The Beagle Bone Black is a low-cost development platform that allows developers to boot Linux in under 10 seconds and get started on development quickly using just a USB cable. It has an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 512MB RAM, and connectivity options like USB, Ethernet, HDMI. The Beagle Bone Black supports software like Angstrom Linux, Android, and Cloud9 IDE. It can be used for physical computing, robotics, and running programs like OpenCV for image analysis. Capes expansion boards can add functionality like motors, sensors, and cameras.