In the wake of the popularity of Raspberry Pi, here comes the yet-another-incarnation of the cheap single-board machine. The BeagleBone Black.

Priced at $45, the BeagleBone Black competes directly with the Raspberry Pi. Though several new features and enhancements have been introduced in the new BeagleBone Black, the favorable element remains its price. The company has reduced the price to almost half as compared to previously $89 single board computer (SBC) makes the BeagleBone cheaper than most Arduino boards and marginally above the $25-$35 Raspberry Pi.

Coming on the technical specifications, The BeagleBone Black’s single-core processor grows up from the predecessor’s 720MHz to 1GHz. It’s a Texas Instruments AM335x system-on-a-chip that uses ARM’s Cortex-A8 architecture. The CPU is backed up with 512MB of 606MHz DDR 3 memory and 2GB of flash storage on the board too. A Micro SD slot is also available if the memory is insufficient for some.

On connectivity side, The Black’s six-layer, 85mm x 53mm PCB holds the entire above plus an HDMI port, 10/100Mbps Ethernet and a cylinder 5V power jack. There are two USB connectors: a full-size jack for host operations and a mini USB client port.

Actually, it’s great for inventors and developers and people who just want to play with a tiny computer. Also, things like this could be awesome when it comes to just general computing in the home and classroom. So what did BeagleBone do to slash the price?

According to BeagleBoard.org co-founder and Software Architecture Manager for Applications Processors at TI Jason Kridner, the price cut derived entirely from design decisions and economies of scale. In fact, Kridner’s employer Texas Instruments (TI) helped promote the BeagleBoard and BeagleBone, enjoying increased awareness and sales of its ARM-Cortex A8 Sitara processors in return, but has taken a largely hands-off approach. In addition, BeagleBone Black has shed some interfaces. It removed less used features like USB-to-serial and USB-to-JTAG, which saves on power and cost.

“The $45 price is mostly due to volume. We’ve already received large orders for the BeagleBone Black. The distributors came to us,” said Kridner.

BeagleBone has also added Yocto compatibility to the device. One of the best features is that BeagleBone Black is faster, and supports Android in addition to Linux distros like the pre-installed Angstrom, plus Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch. (Cashing on Android potential?)
Though BeagleBone Black is not as simple as Raspberry Pi, Kridner positions this as an advantage and is pushing the BeagleBone as an educational platform.

“With its “Arduino-like” Bonescript Linux/Javascript language, combined with the device’s faster processor and richer I/O, the BeagleBone Black is better for teaching embedded development than the Pi. Sometimes students need more of a visceral interaction to get engaged,” said Kridner. “You really need all this I/O to do things like robotics, which is one of the best things that we’re doing in early education.”

As of now, BeagleBone Black is on sale in limited quantities, with volume shipments expected by May.