Kristin and the boys left to get haircuts, this left Emily and I to our own devices. We decided we woudn’t waste our free time and bust out one of the Beagle Bone Blacks I bought awhile ago and hook up some Xbees. So I got my breakout boards and the xbees and my horror when I saw the xbees were to be soldered to the breakout board. I wasn’t about to do that, so we found the pins and have them coming from Spark Fun, so that project will wait for another day.

But I got everything out, what should I do??? I know I thought make a light blink, so that is what we did, with a simple bash script and some wiring, we had it done and blinking.

Here is a closeup of how complicated the wiring is 🙂

Here is the script

#!/bin/bash
 
echo 30 > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo high > /sys/class/gpio/gpio30/direction
 
STATUS=`cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio30/value`
 
while [ 42 == 42 ]; do
	if [ $STATUS == 1 ]; then
		echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio30/value
	else
		echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio30/value
	fi
	sleep 1
	STATUS=`cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio30/value`
done

As promised here are the pins (FYI I used gpio 30 not 60 as the video stated).

Have fun and don’t get blinded by the light

–John

Special thanks to my helper today!