Hey everyone!

I just received a Bela cape + Beaglebone black and I'm wondering if it's possible to develop using the Debian Buster for IoT image (Python, Javascript preferred, but C++ is possible) instead of the Bela IDE? Is anyone aware of any Bela libraries available for Debian?

I came across the following: https://learn.bela.io/using-bela/advanced-topics/using-the-bela-core-with-other-programs/
But I'm not really following the instructions about the header files... Not sure if it's what I'm looking for.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone!

You can write programs using Bela's signature ultra low-latency real-time audio and sensor I/O using:

  • C++
  • PureData
  • Supercollider
  • Csound
  • FAUST

So Javascript and Python are not supported, because they are garbage collected (among other things) and so are not real time friendly. This said, at some point we had support for pyo "a Python module containing classes for a wide variety of audio signal processing types": https://pypi.org/project/pyo/ . It shouldn't take much to make it work again, if there is interest.

As for the operating system, the "stable" image comes with Debian Stretch and there is an experimental Debian Bullseye version (which is actually pretty good and I use it daily). Besides some tweaking, the main difference between a Bela image and a stock Debian image is the presence of the Bela files and a kernel containing the Xenomai patches.

This said, if you don't care for the ultra low-latency real-time audio and sensor I/O, then you can just use any distro/kernel/programming language, load the appropriate device overlay for the Bela cape's audio codec to show up as an ALSA soundcard and do just any good old regular Linux stuff with it.

Thanks for the insights Guilio!

So the reason I'm wondering about this is because I'm hoping to run Node Red simultaneously alongside Bela. Tried installing Node.js via ssh into Bela but getting some 404 errors and now I'm not even sure it's possible.

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Didn't come across anything on the web about installing node-red into the Bela image.... In your opinion, what's the best way to get that installed to the Bela image... if is it even possible?

you'll need to connect the board to the internet first, then as the Stretch version of Debian is now archived, you will need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list to replace all instances of deb.debian.org with archive.debian.org