Beagle Bone Black + machine kit + ar2?

I started with the Beaglebone before moving over to arduino. The challenge I personally had was the beagelbone didn't put out enough power to trip switches/relays and it was difficult to get scripts to run on boot. For example, I couldn't get the beaglebone to activate the motor drivers that the AR2 uses because the voltage for the GPIO pins (from memory) were running at 3/3.3v and the drivers needed 5 volts (from memory). I have gotten away with this with some other drivers but not with these ones.

After using them, I much prefer the ardunio's to the beaglebone and I wouldn't consider moving back, espically for the AR2.