I’ve been working my way through Derek Molloy’s excellent book Exploring BeagleBone.
The BeagelBone Black GPIO pins are all 3.3V tolerant. So you will need some way of interfacing external devices that run at higher voltages such as 12V motors to the BeagleBone Black.
@TomKeddie’s Opto-isolated 12 channel FET board fits the bill quite nicely. I picked up a kit from Tom and assembled it mostly with the VHS Reflow Oven and a bit of hand soldering for the connectors.
In the above photo you can see the BBB in the upper left interfaces to the white FET board sitting on the breadboard with one output driving a single Red LED running at 5V and powered from external ATX breakout board. The BBB is optically isolated from the rest of the circuitry so any damage from high voltages is less likely to occur.
My Christmas decorations are now complete!
A few readers may also recognize the ATX Breakout board in the upper right of the photo which I built in another excellent beginners SMD workshop given by Tom Keddie.