This chapter provides an overview of this book and serves as an introduction to the BeagleBoard and rapid prototyping.

We'll first have a quick overview of what we will explore in this book, followed by a brief look at the features of BeagleBoard (with focus on the latest xM version) —an open source hardware platform borne for audio, video, and digital signal processing. Then we will introduce the concept of rapid prototyping and explain what we can do with the BeagleBoard support tools from MATLAB? and Simulink? by MathWorks?. Finally, this chapter ends with a summary.

Different from most approaches that involve coding and compiling at a Linux PC and require intensive manual configuration in command-line manner, the rapid prototyping approach presented in this book is a Windows-based approach that features a Windows PC for embedded software development through user-friendly graphic interaction and relieves the developer from intensive coding so that you can concentrate on your application and algorithms and have the BeagleBoard run your inspiration.

First of all, let's begin with a quick overview of this book.