The BeagleBox: a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer by Andrew_Thaler

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

A small field book built into a Pelican case powered by a BeagleBone Black or your SBC of choice.
Fieldwork is tough. You're in the elements, facing wind, rain, and salt spray, sometime on an open boat far out in the Atlantic. You and your gear takes a beating. But you're out there because there's science that need to get done.
Your equipment is controlled via computer. Your data entry mandates a computer. This means that your precious laptop needs to come with you. For graduate students and early career scientists, this can be a dilemma. Do you take your one and only computer out into the field and risk damaging it, or do you leave it brute-force your way through sampling without it.
This equation is, counter-intuitively, getting worse. Our sensors, sampling devices, and scanners are getting cheaper and lighter. Rather than buying a $20,000 piece of equipment, you can get a $20 chip, but there's a trade off. Chip-based systems rely on external processing power, they need a general computer. It does not need to be a good one.
Say hello to the BeagleBox, a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer for about $200.
A full description an build guide can be found at Oceanography for Everyone.
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