it’d seem a little unfortunate that the connector is ‘custom’ but i’d guess there’s little choice given the high density
somewhat concerned if home / hobby interfacing patching circuits may be difficult
the other thing would be how capes would evolve from here, nevertheless, those high-density connectors / interface is a good thing
it packs a pci-express in there if i’m correct about it
It is not a custom part. It is a standard product offered by Hirose. I tried using the connectors used on the BeagleBone Black. I could not pull the boards apart. And there were signal integrity concerns on the SATA and PCIe signals
Gerald
thanks for clarifying, no worries, i think it is a good development nevertheless, i’d guess as with new boards it’d take some time for the community (and add-on/cape makers) to come up with the ‘add-ons’ capes etc which hopefully would become a new eco-system
This is not a BeagleBone Black, not even close. This is a whole different, complex and powerful beast. I am working on add on boards at the moment and should have some things out soon. Hopefully this will help to somewhat solidify an add-on board strategy. It is tough to make it as simple as the BeagleBone Black. Way too many variables.
Gerald
no worries, imho beagleboards, beagle bone black etc, raspberry pi etc had the ‘public’ ‘discover’ or become aware of a niche in the sense of ‘form factor’
the old pc desktops are bulky computers by today’s standards, laptops, netbooks, tablets, mobile phones are ‘non-expandable’
intel compute stick, chrome-bit stick, nuc still fills into the ‘non-expandable’ category
beagleboards as it seemed is starting to fill this ‘new’ niche
while the concept isn’t really new some of the concepts made possible by today’s soc e.g. such as integrated lcd controller or gpu + a host of other io features e.g. adc / dac etc made and other on soc modules possible new use cases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VIA_Mainboards_Form_Factor_Comparison.jpg
recently while trying out the beaglebone black i’ve actually assembled what is the equivalent of BBB + 7" lcd and found it a very usable computer and it is still possible to patch simple circuits or low speed io boards (e.g. spi / i2c or simply analog inputs ) into the BBB
https://youtu.be/Xw-y3F3Yp0Q
i’d think x15 would find new use cases just as BBB has, i’d think x15 can easilly integrate/interface say an fpga board and become a full blown say high speed multi channel 100m samples/s digital signal analyzer & it’d be possible to go well beyond with applications
On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 09:19:58 -0500, Gerald Coley
<gerald@beagleboard.org> declaimed the following:
This is not a BeagleBone Black, not even close. This is a whole different,
complex and powerful beast. I am working on add on boards at the moment and
should have some things out soon. Hopefully this will help to somewhat
solidify an add-on board strategy. It is tough to make it as simple as the
BeagleBone Black. Way too many variables.
Maybe the first board should just be an I/O break-out board --
something that provides lots of common 0.1" sockets/pins on which this
system rides...
The layout for the first of two boards has just completed. We are working on the second board layout now.
Gerald
Any CAN addon board?
Not yet. But if there is real demand, there could be.
Gerald
Is there any eagle or kicad library for the connector used?
No that I have seen. These connectors are very expensive.
But the boards i have coming don’t use these, per se… They have standard .1 spaced connectors for add on boards. More like an adapter.
Gerald
Hi Gerald,
Now that the Rev C boards are publicly available, do you have any update on your expansion boards?
Tony
Not at the moment.
Gerald
it would be nice to see a breakout, with pci-e like the am57xx ti
adapter board, and with all the pruss pin's exported. 
Wonder if it could be something put up on groupgets?
Regards,
That is what I have.
Gerald