New OSD3358 Development Platforms from GHI Electronics

It has been a busy couple of weeks around here lately with a lot of exciting news.  First we had the announcement of the BeagleBone® Black Wireless which features the OSD3358-512M-BAS instead of the discrete TI AM3358.  Then we went to World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science.  Now we have a couple more announcements.

We are happy to let everybody know that GHI Electronics has released two development platforms for the OSD3358.  Both boards utilize the OSD3358-512M-BAS which integrates the TI Sitara™ AM3358 ARM® Cortex® A8 processor running at 1GHz, 512MB of DDR3, 2 power supplies, and passives into a single IC package.  The boards are available to order today from the GHI Electronics website.  Their status is listed as preview.  This means there are some things that haven’t been completely tested yet (all of which are outlined).  It also means there could be some minor changes when the production versions are released.

The GHI OSD3358 BeagleBone® Dev Board

The first platform is the GHI OSD3358 BeagleBone® Dev Board.  This is a full featured development board that includes a capacitive touch screen display and features popular industrial interfaces like RS232 and CAN.  It also has a single 10/100 Mbit Ethernet, USB Host, and USB Client ports. For nonvolatile memory, the board has 4GB EMMC and a SD Card Slot for expansion.  The GHI OSD3358 BeagleBone® Dev Board also boasts an expansion header that allows access to the ADC channels and the remaining GPIOs of the OSD3358 System-In-Package.

With all of the features and connection options, the GHI OSD3358 BeagleBone® Dev Board is the best way to explore the full capabilities of the OSD3358.

The GHI OSD33558 BeagleBone® TH Module

The next platform is the GHI OSD3358 BeagleBone® TH Module.  This is a bare bones system that allows you to easily start integrating the OSD3358 into your designs.  It adds 4GB of EMMC, a MicoSD slot, and USB to the OSD3358 System-In-Package.  It also brings the GPIO, Analog, LCD, and Ethernet pins to a 100mil header footprint making it extremely easy to connect your custom circuitry.

This board is designed to be the next step after the Dev Board.  It provides a natural progression to integrating the OSD3358 into your system.  It has just what you need to boot Linux and start controlling your custom circuitry.

GHI Electronics

We are really excited to release these boards to the community.  We have been working with GHI Electronics for over a year on them to ensure the best possible experience.  GHI’s vision and customer knowledge combined with their in-house, US based, hardware design, software services, and manufacturing allowed us to ensure the best possible quality.  We are proud GHI Electronics is part of our partner network and look forward to working with them to continue supporting the needs of our customers.

BeagleBoard Compatible

As the names might suggest, both development platforms are BeagleBoard Compatible, just like the OSD3358 itself.  This means both boards are capable of running the well supported Linux distributions provided by BeagleBoard.org®.  By leveraging the BeagleBoard community and software you can get Linux running in matter of minutes.

Also since the OSD3358 and the development platforms are all BeagleBoard Compatible you can rest assured whatever you build on the platforms will perform the same when you go to an OSD3358 only design.

We hope these platforms will provide designers an easy way to start developing around the OSD3358 System-In-Package.  As you start designing please give us your feedback on the platforms.  We really want to continue to improve the experience.  Let us know what you think here.