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Using Serial with a BeagleBone Black

Serial supports the BeagleBone Black (BBB) embedded Linux development board in one of two ways:

Direct USB Connection

The easiest way to connect the board to your Mac is directly, using a USB cable. The BBB will power itself directly off of the USB port, and after the board has fully booted into Linux a console port will appear within Serial called "BeagleBoneBlack". The baud rate and other settings are ignored when connected via this method. The drawback to this method is you won't be able to view any console output generated during the boot process.

Console Header Connection

The second way to connect to the board is using the serial port header on the board. You'll want to connect the board this way if you need to diagnose issues with the boot process, or while flashing the on-board MMC device. For suggested cables and pinouts, refer to the BeagleBone Black serial debugging documentation .

Your terminal software must be configured with the following line settings:

  • Baud Rate: 115200

  • Data Bits: 8

  • Parity: None

  • Stop Bits: 1

  • Flow Control: None