firmware-pinoccio

This repository contains the default sketch to use on a Pinoccio scout, as well as references to all external repositories that are needed to build it.

This repository serves two main purposes:

• Allow easily cloning and updating all required repositories for development
• Allow tracking exactly what collection of code was used for particular official builds.

To get started with Pinoccio and this sketch, you need three things:

1. The Arduino IDE (nightly build with an updated toolchain).
2. The "pinoccio" hardware folder that tells the Arduino IDE about the Pinoccio Scout and allows compiling sketches for it.
3. A collection of libraries that know how to talk to the various parts of the Pinoccio Scout and its backpacks.

Note that if you don't need the various support libraries and just want to write bare sketches for the Pinoccio Scout, only steps 1 and 2 are enough (e.g., you can run blink without step 3).

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Quick start: Preconfigured VM

There is a pre-configured Pinoccio VM available, which you can use to quickly get all three of the above requirements done. This is a 1GB torrent containing a VM template that can be imported into either Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation/Fusion.

Magnet URI (Built 18 Mar 2014):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:788538B08B13E723AC3649BB813891DC785EF99C

The create-vm-image.sh script will build a new VM image from scratch (advanced users only!)

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1: Arduino IDE

The toolchain (gcc, libc, binutils and avrdude) shipped with older Arduino versions is too old and does not contain the right patches for the Atmega256RFR2 chip used in the Pinoccio Scout. For this reason, you need at least IDE version 1.5.7 or above.

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2 & 3: hardware folder and libraries

You'll need to get the pinoccio hardware folder into the hardware directory of your sketchbook, and the various libraries into the libraries directory of your sketch book.

All needed repositories are configured as submodules of this repositories. Additionally, a script named update is provided which can set up all the submodules for you automatically.

$ git clone https://github.com/Pinoccio/firmware-pinoccio.git
(...output...)
$ cd firmware-pinoccio
$ ./update.sh
(...output...)
$ ls
Bootstrap  hardware  libraries  update.sh
$ ls hardware/
pinoccio
$ ls libraries/
bitlash  gainspan  lwm  pinoccio

Now, you need to make sure the Arduino IDE learns about this hardware folder, the libraries and the mains sketch. There are a few ways to achieve this:

1. Set the Arduino sketchbook path to the the firmware-pinoccio dir you created above (under File -> Preferences). This is the easiest and will make everything work right away. The downside here is that the Arduino IDE will no longer see your regular libraries and sketches, until you change the sketchbook path back.

2. Create symlinks from your sketchbook to the folder above. e.g.:

   mkdir -p /path/to/sketchbook/hardware /path/to/sketchbook/libraries
   ln -s /path/to/firmware/pinoccio/hardware/pinoccio /path/to/sketchbook/hardware
   ln -s /path/to/firmware/pinoccio/Bootstrap /path/to/sketchbook/
   for i in /path/to/firmware-pinoccio/libraries/*; do
     ln -s $i /path/to/sketchbook/libraries
   done
   

   The downside of this approach is that you need to maintain the symlinks when a library is added or removed.

3. Copy the various repositories into your sketchbook (or just clone them in the right place to begin with). This requires manually running git pull in each repository to stay up to date, so this is probably only useful if your OS does not support symbolic links.

Development

If you want to develop the hardware folder or libraries, you can normally work in the hardware/pinoccio and libraries/* directories. These are normal git repositories.

One caveat is that the git submodule command has created all repositories in "detached HEAD" state. So, before you start, you should first check out a normal branch where you can commit your work. When calling update.sh, git submodule is called with the --rebase flag, which should prevent git submodule from overwriting your changes or detaching the head again.

If you make changes to the submodules, these will also show up as changes in the working copy of the main firmware-pinoccio repository. This is because the main repository contains the explicit revision of each of its submodules. Usually it's ok to just commit these along with other changes (they provide historical reference of the environment used to create the commit).

Also note that all submodules are cloned using https:// urls, so they can work anonymously. If you have commit access to these repositories and want to use ssh access so you can push, you can tell git to replace https with ssh automatically:

git config --global url.git@github.com:.insteadOf https://github.com/

Note that this command applies to all github urls in all repositories.

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Compiling Sketches

You should then be able to open one of the Pinoccio examples (File->Examples->Pinoccio->[example]. Make sure your Board is set to Pinoccio and the Port is set to your serial port.

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Official firmware / Bootstrap builds

When shipped and when updating the Pinoccio scout boards through the Pinoccio HQ, it will contain an official firmware build. This build is generated using the "Bootstrap" example from the library-pinoccio repository. This example pulls in the needed libraries and generates the main firmware that offers a ScoutScript prompt and knows how to talk to the various hardware attached to the Pinoccio scout.

These official builds are generated using the build.sh script in this repository, which automatically detects the build number (based on tags and git revision) and includes that in the build. If you build the Bootstrap example through the Arduino IDE normally, the build number and revision will be set to -1 and "unknown".

See the comments at the top of the build.sh script for instructions on how to use it.