Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Programming Arduino from Your Browser – Kevin Warner”.
Good afternoon i’m kevin warner with olympia circuits and i’m going to talk to you a little bit today about a new way. We’Ve created to learn, arduino and do programming of arduino over the browser and the internet. So olympia circuits has a product called the rno. It’S a little beginner kit on a board. So it’s like all the circuits you’d have in a beginner kit, but they’re all pre uh. You know connected and configured so they’ll work properly.
So when you’re learning how to do arduino programming, you don’t have to worry about the hardware being incorrect and the circuit being wired up wrong it’ll. You know that part will work and you can focus on the code when we when we developed this board. We also came up with a book so that you would have plenty of example, sketches to work with. So you can learn a wide range of techniques and and program programming techniques and different circuits. You can use with arduino without having to surf around the internet, spend late nights trying to find good examples, and that sort of thing so it’s been well received, it’s very easy to use. It’S got intros to programming and so on, but we wanted to make it available electronically, and so we originally were just going to make a pdf and make it available and and so on. But we’ve been working with the folks at codebender who have an online programming interface, and so we developed a different strategy that basically is an online book that has a text and a programming ide development environment in one web page.
So you can do the programming and read the text and the explanation of the programming all for one space in your browser and not have to switch back and forth. So once again, i’m kevin warner, peter gould, uh, co-owner of olympus circuits and integral to the uh. The book and the arno so the traditional way with arduino is you install the id from a download and install the drivers right, sketches, upload and so on, which works pretty well but uh.
If you use multiple computers and if you’re just beginning there can be a challenge, getting the right versions and maintaining all that and also keeping getting the right libraries to use and so on. It’S a it’s a good, simple system, but for beginners to have everything in one space would make it a little easier. So we wanted something a little more engaging that took some of the uh positive attributes of a physical book having the code examples and the text explaining them in one in one spot and moving that online and making it easy to access.
Not a big download or anything like that to do that. We took advantage of codebender, like i said, and codebender is nice because they maintain the programming environment, keep it up to date and have libraries and easy ways to share code without having to do all that. On each pc you use so here’s a little bit like i said about the arno board and why we decided to do this. So these are the steps we went through. We thought about just the plain ebook and then a web page where you’d have you’d copy and paste the code, like you would from a typical tutorial page paste it over the arduino ide and so on. There’S a lot of copy and pasting going on, and we think that many students, especially younger students, will be confused by all the copying and pasting and loading up sketches.
So basically, we had the text of course electronically. It all got copied over by an intern who was in the audience and uh, and then we took codebender. We installed uh pieces of their their code onto each website with the sketches embedded with integrator with the text, and it just really allows for uh more focus on uh what what we’re trying to do in each sketch. So my wi-fi luck is any better. So this is a uh example. The web page we’ve got a little description of the sketch and then right here is the the codebender window basically looks just like an arduino screen.
It allows you to download this the sketch as a file that you could use in the arduino interface or edit somewhere else. You can select a sketch which selects all the text for copy and paste functionality, or you can run it on the arduino, which is basically upload and then right below. That, then, is the explanation of what’s going on with each part of this sketch, so you can then see why why the the program is doing what what you, what you see so it looks like it’s trying to upload and it just went from a rgb fade To a led chase or right from the browser not having to open up the ide, and then we have uh same sort of thing. This has a sketch defines the rgb led and just with the click of the mouse, and this is basically hitting the code better website, compiling and then being loaded through the serial port to the arduino. So you do need internet access, but it’s a very low bandwidth and pretty robust, as you can see the types of circuits that, in our case we’re doing. We have leds examples.
Some basic uh, hello, world and uh serial interface, uh games and practice with a serial, monitor, analog uh examples of potentiometer uh sound. This is a so this we use a piezo as both an input and an output, so it uh, we’ll we’ll uh read the voltage as you tap the piezo sensor and then feed that back as a metronome or a or as a rhythm light. Sensing uh and i2c this has an itc, uh temperature sensor, so you can learn the concepts of doing itc serial communication, which is important and then uh, some specifics to the 30 u24, which is like the the chip.
That’S on the arduino leonardo that this keyboard and mouse emulation. So these are screenshots over my backup plan and that’s it so uh. Do we have any questions about uh? How we’re integrating the book and the internet? The code bender he’s asking if there’s a way to use a local server for codebender. I don’t think at this time there is they’re they’re in rapid development phase, and so they don’t have a stable build any one day. I think so, but uh.
So that’s the way it stands right now because they’re trying to keep it up to date and maintain it okay, so he has how the browser interacts with the usb there’s a driver that you install and uh. Well, the arduino drivers are standard drivers and then there’s an add-in for the browser that that talks to the serial port yeah. It’S browser agnostic. As far as i know, i’ve used it on excel or explorer chrome and firefox, and i don’t know if i i know, it’ll work on a mac. I don’t think i’ve personally done it, though, is there a way to program it wirelessly? Yes, yes, so uh with like a spark or uh bacillus, is used in other technology. I can’t remember how he’s doing a wireless, but basically having some sort of a wireless bridge either, especially if it’s a wi-fi bridge you can basically just uh hit it directly.
Yes, you should be able to be able to program it using your iphone. That’S a good point yeah, because it’s browser-based. So then it didn’t matter if you have something there that basically acts as a a bridge between the internet and the and the arduino. Yes – and i haven’t done that, but i know that the codebender guys have done that where they basically have a just a device not connected to anything and they’re able to hit it over the internet, yeah and that might be a technique for uh programming. With a tablet that i hadn’t thought of, because i’ve been wanting to program with a tablet but haven’t come up with a wood, any other questions, thoughts, anything i miss peter. Oh, what’s the connection between olympia circuits and code um, not we just use their uh their service.
Basically, so we just work with them to integrate it, but it’s available for other users as well. So there’s not a business connection or anything like that yeah. It was just a way for us to get our book online and uh. Codebenders has been very helpful to you know, explain to us how we could do it with their product.
All right. Thank you have a good afternoon. .