The BeagleBone by itself contains a few I2C devices as seen in the preceding exercise. These include the power management controller and an I2C EEPROM.
Note
Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) is a type of nonvolatile memory often used to store configuration or identification information.
The PMIC generates the voltages applied to the SoC and other bits of hardware. A mistake in programming this device can cause permanent damage to the BeagleBone. We will avoid this device in our exercises.
The I2C EEPROM on the BeagleBone is used to identify the board to the software. This EEPROM can be written into but there are many safeguards in place to prevent corruption of the contents. A corrupt EEPROM can be repaired with software. This is the device we will use for our exercises.
