My "live" blog about getting Galago up and running

My goal tonight it to get the Galago up and running with the Logiblock IDE.  I expect it to be a little rough around the edges, as development isn't complete, but there's only one way to find out!  I'm going to approach this post like a "live blog".  Obviously, this isn't a live stream, nor will I timestamp everything... instead I'm just going to enter everything I do, along with any errors or results that I observe.  At the end of the post, hopefully I'll be able to see blinking LEDs!

First, here's a pic of the Galago + ledboard:

• Went to https://github.com/OutbreakInc/Galago/wiki/Getting-started-guide
• Downloaded node-webkit for win32
• Just in case, I right-clicked on the zip -> selected Properies -> clicked Unblock so that the included EXE and DLLs would also be unblocked by Windows.
• Extracted to d:\galago\node-webkit
• Downloaded the Logiblock IDE launcher and left in my downloads folder
• Downloaded node.js and installed it
• Downloaded the Logiblock platform
• Extracted the files with 7-zip to d:\galago\logiblock-platform
• Downloaded the Galago USB drivers
• Extracted to d:\galago\usbdrivers
• NOTE: right-clicking Galago.inf and selecting "Install" does not work on Windows 7 x64.  You have to run installer_x64.exe instead (or so I think... haven't tested it yet!)
• opened command prompt
• mkdir d:\galago\projects\test
• cd d:\galago\projects\test
• node d:\galago\logiblock-platform\bin\sdk.js --init
• Sure enough, just like in Kuy's video it downloaded a bunch of stuff and I ended up with this screen:

•   I think it's time to connect the board!  Plugged it in, and... didn't work.

• So I went to the Windows Device Manager and installed it there -- just right click on Galago, select Update Driver, then point Windows to the folder.  In my case, I just specified d:\galago since it will search subfolders by default.
• Success!  Now Galago is recognized by my OS.
• The wiki then says "to build and then download firmware to a connected Galago, pass the --install argument".  I found it strange that it didn't say which project to install, but ok.
• That didn't work, it said "Could not open module JSON file".  I assume I was supposed to pass the project path?
• Ah HA!  Ok, yes, the correct command for my project "test" was node ..\logiblock-platform\bin\sdk.js --install test
• Oh, actually, I just realized that I was supposed to send the command from the project folder itself!  My bad.
• Ok, so I didn't know what to do next.  I forgot to pass the --debug switch, and ended up with a blank screen.  I typed ctrl-z and enter to try to exit, but it didn't bring me back to the command prompt.  Gonna try again now with a new command prompt... no love, didn't work.  Here's my screen:

•  For some reason, I'm not getting a (gdb) prompt at all.  I checked the project folder that was generated with the --init switch, and the main.cpp looks legit to me.

Well, that's it for now!  I feel like I'm pretty close to getting this board running, but I'll have to ask for a little help first.

Another potential Arduino-killer on the block

Though a bit delayed, the Galago project I backed on Kickstarter last year finally started shipping, and I received my boards yesterday.  I am really excited to start playing with them, and soldered up the ethernet and led app boards today at work.  Check them out!

Arduino is great because of the solid user base.  Arduino sucks because of the "development environment" that makes debugging really just an exercise in patience as you pepper print statements throughout your code.  Galago aims to improve things by offering hardware debugging.  Once I get the tools in place, it will be interesting to see how it compares to other platforms that support debugging like Launchpad, Netduino, and the various PIC micros.