You see we learned that we should NOT set any environment variables while using demo u-boot image which was downloaded from here. In fact what we did is we created our own Ångström image (from Ångström site) and simply installed that to our Linux partition of our SDHC card. And it worked beautifully. Though I must say first boot is a drag, very very slow.

Ran to some problems again. It seems BeagleBoard only works with DVI-D LCD’s and we had a HDMI to VGA instead of a HDMI to DVI-D cable.We ended up connecting to it from SSH and installing our programs like that. We really don’t need an LCD any time soon. And to connect to it from SSH we had to learn it’s IP from terminal. So no problems there. And we were very happy with the outcome.

Installing python libraries; as installing python libraries go this one was a little tricky. You see it seems that Ångström doesn’t update its python libs that frequently. So calling the package by

opkg intall python-pycrypto

Didn’t quite work since installed itself to python2.5 directory. Had to install pycrypto manually. I hated every moment of it. I  than uploaded my own program and I was very happy with the outcome. The program worked perfectly.

Stay tuned for more updates on The Black Box project! Remember you can find it athttp://sourceforge.net/projects/theblackbox/ .

Live coding!

The CVS code is as follows

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@theblackbox.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/theblackbox login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@theblackbox.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/theblackbox co -P modulename

I am sorry to say due to some weird problem you can not view the CVS modules from Sourceforge. You will need to use some kind of client. I am currently using Eclipse as my development IDE hence all my CVS materials comes from that. I have heard that TortoiseCVS is quite neat in its own way (for Windows) but I’d rather use Eclipse your choice.

Please feel free to be a part of the project. Warning us of any bugs will be rewarded with a Cookie.

Now back to the BeagleBoard was indeed a great buy. Small and fast. Though the peripherals cost us quite much. We installed Angstrom Linux  distribution. Which could be found at http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/ . Being new in using the BeagleBoard we decided to use some of the sources at hand. We started with the site http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardBeginners . We ran into some problems.

Our first problem was that we did not have a AT-Everex cable to connect to the board. So we had to jump to Step 5 of the steps presented in the web-site.  Which is basicly Linux Boot Formatting the SDHC disc we bought for the board. I beg you please not to follow the steps at elinux.org instead follow http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/LinuxBootDiskFormat . It is much more clear and you don’t get side stepped. Once we used the steps in formatting the SD disk in code.google.com we noticed we needed cable so we can tell the board where to boot from. So until we get that cable (or make one for our selves?) the project is at a halt. Just follow this blog for any more updates on the board and follow the Sourceforge.net ‘s for the changes on our code.

Peace!