The original BeagleBone — sometimes known as “the white board” — was expensive, however its successor, the BeagleBone Black, was much cheaper and more capable. While never a runaway success like the Raspberry Pi, possibly due to the notorious supply problems, the BeagleBone line was arguably better suited for hardware prototyping than the Raspberry Pi, and was open source hardware — meaning that you could adapt the design to your own needs.
That led to a number of boards copying the design the BeagleBone Black. However the BeagleBone derivative board to make major changes to the design was the BeagleBone Green from SeeedStudio. The latest version of the board, released at Maker Faire Bay Area in 2016, is the BeagleBone Green Wireless.
Like its predecessor, the BeagleBone Green Wireless includes two Grove connectors, allowing you connect it directly to sensors and actuators using SeeedStudio’s Grove eco-system without any soldering. However the major change is of course the addition of a 2.4GHz wireless module supporting both Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth LE, although the new board does lack a wired Ethernet connection.
