After reading the blog post about the serial port challenges in Processing and the method for fixing them, I decided to download the IDE and try it myself. It seems to work reasonably well. I haven't quite managed to learn enough about the Arduino to understand how they use Processing or how limited their implementation of it is, but I was able to install and run the Arduino tool on my BeagleBoard after applying Koen's serial port library fix. I hope to use the tool to download applications onto my Trainer-xM, but I haven't yet been able to compile the examples natively because I haven't yet built avr-gcc.This is highly related to my current personal project, which is working with Processing-JS. I've been talking a lot about a BeagleBoard Linux Education project, but haven't really kicked the project off after working with others on the scope. Mark Yoder's ECE497 class is where the most visible advancement seems to be taking place right now, though I've heard of several other educators also creating courses with the BeagleBoard, including the Stanford New Musical Controllers workshop.
For me, I like the ideas of avoiding compilation, working in the most popular development environment today (the browser) and being able to remote my interface anywhere in the world over the web. I also believe the zero-install nature of web applications and the familiarity of working within a browser make it the perfect environment for newbies. To that end, I've made a little fork off of my Linux education project to focus on JavaScript-based development. I now have both Cloud9 and Processing.js installing as submodules. Under Angstrom, I'm able to easily run Chromium as one of my browser options and see the output from Processing.js, such as the picture here. Now to see which environment gets me talking to my Trainer-xM board first.
Also, sorry about the delayed BeagleCast this week--resulting in some of the topics not being timely. I've had a challenge getting a call scheduled with Khasim to discuss Rowboat.