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BeagleBone-IO

Johnny-Five IO Plugin for the BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Green Wireless and PocketBeagle.

BeagleBone-IO supports Node.js versions 8, 10, 12 and 14.

Contents

• News & Updates
• Installation
• Usage
  • Standalone Usage of BeagleBone-IO
  • Using BeagleBone-IO with Johnny-Five
• Johnny-Five Features Supported
• Supported Pins on the BeagleBone Black
• Supported Pins on the PocketBeagle
• Supported Pins on the BeagleBone Green Wireless
• Working Without Sudo/Root Privileges
• License

News & Updates

May-2020: BeagleBone-IO v4.1.0

• Support for Node.js 6 removed
• Support for Node.js 14 added

Installation

npm install beaglebone-io

For the best user experience with BeagleBone-IO the recommended Operating System is Debian.

Usage

Standalone Usage of BeagleBone-IO

The BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Green Wireless and PocketBeagle have four built-in blue user LEDs mounted on the board itself. The IDs for these LEDs are USR0, USR1, USR2 and USR3. All three boards also have an analog input with the ID A0. The program below turns on LED USR3 and logs the value of analog input A0 to the console each time it changes. It's possible to try this program without connecting any additional hardware to the board.

var BeagleBone = require('beaglebone-io');
var board = new BeagleBone();

board.on('ready', function () {
  this.pinMode('USR3', this.MODES.OUTPUT);
  this.digitalWrite('USR3', this.HIGH);

  this.pinMode('A0', this.MODES.ANALOG);
  this.analogRead('A0', function (value) {
    console.log(value);
  });
});

Calling analogRead, digitalRead or i2cRead initiates a new continuous data reading process for a pin not a single read. Further details can be seen at the Johnny-Five IO Plugins Specification.

Analog inputs will be disabled by default on some systems and must be enabled before usage. To enable analog inputs remove or comment out the following line in /boot/uEnv.txt

disable_uboot_overlay_adc=1

Attempting to use analog inputs that are not enabled will typically result in ENOENT error messages:

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/in_voltage0_raw'

Using BeagleBone-IO with Johnny-Five

To use BeagleBone-IO with Johnny-Five the beaglebone-io and the johnny-five packages need to be installed.

npm install johnny-five beaglebone-io

The next example blinks the default LED with Johnny-Five. The built-in LED with ID USR3 is the default LED on the BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Green Wireless and PocketBeagle. It's possible to try this program on any of these boards without connecting any additional hardware to the board. Note how the Led constructor is called without any arguments. If no arguments are passed to the Led constructor Johnny-Five assumes that the default LED should be used.

var five = require('johnny-five');
var BeagleBone = require('beaglebone-io');

var board = new five.Board({ 
  io: new BeagleBone()
});

board.on('ready', function () {
  var led = new five.Led();
  led.blink();
});

Pulse an LED connected to P8_13 on a BeagleBone Black or BeagleBone Green Wireless with Johnny-Five. Note that pin ID P8_13 is specific to the BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone Green Wireless so this program can't be run on a PocketBeagle.

var five = require('johnny-five');
var BeagleBone = require('beaglebone-io');

var board = new five.Board({
  io: new BeagleBone()
});

board.on('ready', function() {
  var led = new five.Led('P8_13');
  led.pulse(1000);
});

Pulse an LED connected to P2_1 on a PocketBeagle with Johnny-Five. Note that pin ID P2_1 is specific to the PocketBeagle so this program can't be run on a BeagleBone Black or BeagleBone Green Wireless.

var five = require('johnny-five');
var BeagleBone = require('beaglebone-io');

var board = new five.Board({
  io: new BeagleBone()
});

board.on('ready', function() {
  var led = new five.Led('P2_1');
  led.pulse(1000);
});

Johnny-Five Features Supported

Supported Pins on the BeagleBone Black

Below are two images of the BeagleBone Black expansion headers from the BeagleBone 101.

The header pins that are colored orange in the first image are reserved for the on-board eMMC storage and HDMI and can't be used with BeagleBone-IO. Although P9_25 isn't colored orange it's also reserved and can't be used by BeagleBone-IO.

The following image of the expansion headers shows the GPIO numbers for the header pins.

Supported Pins on the PocketBeagle

Below is an image of the PocketBeagle expansion headers from the PocketBeagle repository on GitHub.

Note that although the image indicates that GPIO109 is available on P1_3 this isn't the case as P1_3 is reserved for USB1-V_EN. In addition, the analog mode capabilities of P1_2, P2_35 and P2_36 are not supported by BeagleBone-IO.

Supported Pins on the BeagleBone Green Wireless

Working Without Sudo/Root Privileges

BeagleBone-IO v3.0.0 can be used without sudo/root privileges if an appropriate Debian image and v4.11 or higher of the Linux Kernel has been installed.

The latest recommended Debian image for the BeagleBone that is available today at BeagleBoard.org is Debian 9.2 2017-10-10 4GB SD IoT. This image comes with v4.4.91 of the Linux Kernel. The command uname -r can be used to determine which version of the Linux Kernel is installed.

Assuming that Debian 9.2 2017-10-10 4GB SD IoT has has already been installed the following commands can be used to update to Linux Kernel v4.14.

sudo apt-get update
cd /opt/scripts/tools
git pull
sudo ./update_kernel.sh --lts-4_14

After Linux Kernel v4.14 has been installed it should be possible to use BeagleBone-IO without sudo/root privileges.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) Julian Duque, Alan Yorinks, Brian Cooke 2017

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.