Ability to run off of the SD card (SD Card as Device)

It would help with troubleshooting hardware if I could have gold images on an SD card that I could simply pop in to different embedded devices. The current .img appears to only support being burned on to eeprom in case of the BeagleBone Black. Please correct me if I am wrong!

In such a case, I would also want the SD card to be able to assume a unique identity (vs the identity of the embedded device).

Use case #1: Regression Testing.
We have a bug and we are trying to figure out if it is a result of changes in hardware or software. It would be much faster if we could change versions of the application running on the hardware by swapping SD cards than it would be trying to re-provision versions of the application through the Internet.

Hi @badevguru

It would help with troubleshooting hardware if I could have gold images on an SD card that I could simply pop in to different embedded devices.

Each device image is specifically designed to run in a certain device, and therefore it would be a major challenge to create such an image that runs in different devices.

Use case #1: Regression Testing.
We have a bug and we are trying to figure out if it is a result of changes in hardware or software. It would be much faster if we could change versions of the application running on the hardware by swapping SD cards than it would be trying to re-provision versions of the application through the Internet.

Sadly I don’t think there is an easier way to debug this than to wait for the devices to update. In case you had a single SDCard that booted into many different types of devices, it will still require the device to get the latest version of the application trough the internet, or be burnt every time you make a change, slowing down the cycle any way.

We have plans to improve the experience of a user developing their applications with Resin.io, which will support pushing your changes to your devices and seeing the results in a matter of seconds, so stay tuned!

Hi @badevguru

Also notice that we’re currently working on BeagleBone Black SDCards that don’t flash the emmc, so you will be able to boot and run from the sdcard, allowing you to put the same one in multiple BeagleBone Black.

Did this ever make progress? I’m back to deploying on the BBB for some of my devices, and since all models of the BBB prior to revision C only have 2GB of EEPROM, I am stuck if I cannot run of a SD card similar to what the Raspiberry image does.

hey @badevguru, to the best of my knowledge, the currently deployed BBB images don’t have that feature, so this might have been reprioritized compared to adding other board types (including BeagleBone Green / Green Wireless). I’m looking into this internally, how far that work got (how far/close it is to release), and get back to you soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!