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Design and specifications

If you want to know how the BeaglePlay hardware is designed and what are it’s high-level specifications then this chapter is for you. We are going to discuss each hardware design element in detail and provide high-level device specifications in a short and crisp form as well.

Tip

You can download BeaglePlay schematic to have clear view of all the elements that makes up the BeaglePlay hardware.

BeaglePlay design repository

Block diagram

The block diagram below shows all the parts that makes up your BeaglePlay board. BeaglePlay as mentioned in previous chapters is based on AM6254 SoC which is shown in the middle. Connection of other parts like power supply, memory, storage, wifi, ethernet, and others is also clearly shown in the block diagram. This block diagram shows the high level specifications of the BeaglePlay hardware and the sections below this are going to show you the individual part in more detail with schematic diagrams.

System on Chip (SoC)

AM62x Sitara™ Processors from Texas Instruments are Human-machine-interaction SoC with Arm® Cortex®-A53-based edge AI and full-HD dual display. AM6254 which is on your BeaglePlay board has a multi core design with Quad 64-bit Arm® Cortex®-A53 microprocessor subsystem at up to 1.4 GHz, Single-core Arm® Cortex®-M4F MCU at up to 400MHz, and Dedicated Device/Power Manager. Talking about the multimedia capabilities of the processor you can connect upto two display monitors with 1920x1080 @ 60fps each, additionally there is a OLDI/LVDS (4 lanes - 2x) and 24-bit RGB parallel interface for connecting external display panels. One 4 Lane CSI camera interface is also available which has support for 1,2,3 or 4 data lane mode up to 2.5Gbps speed. The list of features is very long and if you are interested to know more about the AM62x SoC you may take a look at AM62x Sitara™ Processors datasheet.

Fig. 5 AM6254 SoC block diagram

Power management

Different parts of the board requires different voltages to operate and to fulfill requirements of all the chips on BeaglePlay we have Low Drop Out (LDO) voltage regulators for fixed voltage output and Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) that interface with SoC to generate software programable voltages. 2 x LDOs and 1 x PMIC used on BeaglePlay are shown below.

TLV75801 - LDO

Fig. 6 TLV75801PDBVR LDO schematic for 1V0 output

This provides 1.0V required by the single-pair Ethernet PHY (U13 - DP83TD510ERHBR). It was decided this was less likely to be needed than the other rails coming off of the primary PMIC and therefore was given its own regulator when running low on power rails.

Note

The voltage drop from 1.8V to 1.0V is rated up to 0.3A (240mW), but the typical current from the DP83TD51E data sheet (SNLS656C) is stated at 3.5mA (2.8mW) and the maximum is 7.5mA (6mW). This isn’t overly significant on a board typically consuming 400mA at 5V (2W). However, this is an area where some power optimization could be performed if concerned about sleep modes.

TLV62595 - DC/DC regulator

Fig. 7 TLV62595DMQR LDO schematic for 3V3 output

This provides 3.3V for the vast majority of 3.3V I/Os on the board, off-board 3.3V power to microSD, mikroBUS, QWIIC and Grove connectors, as well as to the PMIC LDO to provide power for the 1.8V on-board I/Os, DDR4, and gigabit Ethernet PHY. Due to the relatively high current rating (3A), a highly efficient (up to 97%) was chosen.

The primary TPS65219 PMIC firmware uses GPO2 to provide the enable signal (VDD_3V3_EN). The power-good signal (VDD_3V3_PG) is available at TP19 and is unused on the rest of the board.

TPS65219 - PMIC

Fig. 8 TPS65219 Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) schematic

This is the primary power management integrated circuit (PMIC) for the design. It coordinates the power sequencing and provides numerous power rails required for the core of the system, including dynamic voltages for the processor core and microSD card. The TPS6521903 variant is used for this DDR4-based system. The 03 at the end indicates the sequencing programmed into the device and is covered in the TPS6521903 Technical Reference Manual SLVUCJ2.

Todo

Add specific power-up/down sequence notes here as well a highlight any limitations and known issues.

General Connectivity and Expansion

One of the main advantage of using a Single Board Computer (SBC) is having direct accessibility of general purpose input & output (GPIO) pins and other interfaces like I2C, SPI, ADC, PWM. Your BeaglePlay board shines in this domain as well with mikroBUS connector that can take 1000s of click board from MikroElektronika, Grove connector allows to connect hundereds of Grove modules from Seeed Studio, and QWIIC connector allows to connect I2C modules like QWIIC modules from SparkFun or STEMMA QT modules from Adafruit. Note that you also get one USB-A port and one USB-C port. BeaglePlay’s USB-A port with host support enables you to connect any USB device like your keyboard & mouse. The USB-C connector allows you to power the board and to connect the board to a PC. You can then connect via SSH or use the pre-installed VisualStudio Code editor by putting the address 192.168.7.2:3000 in your web browser.

USB A & USB C

Fig. 9 USB-A and USB-C

ADC102S051 - 2ch 10bit ADC

Fig. 10 ADC102S051 - 12bit Aanalog to Digital Converter (ADC)

mikroBUS

Fig. 11 mikroBUS connector schematic

Grove

Fig. 12 Grove connector schematic

QWIIC

Fig. 13 QWIIC connnector for I2C modules

Buttons and LEDs

To interact with the Single Board Computers we use buttons for input and LEDs for visual feedback. On your BeaglePlay board you will find 3 buttons each with a specific purpose: power, reset, and user. For visual feedback you will find 5 user LEDs near USB-C port and 6 more indicator LEDs near your BeaglePlay’s Single Pair ethernet port. Schematic diagrams below show how these buttons and LEDs are wired.

Buttons

Table 4 BeaglePlay buttons

Power	Reset	User

LEDs

Fig. 14 BeaglePlay LEDs

Wired and wireless connectivity

Gigabit ethernet

Fig. 15 Gigabit ethernet

Single pair ethernet

Fig. 16 Single pair ethernet

WL1807MOD - WiFi 2.4G/5G

Fig. 17 WL1807MOD dual-band (2.4G/5G) WiFi

CC1352P7 - BLE & SubGHz

Fig. 18 CC1352P7 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLW) and SubGHz connectivity

Memory, Media and Data storage

DDR4

Fig. 19 DDR4 Memory

eMMC/SD

Fig. 20 eMMC/SD storage

microSD Card

Fig. 21 microSD Card storage slot

Board EEPROM

Fig. 22 Board EEPROM ID

Multimedia I/O

HDMI

Fig. 23 HDMI output

OLDI

Fig. 24 OLDI display interface

CSI

Fig. 25 CSI camera interface

RTC & Debug

RTC

Fig. 26 Real Time Clock (RTC)

UART Debug Port

Fig. 27 UART debug port

AM62x JTAG & TagConnect

Fig. 28 AM62 JTAG debug port and TagConnect interface

CC1352 JTAG & TagConnect

Fig. 29 CC1352 JTAG debug port and TagConnect interface

Mechanical Specifications

Dimensions & Weight

Table 5 Dimensions & weight

Parameter	Value
Size	82.5x80x20mm
Max heigh	20mm
PCB Size	80x80mm
PCB Layers	8 layers
PCB Thickness	1.6mm
RoHS compliant	Yes
Weight	55.3g

Fig. 30 BeaglePlay board dimensions

Fig. 31 BeaglePlay board side dimensions