After flashing Ubuntu 13.04 onto the Beaglebone, I installed ROS Hydro. The dependency issues I had the first time around seem to have been resolved (collada wasn’t available on UbuntuARM). Installing ROS was painless, but involved.
My Beaglebone Black is tethered to a desktop Ubuntu machine through a USB
connection. I access the BBB exclusively through SSH’ing. (Note: the Ubuntu
image I flashed onto the BBB did not have avahi installed so SSH’ing with
ssh [email protected] does not work. I have to use the IP address:
192.168.7.2 aka ssh [email protected] or ssh 192.168.7.2 -l ubuntu).
To access the internet I hacked together a [shell script]
(https://andrewdai.co/blog/beaglebone-usb-internet.html).
Afterwards, careful reading of the installation guide led to a lengthy but relatively simple install.