Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Unboxing the BBB and providing power
Unlike Raspberry Pi, BBB is ready out of the box. A recent BBB will come with the Debi-
an distribution of GNU/Linux, henceforth referred to as Debian, installed on the eMMC.
eMMC is the on-board flash memory for the BBB. As soon as power is applied to the
board, BBB will start to boot from the eMMC. As shown in section three of the SRM, you
can connect the BBB directly to your PC with the supplied USB cable. The BBB can also
be powered from a 5V barrel jack, where you'll want a wall adapter that can supply up to
1A. If you plan on connecting a mini
liquid-crystal display
(
LCD
) to the BBB, you may
want to use a 2A adapter. You can typically find the output voltage and amperage specifica-
tions written on the adapter. You can tell whether the board is powered and running if the
blue user
light-emitting diodes
(
LEDs
) are flashing. Specifically, the LED USER0 will
flash in a heartbeat pattern.
Note
Each user LED has a default meaning that corresponds to a specific BBB activity. To fur-
ther motivate you to read the SRM, the meanings are defined in section 3.4.3 under step 6,
Booting the Board
.
Tip
Be very careful when choosing your power supply. The BBB needs 5VDC +/-.25V. Con-
necting a higher voltage power supply will damage the board.
The BBB can support multiple peripherals such as a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
However, in this topic, we'll be using the BBB in a
headless
configuration, which means
without
the monitor. Section 3 of the SRM details the various connection scenarios.
