Workshop 1 was very interesting and relay good fun today. In the past we have worked with Ardunio's which are small micro-controllers. However today Chris introduced us to the Photon, which basically is a very small Arduino with a built in WiFi shield all for £20.They have 5 anologue pins and 7 digitle pins on them , not as many as an arduino but they do offer a advantage. Ardunios need to be programmed via USB serial. meaning i have to physically have the board and my laptop with me to change its code. With the photon however they get programmed via the internet,so if my photon is in Africa collecting light data i could be in Russia updating the code and then sending it over over to the photon wireless.
There are 3 ways of programming the board. The first is via the app that allows you to connect to any boards linked to your account and then turn on and off digital and analogue pins. Although you cant program anything this way, its handy if you want to run some debugging if you need to see if its a code or hardware fault. |
The second option is with its online code editor https://build.particle.io/build .
Now for me i found that there online editor is a bit buggy and i kept having problems uploading or flashing code as they call it. The online editor is a nice idea as it does not tie you down to 1 machine but the uploading bugs proved at this point in time to be more trouble then they were worth.
Now for me i found that there online editor is a bit buggy and i kept having problems uploading or flashing code as they call it. The online editor is a nice idea as it does not tie you down to 1 machine but the uploading bugs proved at this point in time to be more trouble then they were worth.
The last way is to use there own IDE, which seams at a first look nicely put together. We are able to have multiply project folders on the go at once which is great to get to code quickly. Although i found that it will only upload the top folder and not the file which your clicked on to the board. Which that it self caused problems as by default they have an example folder up. We are able to selected which of out boards we want to send code to and it tells us if there online or offline. like in ardunio we can view the serial ports but if we have more than 1 device plugged in we can which between all the available ports. which is a nice feature to debug more than one device. We can use almost all of the ardunio libraries and the code layout is pretty much the same , even the file types are the same . This makes them easier to learn if you already know ardunio.
Over this workshop i have learnt :
Photon boards are a pain to set up - wifi issues make them a little tricky
Your internet matter's- Eduroam is just terrible and blocks everything next time bring WiFi hotspot
Bargin- considering a WiFi shield is close to £100 for a ardunio and the boards are £20 which is close to £120 for 1 device connected to the net. A photon for £20 which has built in WiFi is worth the money
Over this workshop i have learnt :
Photon boards are a pain to set up - wifi issues make them a little tricky
Your internet matter's- Eduroam is just terrible and blocks everything next time bring WiFi hotspot
Bargin- considering a WiFi shield is close to £100 for a ardunio and the boards are £20 which is close to £120 for 1 device connected to the net. A photon for £20 which has built in WiFi is worth the money