Gadgeteer Hello World

For any folks who are new to Gadgeteer, and looking for the most basic example of getting your Mainboard to do SOMETHING to make sure it works, I just published a Gadgeteer Hello World post on my blog, including videos of how to flash the onboard LED, and (for those who have it) how to write some text out to the Seeed Studio OLED display module:

The post also includes the relevant source code.

Nice! We need more 101 stuff like this. Thanks for the effort.

Good job!

@ Architect - thanks!

@ ransomhall - my thoughts exactly, which is why I included a link to the SDK, etc. downloads. It’s really tough for those of us without an extensive electronics background to stare at a screenful of debug info (or no screen at all) and think…“what now?”

If this helps even a couple of folks, it’ll be worth the several hours it took me to get 10 minutes of video mostly because I initially tried to do a “quick and dirty” recording with my phone, but was stymied by the Vimeo app, which is a good first try, but needs some work on the upload side. Lesson learned…from now on it’s either my Flip cam, or my Kodak, on a tripod, so I don’t have to work one-handed. :slight_smile:

This is awesome, thanks! I agree that “getting started” content is very useful for a lot of people. We all started learning somewhere. :slight_smile:

I was thinking about the same sort of thing, starting with the Hydra Basic Kit I got while waiting for my Spider Kit to show up, and I must admit its been a little on the frustrating side (but don’t all good things take a little effort to learn). So for example I was going to do the simplest of applications, just compile the generated code and run it, such that all you would see in the output windows was:

Program Started

This serves a couple of purposes, first it ensures that you have downloaded and installed everything correctly, second you have connectivity with your device, but alas it hasn’t gone well as the first error I got was:

Device not found or cannot be opened - USB:Gadgeteer

OK so I reset the device and tried again (I am able to see it, ping it etc with MFDeploy), and upon trying again I got this error message:

Invalid native checksum: GHIElectronics.OSH.NETMF.Hardware 0xE23395B!=0xEFA246E0

Resolving.

Link failure: some assembly references cannot be resolved!!

Assembly: Gadgeteer.WebClient (2.41.0.0) needs assembly ‘System.Http’ (4.1.2821.0)

Assembly: System.Http (4.1.2821.0) needs assembly ‘System.Net.Security’ (4.1.2821.0)

Error: a3000000

What the heck? So cleaning up unused references and usings from the system generated code, I compile again, and attempt to deploy and now I get this error:

The debugging target runtime is loading the application assemblies and starting execution.
Ready.

Cannot find any entrypoint!

Done.

OK so much for a quick test of the Hydra board, but before I do battle with whats going on of course I have to ask, anyone seen this before and fixed it and if so, what did you do that I need to do? I’m running Windows 7 Enterprise on 64 bit system, with VS 2010 Ultimate and I just installed everything this weekend so I would hope its the latest versions.

Hopefully my Spider Kit will arrive this week so I can test it out as well.

Thanks

Checksum error = firmware/library mismatch.

The beginners guide book explains this in details.

Nice job, Andrew! Keep it up.

Nice video. We software guys do love our Hello, world’s. :smiley:

Thanks Gus, I didn’t think of that as I was downloading everything from this site so I thought I was version good. Now I have to wait for my Fez Spider Kit so I can use its SD Module to bump up the Hydra firmware version (should be here in a couple of days).

Blake

The thing I found most helpful was using the correct terms when explaining the coding process as some one with a electronics background and who is self taught on programming understanding what is simple and basic to most programmers things like “Object Class” just knowing the correct terms to use so you can ask the correct questions is a big help. I have tried making a few of these 101 videos very well done THANKS!

@ Mr. Bildo - indeed, we do. This post has been part of my TODO list for a while. Can never have too many resources to help folks get started, IMO.

@ swestcott - You’re welcome. I’m glad you found the software piece helpful. Given that I’m coming from almost the opposite background, it’s easy to take for granted stuff that I know that many pure electronics folks wouldn’t. I find exactly the same frustration with some of the intro electronics articles I read in that they don’t explain some of the terms, and the reader is left having to look them up or be hopelessly lost.

For example, I’m still a bit lost when it comes to concepts like pull-up (and pull-down) resistors. I have a rough idea of what they do, but still piecing together the why and how. I’ve yet to find a beginner-level article that explains their use…if anyone is aware of such an article, please point me in that direction! :slight_smile:

@ DevHammer

FYI - There were 2 posts on Facebook from “Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer” yesterday - 1 with a link your blog and the 2nd to your OLED video!

@ mhectorgato

Yep - Kerry mentioned she was planning to post those. Nice to see. :slight_smile:

MOAR Gadgeteer!!!

tweeted and facebook this morning. We look forward to see more.

Good article on Pull up resistors

http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/mar97/basics.html

Awesome, Sean. Will have a look at this later tonight.

Thank you!

Good article, thank you.