Setup Beagle Bone

2020-06-14 - (1 min read)

Instructions on setting up development environment on Beagle Bone, in case I forget it again.

Check USB connection

First, verify the USB connection

$ usb-devices

If it's good, something similar to the following will show up

T:  Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#=  4 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=ef(misc ) Sub=02 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0104 Rev=04.04
S:  Manufacturer=Seeed
S:  Product=BeagleBoneGreen

Alternatively you can check the kernel log

$ dmesg | grep usb

Example result:

[  841.388142] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0104
[  841.388144] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=4, SerialNumber=5
[  841.388146] usb 1-2: Product: BeagleBoneGreen
[  841.388147] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Seeed
[  841.388148] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: BBG217071901

Serial Port over USB

Find the tty corresponding to Serial over USB by checking kernel log

$ dmesg | grep tty

e.g. found ttyACM0

[    5.901768] cdc_acm 1-2:1.2: ttyACM0: USB ACM device

Connect through Serial Port

$ sudo screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200

Frequently used Serial instructions:

Show help: Control a + (no control) ?
Exit: Control a + (no control) \

Ethernet over USB

Execute ifconfig on both Beagle Bone and your Host device to check the IPs and interfaces of Ethernet over USB.

Seems by default, Beagle Bone and Host are under the subnet 192.168.7.0/24, with Beagle Bone having IP address 192.168.7.2 and Host having IP address 192.168.7.1.

Route Beagle Bone network traffic on Host

On Beagle Bone

Route all traffic to Host (IP 192.168.7.1)

$ sudo ip route add default via 192.168.7.1

On Host

Find <Beagle Bone interface> and <Host network interface> through ifconfig

Enable IP layer forward

$ sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

Add NAT rule

$ sudo iptables -A FORWARD --in-interface <Beagle Bone interface> -j ACCEPT
$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING --out-interface <Host network interface> -j MASQUERADE

DNS server

Prepend DNS server address to resolv.conf

$ sudo sed -i '1inameserver 8.8.8.8' /etc/resolv.conf