Beaglebone Black GPIO - 8x8 LED Matrix with C Program - Part1

I made an 8x8 LED matrix circuit to work with GPIO pins on Beaglebone Black.

STEP-1 : Make LED matrix board with the following circuit:

Components Required:
1. Breadboard PCB or General PCB - 01
2. 3mm RED LED's - 64
3. 330 Ohms Resistors - 08
4. Male/Female Header - 01
5. Male/Female Jumper wires - 16

Note: If you don't want to make circuit you can use a standard 8x8 dot matrix module buy from local electronic shops or buy online.

Beaglebone Black: Connect all ROWS to Port_8 on  Pins 11 to 18 and all COLUMNS to Port_8 pins 3 to 10 using Jumper wires.

This application is tested on Beaglebone Black running Angstrom OS

Note: To use these GPIO pins you need to disable onboard emmc and HDMI port. 

• Installing Beaglebone drives on Windows platform Refer adafruit.com
• Installing Beaglebone drives on Linux platform Refer adafruit.com
• Installing SSH client on windows download free BitviseSSHD or Go to: http://www.bitvise.com/ssh-client-download 
• SSH on Linux see adafruit.com 

STEP-2 :Disabling on-board emmc and HDMI port:

• Connect Beaglebone Black to PC with USB cable. wait for storage media to initialize.
• Go to My Computer and open "BEAGLEBONE" storage media.
• Navigate the file "uEnv.txt" and open in text editor.
• Paste this following line:  

 optargs=quiet capemgr.disable_partno=BB-BONELT-HDMI,BB-BONELT-HDMIN,BB-BONE-EMMC-2G 

• Save & Close the file, restart Beaglebone

                                                                                                See Part2 - To be Continued

How to get the BeagleBone Black Drivers to work on Windows 8 computer

To install the drivers, the windows 8 computer needs to be restarted in the mode where it allows you to install unsigned drivers.

Here's a quick step-by-step guide:

1. Press win+c on the keyboard to bring up the charms side bar (or move mouse to right top corner of the screen)

2. Click the Settings button.

3. Click the Change PC Settings at the bottom of the sidebar.

4. On screen that shows up, select the General option from the sidebar then scroll down the page that appears.

5. Click the Restart now button under the Advanced startup section.

6. You will momentarily see the restarting screen, then it will switch to a blue screen titled "Choose an option"

7. Click the Troubleshoot button.

8. Click Advanced options.

9. Click Startup Settings

10. Click Restart

11. You should then see a Startup Settings screen after your computer reboots.

12. Press 7 or F7 on your keyboard to Disable driver signature enforcement

13. Now Windows 8 will continue starting up.

14. For Windows 8 64-bin: Log-in as normal, and then run BONE_D64.exe again (Click on Link to download)

15. For Windows 8 32-bin: Log-in as normal, and then run BONE_DRV.exe again (Click on Link to download)

16. Now you should see 4 warning dialogs about "unsigned driver installation", click OK for all of them.

Courtesy: elinux.org