tinyBrd – getting stuff installed

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This post is part of bigger series. You can get all tinyBrd related information here.

Before You do any work with tinyBrd You have to install required libraries. We have prepared instruction how to do it.

Requirements

This tutorial was tested against Arduino IDE 1.6.7 from Arduino.cc and we assume You are using this version. To program tinyBrd You need some kind of ISP programmer, we recommend easy to use USBasp

Getting info

First You  need to know, where You have to install our code. Locate folder with Your sketches – check Arduino IDE preferences (Ctr+,).

IDE preferences
IDE preferences

In this example it is /home/seba/sketchbook15. In this folder create (if it doesen’t exists yet) folder hardware. Then get our Nettigo tinyBrd Core http://static.nettigo.pl/tinyBrdCore-current.zip and unzip it. Restart Arduino IDE and in menu Tools/Boards You should see new entries. Choose Attiny84 @ 8 Mhz.

Now, open example File/Examples/01. Basics/Blink and change LED pin from 13 to 0. Upload example to tinyBrd (if You have USBAsp just connect it and upload from IDE as usual). You can test with multimeter or LED connected to D0 that Blink is working.

Examples

We have prepared some examples, You can download it from http://static.nettigo.pl/tinyBrdExamples-v1.0.zip Unpack it to Your sketchbook folder.

All of them, in most current version You can get from GitHub: https://github.com/nettigo/tinybrd-examples

Raspberry PI

tinyBrd is meant to communicated with some central node. Raspberry PI is great for that! We have created Python library to get NRF24L01 going.

We assume You are using our NRF Hat to connect modem NRF24L01 to Your Raspberry.

You have to install pip for Python3 if You don’t have it on Raspberry:

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Now just install our library directly from GitHub:

sudo pip-3.2 install git+https://github.com/nettigo/pyNRF.git

NRF uses SPI protocol, which is not enabled by default on Raspberry, run sudo raspi-config choose option Advanced config next A6 SPI and answer yes to next questions. Now reboot Raspberry, it is ready to work.

Revision history (this article and core versions):
  • 12-09-2015 – initial version
  • 30-12-2015 – core updated to work with Arduino IDE 1.6.7
  • 4-02-2016 – v1.1b – lower current consumption – only 4-5 µA in sleep mode