HDMI and the BeagleBone Black Multimedia Environment

Conclusion

The built-in HDMI cape of the BeagleBone Black turns this inexpensive board into a full-featured, multimedia powerhouse. Although the details for interfacing the HDMI framer chip with the BeagleBone Black's Linux kernel and processor are a bit complex, you now know the basics of how everything fits together. A later article will examine hardware-related aspects of the HDMI cape.

What is a Cape?

Cape is a term used within the BeagleBone community for any peripheral that interfaces with the Linux kernel via the kernel's "capebus" mechanism.

The term cape typically refers to the small add-on boards available for the BeagleBone family. (See http://beagleboard.org/cape for a look at some of the capes available for the BeagleBone.)

Although the built-in HDMI of the BeagleBone Black is not an on an add-on board, it is still a cape because it interfaces with the Linux kernel via the kernel's capebus. The circuitry of the HDMI cape just happens to be physically built into the BBB board. The Linux kernel views the HDMI cape the same way that it would view any external cape board that is plugged into the system.

Der Autor

Andrew Henderson is a doctoral candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD program at Syracuse University. When not conducting research on computer security, he enjoys teaching the BeagleBone Black to perform new tricks. He has been developing Linux software professionally for both the desktop and embedded systems for over 15 years.

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