Installing an integrated development environment (IDE)

Transcription

1 Installing an integrated development environment (IDE) 1 Introduction Integrated development environments are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tight-knit components with similar user interfaces. IDEs present a single program in which all development is done. This program typically provides many features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software. One aim of the IDE is to reduce the configuration necessary to piece together multiple development utilities, instead providing the same set of capabilities as a cohesive unit. Reducing that setup time can increase developer productivity, in cases where learning to use the IDE is faster than manually integrating all of the individual tools. To get started 2 Setting up the IDE The IDE is often targeted for a programming language or an operating system. For our MCP8266 based system, the firmware 'dictates' the IDE to pick. As I assume that you started with Download the Arduino IDE from here. Launch the setup to install the application. Once the installation process has finished, launch arduino.exe. The Arduino IDE 1 / 5

2 Select File and then Preferences At the bottom of this panel you'll find the Additional Boards Manager URLs. Paste the following line in the box and exit by pressing the OK button. Then select Tools and Board Board selection 2 / 5

3 The selection should correspond to your developments board designation. In our case it is the ESP-12E Module. If you are unsure whether you have such a board, check up here. After this step exit the IDE to save those settings. Restart the IDE again and check if the board was assigned. If this step is ok also, we have successfully installed our IDE. 3 The serial monitor As you certainly have realized, our little devices come without monitor/screen - so we must get another way to figure out what is going on in this device. Programs you write or download from internet, have information send to their serial (USB) port in order to inform the user what section of the program has been executed. If you include the following code line in your application Serial.print("Turned on LED "); the text Turned on LED will be send to the serial (USB) interface. The question is, how the heck can we be aware the text has been send? This is where the serial monitor comes in. In the IDE select Tools and then Serial Monitor. The following window will show up. Serial Monitor On the status line, you will find a dropdown box with a unit expressed in baud. In telecommunication and electronics, baud is the unit for symbol rate or modulation rate in symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the number of distinct symbol changes (signaling events) made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a line code. The baud rate is the speed our serial monitor expects our board to communicate. In the title bar of the monitor you will see the port the monitor is 'listening' to. 3 / 5

4 Now please push the reset button on your developer board and watch what is happening in this window. Serial monitor - text captured after having booted the device If a part of the text is 'garbled', that means the text was send at an unexpected baud rate. If the text is partially garbled as in the above sample, it means in our example, the device started with a startup baud rate, send some text and switched to a different baud rate afterwards to send the remaining text. Whatever the last lines send, they are of interest of us and that is the baud rate at which we expect to get some feedback for now. If you are curious about the reading of the garbled text, set the baud rate to baud and reset your device again. Serial monitor - text captured after booting the device So if you end up with garbled text after a full boot cycle, change the baud rate, reboot and repeat this step till you are able to read what is send to the serial monitor. 4 / 5

5 4 Next steps If you can't hold yourself back from playing now *grin*, in the IDE under File and then Examples you'll find plenty of readymade code to get started quickly. Pick for example under 01. Basics the Blink code. If you are more patient, then let's head over to the next document. 5 / 5