, an Arduino, and an OpenCV program, and you’ve got an efficient way to control any robot. The OpenCV software is used for image processing and sends information to Arduino microcontroller to indicate the direction of the robot.
Smart home energy monitoring & management system (SHEMMS)
Home applications cannot miss from the Black collection. This project has the goal to monitor and manage the energy consumption in the house.
The Internet of Things is a concept that fit with Black and Bonescript. This application shows how easy is to build with a BBB and a mobile web interface using Javascript and Bonescript an application for wireless control. The application is featured enough to control wirelessly a LED or any other sensor, motor, etc. connected to a BBB.
Anyone who loves coffee will love this robot. The heart of the robot is a BeagleBone board and can prepare five cups of coffee in the same time.
Debrew is a BBB brew dripper coffee maker controlled from an online interface where the user has available pre-defined coffee types. The BeagleBone Black is interfaced with five stepper motors: three stepper motors are for the columns of the Delta bot, one stepper motor is dedicated to control the flow of water, and another stepper for setting the coarseness of the coffee grinder.