Air Quality Egg -- Part 3

For this part we're going to open up the Arduino IDE, take a look at the settings, open up the Base Station code and update the Base Station Egg.

Open your Arduino IDE and choose the appropriate file:

Using the IDE to update an Arduino is well documented. When you open the .ino file the IDE will open all the of the project files. You do need to set the Arduino as "Arduino Uno". The link in the previous post covers how to do all that but basically you'll need to choose the board you want:

Now that we're to this point it's time to check some things. First, let's compile the Egg Base Station code (AQEBase.ino project). There's a checkmark that verifies the code.

After you click this wait for a bit while the code is compiled. Then check the results. Unless something is terribly wrong you'll see:

Now that that's done go ahead and upload the sketch (what Arduino calls it's projects) to your Egg Base Station. Just click the arrow.

You'll see the progress in the bottom of the window.

And if your device is actually connected on the correct COM port you'll see success!

My experience has been that if you check the serial ports listed under Tools > Serial Ports you'll see the correct port listed. If you have more than one FTDI or COM device you may need to unplug the others to find out which is your Egg.

To do the Remote Station Egg you'll have to take the sensor board off. With all pin-and-header boards be careful. Slowly and gently rock the board ever so slightly while pulling up.

Also I should of told you this before but you don't have to have your Egg plugged into AC power when you have the FTDI cable plugged in. The Egg will pull power from USB. I know at least one other person realized that the power adapter is removed when you take the shield off of the Remote Station Egg. That's OK.

To update the Remote Station do the same stuff we did above only using the AQERemote.ino project sketch.

Next I'm going to lay out a bit of a project plan for what I'm doing with my Eggs. We'll connect the Egg data to your own Xively account and start by writing some Python code to pull that data for your own use. After that the project gets a bit more ambitious but should be fun.


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