NXP provides two different IDEs to develop programs for the Rapid IoT device. The first is Rapid IoT Studio which is a graphically oriented web based Atmosphere drag-and-drop IDE. The second is the MCUXpresso IDE which is an Eclipse based IDE for NXP's microcontrollers based on the Arm Cortex-M cores. The second option requires that you download and install the free MCUXpresso application. You also need to download and install the SDKs associated with the MK64F12 and MKW41Z4 microcontrollers that are used in the Rapid IoT. This option offers advanced editing, compiling, and debugging. I am going to cover the Rapid IoT Studio IDE in this blog post.
The Rapid IoT Studio IDE is located at the same URL that we used for the Dashboard: https://rapid-iot-studio.nxp.com/ . It is located on the tab directly above the Dashboard tab.
The IDE comes with example projects for the Rapid IoT.
I am going to start by just by compiling the "Blinking an LED" project and creating a binary executable to program the Rapid IoT. If that works I can then proceed to creating my own program.
The project consists of a set interconnected functional elements that determine the program actions. You click to drop the desired elements from the toolbox on the right and then just drag the connection line between the appropriate elements.
Here's the Element Toolbox:
This Blink project has just 3 elements:
1) Interval Timer to trigger the LED toggle
2) The RGB LED element in the Rapid IoT
3) Label for the Rapid IoT display
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Here are the element properties:
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Here are the Connector properties:
Once all the elements are connected on the workspace you just need to compile and download the binary executable (Blinking an LED firmware.bin).
The Rapid IoT device has a USB MSD (mass storage device) programming mode that allows you to upload applications.
To enter the MSD programming mode you use the following sequence:
In the MSD mode the Rapid IoT will appear as a USB drive and you can just drag and drop the application (.bin) file onto it and that will cause the device to boot into the application.
Here is a short video showing the Blinking LED example running on the Rapid IoT.
Next step is to compile and upload an example using the MCUXpresso IDE. Then on to developing my own applications.
Just as an aside, I noticed that the Rapid IoT OOB Demo example has been updated in Rapid IoT Studio. It now has a display power down feature to save power. To toggle the display on/off, you press the SW1 and SW4 buttons simultaneously for 5 seconds. I tried compiling and uploading the new OOB Demo and verified the new feature is working.