GHI Electronics and the Beagleboard.Org Foundation join forces!

Today’s announcement is especially exciting to us as it involves the open source community. While we work with corporations providing them with closed source solutions, we also enjoy working with the open source community and makers. Today, we are an important part and a great supporter of the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation and its ecosystem of maker friendly products.

If you didn’t know, the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation is located in Michigan and is literally only minutes away from GHI Electronics’ headquarters. By being in close proximity to the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation headquarters, we’re able to stay actively engaged in on-going project developments.

We have made all our engineering resources available to the BeagleBoard.Org Foundation. Through our participation in brain-storming and roadmap discussions, we’ve become incredibly excited about all of the awesome open source products the Foundation will be releasing.

Due to the huge demand for the BeagleBone Black, GHI Electronics will not be selling the BeagleBone Black directly via our website. However, you are able to purchase the BeagleBone Black through our distribution network including international distributors like Mouser, with whom we have had a great partnership with for many years.

If you are currently a BeagleBone Black fanatic like we are but you have a question on customizing your project please give us a call. We are here for you with our vast experience with engineering, manufacturing and bringing products to market.

Next time you are purchasing a BeagleBone Black, make sure that the board is from an official BeagleBone Black manufacturer like GHI Electronics or distributor which can be found listed at Beagleboard.org.

We are excited to be working with the Beagleboard.org team and look forward to working with the open source community as well.

BeagleBoard.Org: https://beagleboard.org/
BeagleBone Black: BeagleBoard.org - black

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Is it likely that the Beagleboard will support Windows? Or should the question be, is it likely that Windows will support Beagleboard?

@ suitable1 - Without breaking NDA, we can say that is has been a topic of conversations.

@ suitable1 - I don’t think so. Not enough compute power. Not enough ram, and it’s not 64 bit.

Ah, you guys are now going to help with the global shortage of BBBs. This is why you increased you production. Makes sense! I didn’t know you two were so close. When is the big day? :whistle:

@ Mr. John Smith - “big day”?

I’m confused… Why would you stop selling a product that has such huge demand? Is @ Gary unable to put the money in the bank fast enough?

Of course, I think it’s awesome that GHI is a partner with BeagleBone.org (didn’t we already know that?) but a little more detail on what exactly this means would be beneficial.

Thanks!

@ Gary - The wedding :-[

We stopped direct sales through the website a few years ago. We are only selling to distributors.

We are announcing that we are one of the official contract manufacturers for the Foundation as well as providing engineering resources to the Foundation. And you really need us to explain why this is beneficial?

Selling what? Is this announcing that you are producing the BB boards? Sorry, this just isn’t clear exactly what it is you are doing for BB. Or I just still haven’t had enough coffee…

No, I understand why that’s beneficial. Unless I missed it, you didn’t actually say anything about being a manufacturer in your original post, though. Which is why I asked for more info. I’m still not totally sure what this means. Are you only working with the BB Foundation or are you also saying that you are a resource for customers needing help with BB related projects?

I will answer all of this with quotes from the original post and highlight the answers

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@ Gary - What he means that some of the newer guys won’t understand the significance of becoming one with the Beagle Bone community.

So I’ll spell some of it out. GHI’s community is one of the best embedded development / micro controller communities. It’s less about using linux more about electronics. Further, if GHI puts c# on the beagle bone black in such a way that I can hit F5 in visual studio and it copies, starts up and debugs over the usb cable (which they could totally do), then beagle is going to get a slew of new Enterprise Applications developers who use the VS eco system.

GHI get’s their first embedded linux system on a module that they can peddle to their customers (of which I will be one). Then, they get to manufacture this high demand board, which only adds to their bottom line. Further, they get to customize this board. Think Gadgeteer sockets on a BBB.

(sorry jacked up on skittles; can’t focus to write coherently)

@ Mr. John Smith - yep :slight_smile: great things are on the way already.

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@ Gary - Ok. I concede! It’s a bit like answering Gollum’s riddles but indeed the answers are there.

Next time I’m up there you’ll have to explain to me over a beer (I think better then…) why you don’t sell them yourself since you could do so and carry very little inventory given that you’re manufacturing them. I’m curious to understand the business side of that equation.

That answer is pretty simple, we don’t want to compete with the distributor. And instead of selling one or two at a time we can sell hundreds or thousands at a time.

As long as the G-Series also continue their life on this planet (oh or maybe on another, or in-between, I don’t know all over where they are scattered) everything will be fine :)…
A wider field of devices means also a wider field of customers (and usecases), so that’s fine. And you guys wont get bored :D…
I thinks that’s the normal thing, that manufactuers don’t sell directly to individual customers.

This is exciting news. I am always excited to hear that companies like GHI are expanding, growing and seeking new areas of growth.

However, this creates a growing dilemma for me. It appeared that Win IoT was going to be a good place to start to invest some resources and potentially use in an upcoming product. Now it appears with BBB and Octavo partnerships Linux is back on the table. So do I invest in Win IoT or Linux? This has been an on going discussion with myself. (Some days the conversation is better than others.) The BBB/Octavo announcements are making my future direction about as clear as mud. I am hoping that future announcements that have been hinted at will bring some clarity.

EDIT: I genuinely am excited. The more options the better. I re-read my post and it could come across a slightly negative.

@ skeller - Have you been using the .NET Core? It is a goal to get the BBB programmed and debugged with VS over the usb or ethernet interfaces. So all of your c# investment should not go to waste. GHI may beat me to it since they have more full time devs than I do.

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I personally would gladly buy a BBB (or whatever color…) over an RPi if it would just run Windows IoT Core. Someone get that working! The BB is a much nicer piece of hardware to build real projects upon.

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@ skeller - [quote] The BBB/Octavo announcements are making my future direction about as clear as mud. [/quote]
I agree totally.

@ Mr. John Smith -
@ ianlee74 -

Yes, I to would really appreciate IOT core running on BBB.