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  • Author Author: ntewinkel
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Hello, RIoTboard (for newbies like me)

ntewinkel

Element14 was kind enough to send me a RIoTboard to try out, and after receiving it today I couldn't wait to try it out to see what it can do.

 

I have to note that I'm a total newbie to single board computers, so I had no idea what to expect.

What interested me in the RIoTboard is that it comes with Android installed, and from what I can tell there are some libraries available (edit: there are no libraries image) that make it easy to use the GPIO ports in an Android app - I'll definitely have to check that out at some point.

 

The first thing I had to do was to figure out what I needed to make this thing work.

Here's my list...

* 5v power adapter

* HDMI cable

* USB mouse

* USB keyboard (I think this is optional)

* Ethernet cable

* TV or monitor that connects via HDMI

 

Thankfully e14 included a power adapter for it, so that saved me searching for that, although I think the older routers I have in the basement might have 5v adapters with the right kind of plugin. In any case, if you're buying one of these you might want to also buy the adapter just to make sure you've got the right thing.

The other parts are easy - I already had an hdmi cable and an ethernet cable, as well as a keyboard. Oddly I couldn't find a mouse so I went and bought a little one at the dollar store for 5 bucks. Neither my monitor nor my wife's monitor have hdmi connections, but the living room TV did, so I hooked it up there.

 

Here's a picture of it all plugged in:

image

There's not a whole lot to it, is there? I'm used to the "old" days of computers taking up way too much desk space image

 

It boots up quickly and easily:

imageimage

It's a little weird to be running it on the big TV, and my hdmi cable was kind of short so ergonomics weren't ideal image  But ultimately I do want to use this for handling music and movies on my TV, so it's the right place for it.

 

I really like that! I love it when things are easy! Plug it in, it boots up, viola! The mouse works very intuitively too - I had an Android phone for a while so this all worked the way I would expect a regular Android phone to work. And everything is quick and responsive.

The HDMI cable also automatically hooks up the sound to the TV, so that was nice.

 

The biggest issues I ran into were the furry ones:

imageimage

I guess that's to be expected when there's something new in the living room involving a lot of little cords, and that mouse cursor is just too irresistible!

 

I had a little uSD card, so I put music and a little video on it to try that out. It all worked nicely, but the sound was noticeable slowed down… not sure what's up with that yet.

Also, it didn't recognize my full sized SD card. I bet there's a setting for that somewhere.

 

The ethernet plug in my living room isn't hooked up and I didn't feel like figuring all that out tonight so I'll fiddle with that on the weekend (we have wired cat5 throughout the house, but we've been using wireless). So I wasn't able to try any of the connected kind of stuff yet.

 

All in all, it was a great first startup experience - like I said, I like it when things go easily!

Thanks element14!

 

Cheers,

-Nico

 

image

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    It's classy.

     

    Not sure I can do so well for Frederick .... he needs a BBB

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    So far just a trip to the farmer's market (paid in advance, I might add!), but I did also get dragged to a touristy market type place on Friday, so she kind of owed me.

    I know! TWO cats, can you believe it?? And she decided the Arduino was better than the banana image

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Nice Avatar ... how much did she charge??

     

    You've managed to include an Arduino and two cats

  • in reply to Former Member

    I think you're right about the hardware/software expertise in the companies making the hardware. It's too bad really, as without the software you can't take full advantage of what the hardware is capable of.

    If I didn't have other things going on I would spend more time digging through it all, but right now all I really have time for is the occasional evening which is barely enough for hobby level stuff where everything works properly image

    I guess that's one of the reasons they give us these boards to try out though, so that we'll help figure things out image

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    have a look at http://www.element14.com/community/thread/32436/l/gpio-ports-on-riot-board and it'll quickly become clear that with the official ubuntu linux image the gpios don't work particularly well either.  Since the android image is based off a very similar 3.0.35 kernel, I wouldn't be surprised if you run into similar issues of the available gpio pins not being setup in a useful way even if you do find a way to access them from within android

     

    Embest/e14 in particular, by way of where they have their roots, are good at hardware. The RIoTboard demonstrates quite clearly that they can produce some really nice boards.

    Unfortunately it also shows that they are not so strong when it comes to the software for the boards.

     

    We have a couple of community people who are reasonably good with the software side, but so far is the only one to show much interest in android. Without the community stepping up to fill the gaps, I suspect we'd be stuck with various things that don't work..  A couple of people working on stuff isn't going to do it, we need more people actively involved to bootstrap a decent community around the board