BANGALORE, INDIA: Passionate open source developers and hobbyists in India can now realize their creative design ideas without being restricted by expensive hardware development tools, lackluster performance capabilities, high power consumption or stifled design environments.

Open platform innovators will now have the expandability of desktop machines without the expense, bulk or noise with the Beagle Board, which is a powerful, low-cost and fan-less embedded system development board smaller than the size of an index card.

Driven by the objective of this open platform and initiative, Cranes Software International Ltd. in India has volunteered to distribute these boards for Indian Open Community enthusiasts for just Rs. 9,999/-. The pocket-size, USB-powered Beagle Board is based on Texas Instruments’ (TI) OMAP3530 applications processor, which features an ARM Cortex-A8 core, 2D/3D graphics engine and high-performance TMS320C64x+TM digital signal processor (DSP) core.

Inspired to create a small, open source development board, a small group of enthusiastic engineers worked together on the concept and realization of the Beagle Board. The resulting three inch by three inch board bridges desktop and embedded development by allowing developers to use the same peripherals and usage mode for almost limitless expansion. Developers are able to design exactly to their specification and collaborate with the community on creative new applications.

“This Independence Day hobbyists and open community enthusiasts in India will get ‘freedom to innovate’ on Industry’s leading technology”, said Khasim Syed Mohammed, Core Member, Beagle Team.

He added, “BeagleBoard.org is a worldwide initiative that gives the open community an opportunity to innovate on technology for next generation. Passionate open source developers, hobbyists and students in India should leverage this opportunity to execute, showcase and present their thoughts & ideas globally. With Open tools and compilers available for ARM and DSP on OMAP platforms, community should be able to explore and develop software applications on OpenGL, OpenMax, OpenOffice, Open CV, Browsers, 3D Gaming, gStreamer, 3D UI and lot more. Take this opportunity to contribute, participate, leverage and share developments with Open Community comprising leading Linux developers and maintainers. Collaborate and develop with industry’s experts and techies in the field of SBCs, Portable media, Portable Navigation, web services, mobile devices and open platforms”.

Achieve laptop-like performance
The Beagle Board gives the open source community access to the industry’s highest performance ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) broadly available today, the OMAP3530 processor, which integrates a 600 MHz superscalar ARM Cortex-A8 core that utilizes highly accurate branch prediction and multiple instruction pipelines.

As the superset device of TI’s OMAP35x platform, the OMAP3530 device provides more than 1200 Dhrystone millions of instructions per second (MIPS) to run a full Linux operating systems with desktop window managers and office applications, and also integrates an OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible graphics engine to achieve photo-realistic, real-time pixel-shaded graphics for gaming and 3D user interface acceleration.

A 430MHz C64x+ DSP core is capable of handling high-definition (HD) video (MPEG-4 decode at 720p) for embedded applications, such as home media centers, robotics, web kiosks and digital signage.

Where technology meets imagination
Now equipped with the technology, designers are challenged to use their imagination on how best to experiment with the size and performance of the Beagle Board by only using standard PC peripherals. Developers can utilize the standard expansion buses to add their own peripherals they already own via standard expansion buses, such as a high-speed USB 2.0, MMC/SD/SDIO and DVI-D. In addition to utilizing the DVI-D port to add a digital monitor, an S-Video port can be used to add a TV or the USB miniAB connector can be used to add a high-speed hub for a keyboard, mouse, WiFi or Ethernet connection and web camera. The MMC/SD connector can be used to add multiple gigabytes of storage or SDIO-based WiFi and Bluetooth functionalities.

The Beagle Board allows developers to take their projects with them on the go as they no longer need to worry about a large power supply as there are several ways to power the board through the USB connector. For instance, the board can be connected to a laptop, a car adaptor to run off the car power, a battery-based cell phone charger or a solar-powered backpack. 

Community driven support and expertise
The Beagle Board aims to engage passionate developers and fuel their innovations in the open development community, whether they are designing projects for work or fun. Developers can quickly maximize their design concepts by tapping into the expertise and support of some of the industry’s top Linux programmers already experimenting with the Beagle Board. With communities hosting the latest updates and codes, live forums and chats for easy collaboration, developers have easy access to support and exchange of ideas. Users are encouraged to join active, existing communities already participating in the project.

Pricing and availability
The Beagle Board is available now for Rs. 9,999 /- from Cranes Software. Interested individuals can send their requests to beaglesales.india@cranessoftware.com.