New Cape prototyping

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1

Hello to all,
I’m prototyping a new cape board for BeagleBone Black.
I have designed most of the circuit and now it’s time to connect all the thing to the beaglebone.
I have a problem: I can not figure out whitch PINs can I use.
I read the BeagleBone Black System Reference Manual and the AM335x Sitara Processors datasheet, but I can’t find where all the pin’ s feature are explained.
I some different kind of connection:

  • 1 I2C bus (it’s OK, ill use P9 17 and 18 PINs)
  • 1 UART with CTS and RTS
  • 2 IRQ from push buttons
  • 4 analog channel (it’s OK, ill use AINs PIN on P9)- 2 SPI bus
  • 3 PWM channel (standard PWM modulation, fixed frequency, variable duty cicle)
  • various I/O (no problem for this)

Until now I have always designed on less complex systems, like PIC24 and PIC18 based board. I know the hardware, but the AM3358 seems too big and complex, and I’m a bit scared of its.
Please, can someone help me?

2

The Sitara, particularly when it is operating with a Linux OS, is much more sophisticated than any of the PIC’s.

I suggest you carefully read the BeagleBone Black Systems Reference Manual (SRM).
http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#LATEST_PRODUCTION_FILES_.28C.29

I suggest you purchase a copy of Derek Molloy’s “Exploring BeagleBone: Tools and Techniques for Building with Embedded Linux”
http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-BeagleBone-Techniques-Building-Embedded/dp/1118935128/ref=sr_1_1

I suggest you download Derek Molloy’s Header Charts, which summarizes all the I/O pins for the capes, and how they can be assigned through the pin-mux (Device Tree).
http://exploringbeaglebone.com/chapter6/#BeagleBone_BlackHeaderCharts

The combination of the SRM and Molloy’s Header Charts have all the information you need to assign and use the BBB pins, but there is a lot of background and application information that will keep you from making mistakes.

— Graham