Investigate BeagleBone Black power options
nellump opened this issue · 3 comments
Can the BBB be powered through its GPIO pin headers, or only through the micro-USB port?
An excellent BBB GPIO reference: http://kilobaser.com/blog/2014-07-15-beaglebone-black-gpios
From the most recent System Reference Manual, http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack
p. 44: "The 5VDC rail is connected to the expansion header. It is possible to power the board via the expansion headers from an add-on card."
p. 86, Table 13: pins 5 and 6 of header P9 are labeled as VDD, which the Internet tells me is a label for direct voltage supply to an IC.
Also a guy in this random Google Group (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beagleboard/uhOh08jSlVA) says that pins 5 and 6 of P9 can be used as power supply for the board as long as you've got a regulated 5V power source. Somebody with more electrical engineering experience than me probably wants to vet this information.
I'll accept the SRM as authoritative. The same document also states (p. 33):
Power routed to the board via the expansion header could be provided from power derived on a
cape. The DC supply should be well regulated and 5V +/-.25V.
Thanks for the research.