The PB2 is a completely different beast from the original PB or any of the current BeagleBone devices. It's based on an AM62x chip which is a modern 64bit (A53 cores, same a Pi3b+) chip. Being a "modern" chip, it has a bunch of secure boot/digital signing requirements so there really is no way for the existing BBB FPP images to work on it. From a pinout standpoint, it's "mostly compatible", but from a software standpoint, it's not compatible at all. That's the bad new.
The good news is I've been working with a prototype for months and now have "real" PB2's in hand and have slowly been working through the issues. There is a "FPP-v8.5-alpha3-BB64.img.zip" image up on GitHub that should work for the various pixel based capes like the PB16. This works with my K4-PB, K8-PB, and K40-PB. The two things that are not fully working yet are:
1) Panel based capes (PocketScroller) - these work if you update to the latest after booting the image, but here is a bit of extra ghosting. The PB2 runs the PRU's 25% faster so I don't know yet if that's causing the ghosting or what.
2) PRU based serial output - I believe the PB16 uses this for the DMX output. This isn't working yet and I'm not sure it will work any time soon. None of my capes have used it for the past 5 years or more so I'm not even sure how I'd test it. Capes that use ttyS# based outputs for DMX SHOULD work, but note that the ttyS names are different between the PB2 and PB1.
Couple notes about the PB2: it's currently a two core, 1Ghz processor with only 512M of RAM. Thus, it sounds similar to the PB1 (single core 1Ghz with 512M of RAM), but the second core and being 64-bit/A53 based instead of the old 32bit does make it a bit faster. The 512M of ram is a major limitation though so building FPP isn't much faster. Once FPP is running, it's fast though. The SD card on the PB2 is WAY faster than anything else we use. I'm getting 75-80MB/sec from the SD card. We only get 40MB/s from the Pi4, 30MB/s from Pi3, and 20MB/s from the older Beagles. Thus, it boots quite quick despite the slower 1Ghz processor. (Pi3B+ has four A53 cores, but they run at 1.4Ghz). The main "problem" with the SD card is the location of the card slot. It really sucks. Getting the card in/out will require tweezers or removing the PB from the board. I would highly recommend some mini extenders similar to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MVKYY35 .
It does have two PRU cores which are almost exactly the same as on the original Beagles. The main difference is that they run at 250Mhz instead of 200Mhz. Thus, some of the low level timing needed adjusting. (actually, the cores CAN run at 333Mhz, but I've run into some performance issues trying to get data from memory when running at that speed).
Anyway, I'd definitely encourage folks with PB16's to grab a PocketBeagle2 and help test. Like I said, it's completely different architecture and such so we'll likely run into issues.
Dan
The good news is I've been working with a prototype for months and now have "real" PB2's in hand and have slowly been working through the issues. There is a "FPP-v8.5-alpha3-BB64.img.zip" image up on GitHub that should work for the various pixel based capes like the PB16. This works with my K4-PB, K8-PB, and K40-PB. The two things that are not fully working yet are:
1) Panel based capes (PocketScroller) - these work if you update to the latest after booting the image, but here is a bit of extra ghosting. The PB2 runs the PRU's 25% faster so I don't know yet if that's causing the ghosting or what.
2) PRU based serial output - I believe the PB16 uses this for the DMX output. This isn't working yet and I'm not sure it will work any time soon. None of my capes have used it for the past 5 years or more so I'm not even sure how I'd test it. Capes that use ttyS# based outputs for DMX SHOULD work, but note that the ttyS names are different between the PB2 and PB1.
Couple notes about the PB2: it's currently a two core, 1Ghz processor with only 512M of RAM. Thus, it sounds similar to the PB1 (single core 1Ghz with 512M of RAM), but the second core and being 64-bit/A53 based instead of the old 32bit does make it a bit faster. The 512M of ram is a major limitation though so building FPP isn't much faster. Once FPP is running, it's fast though. The SD card on the PB2 is WAY faster than anything else we use. I'm getting 75-80MB/sec from the SD card. We only get 40MB/s from the Pi4, 30MB/s from Pi3, and 20MB/s from the older Beagles. Thus, it boots quite quick despite the slower 1Ghz processor. (Pi3B+ has four A53 cores, but they run at 1.4Ghz). The main "problem" with the SD card is the location of the card slot. It really sucks. Getting the card in/out will require tweezers or removing the PB from the board. I would highly recommend some mini extenders similar to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MVKYY35 .
It does have two PRU cores which are almost exactly the same as on the original Beagles. The main difference is that they run at 250Mhz instead of 200Mhz. Thus, some of the low level timing needed adjusting. (actually, the cores CAN run at 333Mhz, but I've run into some performance issues trying to get data from memory when running at that speed).
Anyway, I'd definitely encourage folks with PB16's to grab a PocketBeagle2 and help test. Like I said, it's completely different architecture and such so we'll likely run into issues.
Dan
