BeagleBone board boasts WiFi, Bluetooth capabilities

23rd February 2017

Mick Elliott

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Three new products in the successful open source BeagleBone range are being shipped by Premier Farnell. They are BeagleBone Black Wireless, the element14 Wireless Connectivity Cape and the element14 4.3in. Display Cape. The BeagleBone Black Wireless now has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities built in, removing the need for design or hardware workarounds.

Focused on connectivity, the 10/100 Ethernet port from the BeagleBone Black is replaced with a TI WiLink WL1835 which is a high-performance 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth.

With Debian Linux preinstalled and 4GB of onboard eMMC memory, designers can be developing using their web browser in less than 5 minutes using just one USB cable.

The new BeagleBone Black Wireless is also fully compatible with existing cape plug-in boards designed for BeagleBone Black.

For designers already working with the BeagleBone Black and element14 BeagleBone Black Industrial, wireless communication is now available through the new element14 Wireless Connectivity Cape.

This powerful cape expands the capability of the BeagleBone device by adding a variety of wireless connectivity standards - making BeagleBone boards the go-to choice for those developing IoT applications.

The cape utilises the advanced features of the Texas Instruments WiLink 8 (WL1837) industrial dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz), 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth & Bluetooth Smart (Low energy) module also including Zigbee and NFC functionality.

Additional capes and accessories can be stacked or added as required with the inclusion of I/O headers on the cape, as well as on the BeagleBone Black board.

The element14 Display Cape allows designers using the BeagleBone boards (BeagleBone Black, element14 BeagleBone Black Industrial and BeagleBone Black Wireless) to connect a 4.3-inch colour touchscreen display directly to the board.

With capacitive overlay, the Display Cape provides an LED backlit screen for a smartphone-like interface, perfect for interactive projects, embedded systems and standalone installations.