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.
I just wanted to point out, there are some relay boards at least that have a jumper you can remove to supply an external 5v (or whatever) source to do the actual tripping of the relay. I ran into that recently doing an nodemcu project and discovered my multiple-relay boards had that feature. Not sure if that is the same thing you are referring to.
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.