CHAPTER 9
Interacting with the Physical Environment

In this chapter, you will learn how to build on your knowledge of GPIO and bus interfacing. In particular, you can combine hardware and software to provide the Beagle boards with the ability to interact with their physical environments in the following three ways: First, by controlling actuators such as motors, the board can affect its environment, which is important for applications such as robotics and home automation. Second, the board can gather information about its physical environment by communicating with sensors. Third, by interfacing to display modules, the board can present information. This chapter explains how each of these interactions can be performed. Physical interaction hardware and software provides you with the capability to build advanced projects, such as to build a robotic platform that can sense and interact with its environment. The chapter finishes with a discussion on how you can build your own C/C++ code libraries...