The FATCATLAB’s Meow: EVB

Imagine an EV3 with a backlit screen, a 1GHz CPU, instead a 300MHz one and 8 times more memory, that’s pretty much what the EVB is.  It’s a cape (kind of like an Arduino Shield) for the BeagleBone Black (BBB) and it’s awesome.  It really, really makes me wish the EV3 had a backlit screen like this thing.

I was sent two prototypes by its creator, Andy Lau, a little while back and I had a bit of a play with it and it’s fantastic.  So how did he do it?  Andy told me that he took the source code from the GitHub repository  and ported the LEGO VM and some of the kernel modules to the BeagleBone Black.  How great is that?  It allows you to run the standard LEGO EV3 software with it with some small limitations; currently, things like daisy chaining and I2C sensors are not supported.

The great news is, you can own one of these too!  There’s a Kickstarter campaign going on at the moment, and if you’re quick, you can get one of the Early Bird rewards, an EVB for just $59, that’s a pretty amazing deal!  You can find a lot of information about the EVB on that page, so be sure to check it out.

Maybe I can port ROBOTC to it 🙂