I've done several projects using the Beagle Bone Black, with good success. The PRU units in the Bone are amazing, a pair of 200 MHz 32-bit microcontrollers with direct access to GPIO pins, and shared memory interface to the ARM CPU. Ethernet, USB host and target and a few other things. There are also variants aimed at vehicle projects. I have used it in ground-powered applications, but it is pretty low power, something like 300 mA at 5 V.
I started using the earlier Beagle Board to control devices remotely, and have now switched over to using the Bone as the original Board is no longer made. I could have used lesser-performing processors in these devices, but the ease of programming network servers in Linux made this a great choice.
Jon