Texas Instruments and BeagleBoard.org have announced that the AM62x and AM26x PRU Academy is now available, adding new learning material for developers working with BeaglePlay and PocketBeagle 2.

 

The PRU, or Programmable Real-Time Unit, is a deterministic 32-bit RISC core found in several TI Sitara and Jacinto devices. It is designed for low-latency I/O control and can operate alongside the main processor cores, making it useful for applications that require precise timing, direct hardware access, or real-time peripheral control.

The AM62x PRU Academy is available through TI’s Resource Explorer under the AM62x Academy training section. Its introductory material explains the PRU subsystem, the PRUSS architecture, and related getting-started resources.

AM62x PRU Academy index(click image to enlarge)

The course also includes five Getting Started Labs that walk users through the basic development workflow. These cover project creation, writing code in C or assembly, compiling the output, loading and initializing the PRU, and debugging the application.

Additional hardware-focused sections cover PRU cores, clock frequencies, I/O, GPIO, pinmux configuration, the interrupt controller, memory, broadside accelerators, and available peripherals.

Creating a CCS PRU Project(click image to enlarge)

The firmware development material expands on when the PRU is suitable for a given use case, how memory allocation is handled, how header files and Linux resource tables are used, and how Linux interrupt configuration works. It also includes topics related to direct memory reads and writes, latency calculations, arbitration delay, and the PRU constant table.

Load the PRU firmware(click image to enlarge)

The academy further includes Linux driver material and practical labs for the interrupt controller, GPIO, multiplier with accumulation, and CRC16_32 cyclic redundancy check examples.

This release accompanies version 2026.01.00 of the OpenPRU GitHub repository, a software development package for PRU processor-core development. According to the OpenPRU documentation, the project provides academy content, getting-started labs, application examples, firmware macros, register definitions, and example drivers.

Running the PRU firmware(click image to enlarge)The OpenPRU repository currently lists support for several TI processor families, including AM243x, AM261x, AM263x, AM263Px, AM62x, and AM64x. For basic PRU development support on older AM335x, AM437x, and AM57x devices, TI refers users to the PRU Software Support Package.

Debugging the PRU firmware(click image to enlarge)

In older news, BeagleBoard.org also shared details about BeagleConnect Zepto, a low-cost microcontroller board designed around the Texas Instruments MSPM0L1117. The device includes an Arm Cortex-M0 core running at 32MHz, along with 128kB of flash and 16kB of RAM. BeagleBoard.org said it distributed hundreds of Zepto boards at Embedded World 2026 and published the design files on GitHub and OpenBeagle.org.

BeagleConnect Zepto(click image to enlarge)

BeagleConnect Zepto includes friction-fit mikroBUS-compatible through-holes for use with Click add-on boards, as well as two QWIIC connectors for chaining the board with BeaglePlay, BeagleBadge, or other QWIIC-enabled systems.

The board is also intended to work with BeagleConnect Greybus for Zephyr, allowing peripherals to be exposed to Linux over I2C without requiring new microcontroller firmware. Software development is primarily supported through the open-source Zephyr RTOS, with Arduino Core and MicroPython support through Zephyr.

Further Information

Additional information is available from the BeagleBoard.org announcement, TI’s AM62x Academy in Resource Explorer, and the Texas Instruments OpenPRU GitHub repository.