Modern Device Forum

Hi Paul,
I built a BBB board yesterday and was very pleased with the experience! Great value, nice board, excellent documentation.
I did notice a couple of minor glitches in the docs, and thought I'd point them out before I forget. None of them are show-stoppers, but I know I'd want someone to point these out in my documentation.

(Revision E BBB instructions)
Page 1 - reference is made to the "Atmega168 datasheet" - maybe this should be "Atmega168/328" to be consistent with what you've done in the schematic section. You might want to do a global search on "168" to neaten things up a bit.

Page 2 "Testing your BB Arduino"
2nd bullet - "Atmega 168" reference
Before the 3rd bullet point it would be helpful to have something like "You should have the Arduino software and FTDI drivers installed before continuing". Maybe this should be at the top of the section - I dunno (Guess who had forgotten to install the drivers!).
4th bullet "troubleshooting guide on page 6" should be page 8!

"Powering the BBB Arduino" section:"..power options are illustrated on page 6" should be page 7.

Page 5 - bottom caption says "Atmega168/ 238"

Again, the docs are really excellent, and I don't think the items above would cause anyone any serious problems. But last week I found a couple of similar silly errors in a chemistry lab I've been giving to students for about 5 years and my first thought was "Why hasn't anyone pointed these out to me before!"

Oh yeah, since this is my first post, I guess I should point out my background: I've built lots of kits, done some simple circuit design, and am familiar with PIC and AVR microcontrollers, but a newbie to the Arduino system. I'm a chemist and I'm currently working on a pH meter circuit to use in teaching a chemical instrumentation course.

Thanks again for a great product!
andy

Thanks for all the comments Andy - I'll get right on it.

The docs are as good as they are because my users have pointed out the fine points to me to make them better.

Paul

Paul .. what are the differences between the Rev D, Rev D2, and Rev E? I can't find the schematics and board files for the various revisions on the site...

The only change from rev D to Rev E was that the USB power in rev E no longer flows through the regulator. It did that in all previous revs.
rev D to D2 was just some minor hole size changes and silkscreen changes maybe. Very minor.

I'll get some docs up on the site. I'm trying to decide about a wiki to put all this stuff in. I don't really like Shopify interface for docs that much.

Paul

Paul,

I have some BBB rev. C boards that I bought a couple of years ago, and haven't gotten around to assembling yet .

I was wondering - what are the major changes from rev. C to D? Would be it worth buying some new rev. E boards?

Also, will the rev. C boards work with the Atmega '328 (I believe the kits shipped with the '168)?

Thanks!