Installing the BeagleBone Black USB drivers

This information is outdated. On modern operating systems and BeagleBone images, driver installation shouldn't be necessary. If you really need them, we recommend consulting this page.

Sometimes it may be more comfortable the access the BeagleBone Black via the USB interface of your host system. The configuration depends on the type of your operating system (either Linux, Windows or Mac OS X) and sometimes of the version of the used operating system. Lets have a look at the common systems. I start with with Mac OS X, because I am using it.

If your Mac OS X version is higher 10.13 (e.g. Mac os X Catalina), there is no possibility to access the BeagleBone Black via usb. In that case, you can downgrade to Mac OS X version is 10.13 (High Sierra) or you can install a virtual machine with High Sierra. Steps to run High Sierra on Virtual Box from Oracle are described here. Afterwards come back and proceed with the installation.

If your Mac OS X version is 10.13 (High Sierra) or lower, accessing the BeagleBone Black will be easy:

Just download and install the network driver and the serial driver from beagleoard.org.

The network driver offers Ethernet over the USB access and the serial driver offers USB to UART conversion.

After you have installed these two drivers reboot your computer and open the Network Panel of the System Preferences app. Now, connect your BeagleBone Black to the USB plug of your Macintosh.

Boot the BeagleBone Black with the Bootkey passed. Release the Bootkey. After a schort time, you will see 2 additional interfaces called BeagleBone Black in the Network Panel (see fig. 1).

Fig. 1: System Preferences - Network

To get access to the Beaglebone Black via the USB interface, you need to install a driver. Two versions of the driver exist, a version for 32Bit and 64Bit systems. So first, determined the Windows version, that you are using. Afterwards download either the 32Bit-version or the 64Bit-version.

After launching the installer, the window shown in Fig. 2 should open.

Fig. 2: MS Windows USB network driver (32bit version)

Start the installation by clicking the “next” button. During the installation, you have to answer some question about aborting or continuing the installation as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3: MS Windows USB network driver (32bit version)

Do not hesitate and continue the installation anyway until it is finished.

Now plug in the BeagleBone Black to your USB interface. The BeagleBoone start booting. If the usb interfaces are available, MS Windows will automatically discover the device and install a driver for this device. If this has been done, open the system references pane and select the network settings as shown in Fig 4.

Fig. 4: MS Windows Network Settings

As you can see, a new ethernet connection has been established and is connected to “Unidentified Network”. This is the connection to the BeagleBone Black. If you click an this connection, the configuration settings will be shown (see Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: MS Windows USB settings

The IPv4 address should be in the 192.168.7 network. If not, restart the DHCP client by editing the IP assignment and reactivating the DHCP client.

To test the new connection, open the “Command Prompt App” (short cmd) and enter the following command:

ssh 192.168.7.2 -l debian

The ssh command will establish a new shell at the BeagleBome Black. If everything is fine, enter the password. You are now logged in, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6: MS Windows SSH

If you are using Linux, Internat access over the USB interface is already included. You can connect to the Beaglebone Black directly.