BeagleBoard.org update for the Open Hardware Summit 2020 @ohsummit #OpenCovid19Initiative

Hi, I’m Jason Kridner of Texas Instruments and one of the board members at the Open Source Hardware Association as well as a board member at the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation. I wanted to give you a little update on things going on with BeagleBoard. Why this update in a little YouTube video? Well, I’d expected to be able to hang out and just chat with folks face to face, but that’s not going to happen this year. Instead, I’m going to record this and hopefully encourage more of you to do the same; to make a quick recording of the latest going on with your projects and share it back with the rest of us. Please do that. Join the Discord channel and join the channels on Discord the #community-announcements channel as well as the #show-n-tell channel.

00:51 - Paste a link to your video or maybe a blog post or something else to kind of just let us know what’s going on. I really want to try to fill the gap and let you brag about what’s going on with you and your projects. For us, the thing I’d want to brag about is making the world’s greatest cheeseburger! If you want to find out how the world’s greatest cheeseburger is made, with 14 BeagleBones, then check out beagleboard.org/creator. Another thing going on with the BeagleBoard community, a little more timely… We’ve been chatting with the olks over at Chai.

01:29 - Back in 2014, they introduced a fully open hardware qPCR, quantitative PCR, machine using BeagleBone to increase access to biotechnology. It looks for different– You take DNA strands and you replicate them and it it automates the process of making a lot more comfortable or easy for DIYers to do PCR and test for different DNA sequences, like a virus. The news here is that they are getting pretty close to releasing a test kit for the Open qPCR to test for for COVID-19. That would allow these tools to be used for environmental testing; things like swabbing doorknobs, seats, or different places in the office or in the library. I think this is super-important for us to get out into the communities through hackerspaces, schools, and libraries and to make these widely available community resources for folks. To that end big, BeagleBoard.

Org Foundation reached out to see 02:54 - how we can help. Chai said that they’re going to let us donate some boards to try to get some more of these units out there. If you want to find out a little bit more about what’s going on with Chai Bio and coronavirus testing visit chaibio.com/coronavirus. One of the cool things is they just submitted their the kit to be certified for for open source hardware! At BeagleBoard, we’ve got four boards currently certified: PocketBeagle, BeagleBone Black Wireless, BeagleBone Blue, and BeagleBone AI. News on BeagleBone AI is that we’ve just kicked off with some KiCAD developers the migration of the design from Allegro to KiCAD so that people can use open source tools to edit the design and collaborate and help move that design forward.

03:59 - Of course you can get your hands on boards today. Other cool things we’re doing with partners in open hardware– one of our our favorite partners is Seeed Studio. We’ve been working with them on an upcoming BeagleBoard.org PocketBeagle Grove Kit. This is a great way to learn use sensors and actuators. It’s probably the easiest way to get started with Beagle that we’re putting together.

04:31 - I’m really excited about the possibilities that Kit– essentially everything you need to put together some some musical instruments. It works with Python. It’s just a really nice solution for getting started with with Beagle. We’re kicking off a number of other projects with Seeed Studio. One of them being a Cape for the Machinekit community. We’ve reached out to the Machinekit community to try to gather up requirements that they need for good open hardware solution to building 3D printers and CNC machines.

05:08 - Check that out and get involved with the those open a hardware efforts. To wrap up with a call to action, right now one of the easiest ways to get involved with BeagleBoard is through the Google Summer of Code efforts. Students are a little less than a week out from beginning to submit project proposals to to us to examine for Google Summer of Code. If you go to BeagleBoard.org/GSoC, you can get involved and help us mentor the students and help them finish their their project proposals. they can have some cool stuff for the community.

05:53 - Thanks very much for your time and let us know what you’re up to!.