The BBB ships with a small barcode sticker that indicates the serial number (at least it doesn’t appear to be a MAC address). With a bit of googling, I found that there is an eeprom accessible via I2C that contains the serial number and also seemingly the board revision:
`
hexdump -C /sys/bus/i2c/devices/0-0050/eeprom -n 48
`
However, aside from the first 4 characters, which apparently indicates the manufacture week/year, the two values don’t seem to match.
Barcode: 001613nnNNNNn
EEPROM: 1613aaaaNNNN
Where ‘n/N’ represents a digit (apparently decimal) and ‘a’ represents an alpha char (not hex). Note that ‘NNNN’ represents the same 4 digits repeated in both values. The final ‘n’ in the barcode does not appear to be a check or guard digit but part of the value (I scanned it with a barcode scanner and it shows up unlike the leading 0).
Does anyone have any idea how the barcode sticker correlates to the eeprom value? or indeed the meaning of the other characters in the eeprom (aside from the board revision, in my case A5A).
Many thanks!
-W.
The sticker doesn’t really correlate to the EEPROM other than a sequential serial number portion. The sticker is just a tracking number for manufacturing. The barcode is for manufacturing tracking only.
Gerald
So the sequential serial number portion is the last 4 digits of the EEPROM barcode sticker and the last 4-but-1 of the barcode sticker?
If so, what happens when it wraps around 9999, or would the production date digits be different?
Thanks!
-W.
Production dates are based on year, week. and units per that week. Also, the actual format is subject to change. We only started using bar codes when the BeagleBone Black was launched. I would anticipate some tweaking in the format.
Why the interest in the bar codes?
Gerald
I’m interested in using these as monitoring devices, so I have software that interfaces to 1-wire via an I2C. I need a unique device identifier (e.g. eth/phy MAC address, or the serial number in the EEPROM), but it would be nice if the software-id matched something visible on the board itself (especially if it can be scanned by a barcode scanner). When the system boots the s/w on the BBB, it connects to the server and provisions itself based on this ID, so I have UI where I have to create a config for the device using this ID.
I already have 3 of these on my workbench! Right now I use a label printer to make a label for the case with the MAC address, but I’m thinking of switching to barcodes and if possible, I’d like it to match the sticker/id on the board … if not, then no big deal, I’ll stick with the MAC addresses. But I figured I’d ask!
Thanks!
Oh. That is built into every processor. Each have a unique MAC address. Check the Technical Reference Manual for the AM3358 processor.
http://www.ti.com/product/am3358
Gerald