Customized Seeed Studio Beaglebone boards in Industrial Applications and Projects!

Customised Beaglebone® Green Industrial Applications

Speaking of Beaglebone® Green, how well does it actually perform in an industrial setting? Well, we will be showing you 4 different settings where our Beaglebone® Green is applied as part of the industrial solution!

An Electronic Controller for Poultry Industry & Farm

In order to allow farmers and people of the poultry industry to view and monitor the data in farms, our original Beaglebone® Green is used as an electronic controller in this case.

This controller is capable of controlling and displaying all data such as humidity, temperature and light levels, which would in turn optimize poultry production with real-time data management.

Smart Gateway for Building Metering

As for tracking factory and residential needs such as water, electricity and gas, our customised Beaglebone® Green is used as smart gateway to collect real-time data and transmits data to the cloud for real-time and remote monitoring.

The following customisation is made to our Beaglebone® Green to better cater to their solution: Increased in DC input to 9V – 24V, added the real-time clock and added RS485 interface.

Smart Gateway for Collecting Food Delivery Status

For the case of transporting fresh produce and goods, our customised Beaglebone® Green is used as the smart gateway to track the quality of the good.

By collecting and uploading data such as temperature and humidity of the goods during transport, this would prevent unnecessary cost and increase the overall efficiency in product distribution.

The following customisation is made to our Beaglebone® Green to better cater to their solution: Rearrangement of header pins, added PoE(Power over Ethernet), added RGB LED for system status, added 2 USB host connectors.

New Energy System Monitor

In order to upgrade solar system controllers, our customised Beaglebone® Green is used to enable users and maintenances to update and monitor the devices for solar systems. Also, this controller also works as a smart switch for home solar system and grid!

The following customisation is made to our Beaglebone® Green to better cater to their solution: Added RS485, CAN (Dual pack RJ45), encryption chip, LED and buzzer and RTC

Comparison between Beaglebone® Green Series and Beaglebone® Black

Main differences between Beaglebone® Green Series and Beaglebone® Black

Since Beaglebone® Green Series basically use the same board as Beaglebone® Black, you can find many similarities between them. But there are a few differences that make Beaglebone® Green Series a better option instead.

Pricing

If we were to look at their specs and compare them side by side, you’ll realise that BBB ($60) is a lot pricier than BBG ($44). Not to mention BBG series have 4GB on-board storage as well. For about the same features, BBG is definitely more pocket-friendly for your needs.

Connectivity

In term of overall connectivity, the most comparable one to BBB is BBG, but what makes BBG series stand out is its 2x Grove connectors. Where BBGG and BBGW have Bluetooth and Ethernet as well! Though for the most parts, BBG and BBB are pretty similar.

Background of Beaglebone® Green Series

Beaglebone® Green

Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green is a joint effort between BeagleBone.org® and Seeed Studio, and it is based on the open-source hardware design of BeagleBone® Black.

It is a low-cost option that provides the compact footprint, numerous interfaces, and expandability of BeagleBone® Black while extending the development environment with on-board Grove connectors which work with the Seeed Grove ecosystem. Furthermore, Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green is fully compatible with BeagleBone® Black capes. 

Moreover, it comes with a Debian image installed on the on-board 4GB 8-bit eMMC flash storage, where you can connect the board to a 5V power supply or the USB port of your PC to easily power it up.

BeagleBone® Green Wireless

Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green Wireless Development Board is based on TI AM335x, is the first Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) board from the Beagle community. It offers a Wi-Fi and BLE solution with a built-in 2.4 GHz TI WLinkTM8 module with two antennas. 

It also supports AP+STA mode of communication, comes with an MRAA library, and complies with Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). The board also comes with two Grove connectors, making it easier to connect to the large family of Grove sensors.

BeagleBone® Green Gateway

Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green Gateway Development Board is a commercial-grade single-board computer (SBC). It is based on the open-source hardware design of Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green and Seeed Studio BeagleBone® Green Wireless and combined with the onboard Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) + Ethernet features. Which also supports various BeagleBone® Cape that can perform different functions.

Though Beaglebone® Black is not the star in this article, but to help out those who are not familiar with it, here’s a brief intro about it:

Beaglebone® Black

Beaglebone® Black is a low-cost development board, built with AM335x 1GHz ARM® Cortex-A8. BeagleBone Black comes with the 512MB DDR3 RAM and 4GB 8-bit eMMC on-board flash storage. You can boot Linux into the board within 10 seconds and get started on development in less than 5 minutes with just a USB cable.