UpCycle IT - R2I - Grove-ON!

UpCycle IT - R2I - Edison link to Arduino

UpCycle IT – R2I INDEX:

Blog #9 - Grove-ON!

I realize some of these blogs are simplistic to many of the experienced members but I decided to make sure I document my own experiences to the best I can since some things I know I will run into again and hopefully others can benefit from what I have stumbled across.  This blog is a prime example of the benefit of blogging knowledge and having it return a benefit for yourself in the future.

I have to admit the Grove Kit was/is very interesting to me.  I love the ideas of a Kit that has been assembled and has the potential to provide to members a great source of inspirational sensors as well as actual examples for learning.  I find myself doing many things I come across on the Element 14 website that I would never have thought of before on my own but due to the great sharing of other Members I want to try it out and see how it works for myself!

So let's get ready to get our "Grove" ON and wrap it into our Arduino IDE for the Intel Edison:

The Grove Starter Kit comes with a handy dandy booklet/page that is folded up and can be unfolded into a small poster sized piece of information.

Here we have a snapshot of part of it where they are suggesting to newbies where to go to start rolling with their equipment.  Honestly I enjoy following all of these instructions many times just to be sure that something new that has came out has not escaped my notice.  So let's give this a try.

By the way Enrico balearicdynamics had made a comment on adding links in my past blog and I fully agree with him, in fact that ties in really well for what we are playing with right now.  Thank you for the input Enrico!

Here we putt in their suggested web address:  www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/Grove_-_Starter_Kit_V3

What kind of interesting and informative path will it place us on as we begin our exploration into the world of Grove Sensors and Devices?

Stay tuned, same E14 Channel, same E14 time:....

...

..

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Well... Not really what I am looking for.  Feel free to click the link above, perhaps something has changed.  :-)

So let's try to do some exploring and find if they have anything that let's someone brand new to the Grove World have a helping hand in rolling along.

I went back to the main site and saw they have a Grove section complete with Kits, cool this looks interesting!

Looks more like a page to order their kits, but that makes sense since it is a company, perhaps they have a link off of a kit with technical information.

Here I found something that seems similar to our Kit but not quite.  Nor can I find anything that really seems to point you to what to do with the Kit.  I am assuming since they include that handy dandy page in every Kit they believe that will be the Golden Ticket to your Grove experience.

Kind of highlights the idea that

A. links can be incorrectly documented

B. links can change

(although in the best interests of business you would hope they would have something in place to quality control either of these when placing so much on a single link)

I also freely admit I am capable of missing information or mistyping URLs so if anyone is following along and see that I had a "DOH" moment let me know so I can properly document!  I do check, double check and usually triple check but I have observed myself typing in the wrong thing all 3 times before.  :-)

Okay, remember my mentioning of documenting my experiences at the beginning of this blog?  Prior to receiving the Grove Kit I went out and tried to find as much information on it as possible so I could appropriately plan out my project.  Myself and some other members shared this here.  Above I tried to capture the key spot I want to reference since it is a general comment flow on the whole kit.

So clicking on my saved link from the previous postings http://wiki.seeed.cc/Grove_Starter_Kit_v3/ brings us to the above.  This seems much more like what we have in our hands!  Cool we are back up and rolling on our path!

Scrolling down the page a little we have the key spot I want to look into.  Feel free to look at the whole page there could be something that catches your eye.

The colored numbers are NOT on the actual page, just my reference points for below discussion.

1.  We already addressed the IDE and Edison tie in blog 8.

2.  We already addressed the Edison board in blog 7.

3.  I looked at this a little but it wasn't the full box of goodies I really wanted so I am skipping over to the next piece since that is what I really want to work with.  Feel free to check out their example Sketch, but step 4 has ALL of their example Sketches that go with the various parts of the kit so that is what I wanted.

4.  The least obvious link here but the one I want to play with Go for It you know you want to!

Okay, we have been taken over to Github and we see a bunch of items for Starter Kit 2, I looked a little for a 3 but didn't see one, if anyone has a link to 3 feel free to share!  Thanks

Zoom in on Clone or Download, click that Green button of goodness!  This is what I want to look at next.  I am downloading the ZIP because I like to have copies I can store in each project folder and hopefully save for offline storage in the future.

I open up that Zip file and here you can see a bunch of folders for Sketches as well as one library folder.  Now we want to add these into our IDE.  There are probably many ways to do this but I am going to cover how I did it since it worked and since it allowed me to follow the same process for both examples as well as libraries.  :-)

Some of you may have noticed both UpCycleit as well as 2 Safe&Sound folders on the left above, yes I have been so flustered with some of my Safe&Sound "research" that I have completely started over and have been running 2 flows of testing trying to get something working correctly.  I have not given up though!  Back to your regularly scheduled UpCycleit E14 program:

A quick look at my IDE shows that no, the IDE hasn't advanced to a point where it knew new sketches had been placed nearby and tried to assimilate them in.  I joke just a bit there, seems like more and more programs especially for music, pictures and videos are constantly monitoring and try and snag anything new as soon as it touches your desktop.

Well we want our IDE to see these new Grove examples so let's help it out.

Here I have opened two windows showing the Compressed folder on the right with the Grove examples, they have been highlighted leaving the library alone.  On the left is my Arduino IDE location showing you the folders for examples and yes below, libraries.  I highlight my example folder and click Copy Here to transfer the Grove examples over to my IDE.  Standard drag from right to left process while holding mouse button down.

For a little variety I actually open both the Libraries folders in both windows and click just the one folder I want on the right, which works since there is only one folder offered, the Grove_LCD_RGB_Backlight library and as before I click on the Copy Here option to copy that library over into my IDE.

Restart your IDE and go look into Examples and yes, we now have the Grove examples to work with each of the Kit offerings!  If you don't restart the IDE you will not see these until you do Restart.  I just forgot to snap a shot of it when I did the quick check.

Temperature Sensor is the one I want to play with soon so that is highlighted but that will be another blog.  :-)

Just to be sure, let's jump over to our Libraries and check, yes, there is that new Grove_LCD_RGB_Backlight library.  Great, because that is yet another item I want to blog about soon!

Now we are ready to get our Grove-ON!