Our friends at BeagleBoard.org revealed the newest iteration in their line of embedded Linux development boards, the BeagleBone Black. Besides the new color, the board should look familiar; it has the same footprint and similar layout as the original BeagleBone. However, there are a lot of new features and specs that make this more than just a slight revision:

The processor gets a bump up to 1GHz, compared to the original’s 720MHz.

RAM is doubled to 512MB.

The BeagleBone Black can be connected directly to a monitor through the on-board MicroHDMI port.

They’ve added 2GB of on-board flash memory, which will be preloaded with the Ångström distribution of Linux. This is in addition to the MicroSD slot, which you can still boot from, if you wish.

The software gets a big upgrade, too. The provided Ångström disk image is now on Linux Kernel 3.8. They’ve also made many improvements to BoneScript, their node.js library for physical computing on embedded Linux. This new disk image is will be available for the original BeagleBone as well.

Perhaps best of all, BeagleBoard.org has slashed the price down to a mere $45, pitting it much more competitively against the very popular Raspberry Pi, which currently sold for $35.

To celebrate the release of the new board, we’re also just about to launch the Early Release of my own Getting Started With BeagleBone ebook. With Early Release version of the book, you get access to the content as I’m writing it. You’ll receive updates along the way in addition to the final ebook when it’s published. Getting Started with BeagleBone covers how to make projects with both the original BeagleBone and the BeagleBone Black.

The BeagleBone Black is available for purchase from the Maker Shed!