Welcome to the second instalment of Dive Into JeeNodes. Let’s get going!

DIJN differs from a conventional laptop / workstation setup, in that it will be interfacing to the real world via microntrollers running our code. To get that code onto these devices, we need to cross compile the software on our (big) computer running Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux, and then upload it into the permanent memory of a microcontroller chip.

The Arduino has brought this approach to the masses, by providing an open-source IDE to develop, compile, upload, and run the software in the form of embedded software (called “sketches” in Arduino-speak). The success of the Arduino is partly due to the fact that these tools have become easy to install and use.

Before the Arduino era, cross compilers were complex, platform-specific, and too expensive for personal use in small projects. Now they are free, open source, extensively documented, and surrounded by a vibrant community.

Installing the IDE

As a first step, we need to perform that installation. This process is fully described on the Getting Started with Arduino page.

The recommended version is Arduino IDE 1.0.3, at the moment. Note that you don’t have to follow all the steps (1..7 on Windows and Mac OSX are enough), because we’re not going to connect any hardware or upload any software just yet.

Go ahead, perform the installation now. Should take no more than 15 minutes, normally.

If all went well, you should be able to launch the IDE and see something like this after you open the LED blink example sketch with File > Examples > 1.Basics > Blink. :

If you click on the leftmost round button, the one with the checkmark, then the bottom part of the window should also show that same text:

Binary sketch size: ...

Congratulations, you’ve installed a fairly large package and it’s all running as expected.

What is an IDE?

But, wait… what is this thing? And why do we need it?

The “Integrated Development Environment” is where we create the software that ends up running on our microcontroller(s) – be it an Arduino, a JeeNode (which can be used just like an Arduino Uno because it has the same ATmega328 microcontroller), an RBBB, or a range of other similar products.

The Arduino IDE is an editor, a compiler (translating the program source text into some obscure binary code which one particular type of microcontroller understands), an uploader, and a serial terminal interface – all rolled into one app. If your background is PHP or Python, you may want to read a bit more about compiled languages.

The IDE also defines various conventions for how and where to store different pieces of software if we have more than one microcontroller, how to deal with standard libraries obtained from other software developers, and which type of microcontrollers we can handle through this environment.

All of this is essential during development, but once the compiled code has been stored in the microcontroller, it’s not really needed anymore. In day-to-day use, the IDE plays no role – until we decide to make changes, add new features, extend the code… or fix bugs. Then the whole process kicks in again – we load the sketch we were working on back into the IDE, make the changes, compile, upload, try things out, and again: once it works, the IDE can be closed and left alone.

Note that there is no way back: you can’t get code out of a microcontroller and turn it into the source text you wrote. So an essential part of the IDE is to help you manage all those different tasks and versions used for different microcontrollers in your (usually growing) collection of remote sensor nodes. It’s a good idea to think about how you name stuff and where you put it, because you’ll want to find it again whenever you fire up the IDE.

So we write (or use someone else’s) code, as a “sketch” for a particular task, and we upload it into one or more microcontrollers in the different remote nodes. We give these sketches names, and we use the IDE to keep a copy of each of them, to be able to improve / refine / fix / alter the logic of certain nodes at any time in the future.

Some people spend all their time in the IDE (because that’s where lots of code is created). We usually call ’em software developers, although I think IDEalists sounds a lot nicer!

JeeLib

Software can grow to become quite complex. Yet some parts are going to be used over and over again in different sketches. In the case of wireless JeeNodes, the best example is the “RF12” wireless driver, i.e. a piece of software which takes care of sending and receiving wireless data packets.

This sort of “standard” extra functionality is usually made available as software libraries. In the Arduino IDE, such libraries can contain the re-usable code as well as example sketches to try everything out.

The library we want is called “JeeLib”, and is documented here.

We need to add this essential ingredient to our IDE. It has been developed and extended by JeeLabs and other people over the years, and the latest version of this code is available from GitHub – a popular place for a huge range of open source software projects you’re likely to want to use. The GitHub website is enormous, but easy to search and navigate.

Installation requires some care, because we must download the entire set of files and put it in a specific location for the Arduino IDE to be able to find it. There is a good introduction on how to install libraries.

To download the latest version of JeeLib, click on this link, which you can also find as a “ZIP” button in the top left of this page on GitHub. Unpack and rename the resulting folder to just “JeeLib”, then follow the instructions on that how to install page.

To check that things went right, you have to first work around a quirk of the IDE:

Quit the Arduino IDE and then restart it, so that it will pick up all library changes.

Lastly, see if you can locate the following entry in the Arduino IDE’s nested menus:

File -> Sketchbook -> libraries -> JeeLib -> DIJN -> test1

Found it? Terrific. You’ve completed the software installation for embedded Arduino and JeeNode use. As far as the software required for DIJN is concerned, your laptop / workstation is ready to rock.

Onwards!

(This series of posts is also available from the Dive Into JeeNodes page on the Café wiki.)