Arduino IO Interface Board for EIVE

General Information

This is the software for an Arduino board to set it up as an interface board. The interface board will be used to relay commands from a host computer serial interface to connected I2C or SPI sensors. This allows device handler testing on a host machine. There are 2 options to build and flash an Arduino with this repository:

1. The software is compiled and programmed on the Arduino with make and avrdude, provided the AVR GCC toolchain is installed
2. Eclipse with the Sloeber plugin is used. The plugin and Eclipse take care of the build management, and an Arduino IDE like interface is provided in Eclipse

It is recommended to use Sloeber for enhanced convenience, as it takes care of the building process. Furthermore, the interface is similar to the Arduino IDE, which lowers the entry barrier for new developers. It is also integrated into Eclipse, which has a powerful indexer and several other tools to ease development.

Instructions to build with make

Prerequisites

1. When compiling on a Windows system, make sure the Windows Development Tools are installed and added to the system path.This is required for make to work.

2. Install the AVR toolchain for your OS

3. If building the binary with make, initiate the contained arduino_core submodule and the required core contained within that submodule by running

git submodule update --init --recursively

Build Instructions

Make sure to add WINDOWS=1 when building on Windows!

1. Run following command to build the software.

make all -j

2. Run following command to clean up the directories

make clean -j

Instructions build with Sloeber

Prerequisite

1. Install Eclipse for C/C++ developers

2. Install the Eclipse Sloeber plugin by going to Help → Eclipse Marketplace and searching for Sloeber V4 and installing it

3. First time setup:

   • Create a new Arduino sketch by going to File → New → Other → Arduino Sketch.

   • Unselect Use Default destination and pick the arduino folder inside eive_obsw. The name does not really matter, arduino was taken for the example.

   • The board specific information can changed later so its okay to take any option here and change it later.

   • Take any example sketch (.cpp or .ino). An example file will be generated and should be deleted manually in the tree view on the left

   • Eclipse should ask whether it should switch to the Arduino View. Confirm this with yes.

   Now the top menu should have an Arduino section which can be used to install all required libraries and Arduino cores. The project properties can be accessed in the tree view on the left by right clicking on the arduino folder and selecting properties

4. It is recommended to get familiar with the interface provided by the plugin. A majority of functions is provided by top bar elements as shown in the following picture.

5. The Sloeber plugin build mangement system will parse the arduino folder and all contained subfolders for source files. If you want to exclude source files from the build (for example, to exclude the arduino_core, Sloeber will take care to include the core files via its integrated board manager!), right click on project folder (arduino) in the tree view on the left, go to Resource Configureation and configure Exclude from Build.

6. Set up the plugin for the used board and install all required libraries.

   • Install all required board libraries by going to Arduino → Preferences and using the options Library Manager and Platform and Boards.
   • It is necessary to install the arduino-timer library by searching for timer in the Library Manager.
   • It is recommended to install the Arduino AVR Boards and the Arduino megaAVR Boards in the Platforms and Boards manager.
   • It is also necessary to go to Arduino → Preferences → Add a library to the selected project and then adding the arduino-timer and SPI library there.

Build and flash instructions

1. Right click on the arduino folder inside the tree view on the left and go to Preferences. Go to the Arduino section and make sure the Arduino Board Selection tab is configured correctly.
   Please note that board libraries and libaries need to be installed and added as beforehand as specified in Prerequisites. It is recommended to go to the Compile Options tab and addding following define to to append to C and C++

-DSERIAL_RX_BUFFER_SIZE=256

2. An Arduino like bar can be seen at the top, which can be used to compile the software and flash it to the board. The check symbol is used to compile while the right arrow symbol is used to flash the software. There are also symbols to open the serial monitor or the serial plot.

3. The serial monitor can be opened in the Serial monitor view tab at the bottom or with the icons at the top bar. Take care to pick the correct USB port and baud rate.