Matt is leading the charge to make technology serve you, the individual, and a new generation of innovators. BeagleBone Black is his newest, strongest—and most affordable—tool for building understanding, mastery, and just outright fun electronics projects. As one of the creators of this tool that enables just about anyone to sense, control and manage the data in the world around them, I’m obviously proud of what it can do. No amount of pride, however, is going to help you understand BeagleBone’s capabilities or how to master them. Matt’s contribution with this book is a piece previously missing from the Beagle-verse and one I’m confident will help you in your journey along the path he’s paving.

When I was quite young, it was two books that set me on the path to understanding what could be accomplished with programmable electronics: Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims III and Getting Started with TRS-80 BASIC by George Stewart. At the time, my experience with each programming and electronics was a separate endeavor. Programming was, at the time, the way you made use of a computer. The computer wasn’t burdened with the storage of family photos or even precious business data, because my mom’s business data was safely removed using floppy disks and stored away from my exploration. I was able to type in instructions to do whatever I could imagine, as long as I didn’t open the box.

Far away from the computer, I was making runs to Radio Shack and buying components to build circuits that blinked LEDs and reacted to the ambient light in the room. It was almost a decade before I started connecting components up to microprocessors. As much as I had enjoyed modifying the games I’d typed into the computer such that I’d always win, having my programs interact with the physical world around me was an entirely new source of fire in my soul. All the everyday technology around me took on new meaning as I could understand how to make it myself and make it behave as I wanted.

When Gerald Coley, the hardware designer of BeagleBone Black and all of the BeagleBoard.org boards, approached me in 2007 to do something new with TI’s ARM processors to bring the technology to a much wider audience, the idea of bringing back something closer to my childhood programming and electronics experiences fell naturally out of our discussions with our colleagues. Gerald’s passion for excellence in electronics is something that has proven itself invaluable to the BeagleBoard.org community and me personally. Gerald has certainly never been one to be satisfied with typical notions of what is good enough.

With the emergence of so many new do-it-yourself electronics tools in recent years, I’m thrilled that many aspects of my childhood electronics experiences are once again available to technology-minded individuals looking to build something new of their own for the first time. It seems, however, that this split—between programmable computers that let you do what you expect to do with a computer, such as browse the web or even act as a web server, and devices that are great to talk to real-world components like motors, temperature sensors and light switches—is still quite prevalent. BeagleBone spans that divide.

Thanks now to Matt’s effort with this book, I’m quite hopeful many more people will learn what programmable electronics can enable for them and experience what Gerald has offered to all of us. Even more, I hope it is a part of educating the next generation at any age how to make technology serve them, rather than merely living with someone else’s idea of the perfect gadget who’s purpose is to serve that someone else’s goals.