Serial ports / UART

The BeagleBone has six on-board serial ports.

On the BeagleBone Black, it's only the /dev/ttyO0 that is enabled by default, and it is coupled to the serial console. The other serial ports must be enabled before they can be used.

To enable the uarts 1,2,4 and/or 5 on the BeagleBone Black, rev A, B and C:
  1. Rev A/B: Open the file /media/BEAGLEBONE/uEnv.txt in an editor (vim/nano)
  2. Rev C: Open the file /boot/uboot/uEnv.txt in an editor (vim/nano)
  3. Add the key "capemgr.enable_partno="
  4. Add the ports you want to enable, comma separated (BB-UART1, BB-UART2. BB-UART4, BB-UART5)
  5. Reboot
An example line looks like this:
root@beaglebone:/dev# cat /media/BEAGLEBONE/uEnv.txt
optargs=quiet drm.debug=7 capemgr.enable_partno=BB-UART4

After reboot, the device is present in the device list:
root@beaglebone:/dev# ls -l /dev/ttyO*
crw-rw---- 1 root tty     249, 0 Jan  1 01:18 /dev/ttyO0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 249, 4 Jan  1 01:18 /dev/ttyO4


The UARTs map to pins and devices like this:


 RX TX CTS RTS Device Remark
 UART0    J1_4 J1_5       /dev/ttyO0BeagleBone Black only
 UART1 P9_26 P9_24 P9_20 P9_19 /dev/ttyO1 
 UART2 P9_22 P9_21 P8_37 P8_38 /dev/ttyO2 
 UART3  P9_42 P8_36 P8_34 /dev/ttyO3 TX only
 UART4 P9_11 P9_13 P8_35 P8_33 /dev/ttyO4 
 UART5 P8_38 P8_37 P8_31 P8_32 /dev/ttyO5 


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