I am very happy to report that the BeagleBone Black is working well running Allstar. As you probably know from my previous posts I have been working on the arm/allstar project here for the last several months. The RPi was my first choice but unfortunately it seems it just is not going to make the cut. I then got sidelines getting Allstar up on Debian and Ubuntu on a PC mainly to prove it would work in those OS's and that I was not chasing my tail on the ARM processors.

My first attempt with the Black was using the Debian release. Unfortunately it was less than satisfactory. CPU utilization was actually worse than Raspbien on the Pi. The DAC audio was better but no where near perfect and I was having periodic crashes.

I then decided to try a completely different Linux OS so I loaded ArchLinux on the Black. ArchLinux is a leading edge barebones flavor. It does not load anything that is not necessary including any graphics support. I was actually quite pleased with the compile times and lack of initial errors in compiling dahdi and asterisk. It is very different though using systemd rather than initscript.

The end result was a perfectly working simpleusb server/node. I see none of the prior audio problems I had experienced and also no delay issues. CPU utilization is at least 60% less than prior compiles with other OS's on both the Black and the RPi. At some point I might revisit the RPi with the ArchLinux but given the known USB problems and also that it is a slower processor running V6 rather then the V7 on the Black I am not optimistic about it working.

I have all the source and probably some other unnecessary stuff for a final release and it still takes well less than 2GB on the SD card. This means it could be flashed to the built-in eMMC memory on the Black. Future Blacks will have 4GB eMMC as well as other improvements.

So the bottom line is that the BBB is working well. It costs $10 more and they are a little harder to get but it should make a nice package. I will be testing this further over the next week or two and maybe will have an image I can upload by then. It is a busy time with all of the other spring things going on right now so bear with me.

73 Doug
WA3DSP
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 17:19:59 -0500
From: asylthe@kc9ona.com
To: kb1ncj@gmail.com
CC: app_rpt-users@ohnosec.org
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] beaglebone black

I'm very interested in this as well.

On Tuesday, April 15, 2014, Greg <kb1ncj@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello.. just wondering of the progress on getting Allstar running on the Beaglebone Black. I haven't heard much in a while.

73
Greg