Ha! You found it! We're stoked for these one of a kind BoilerMake Badges, and can't wait to see what all the hackers here at BoilerMake end up doing with them.
We put a lot of work into these, so we kinda have to brag a little... here's some quick facts you might find interesting.
- The badge is an Arduino Dev Kit. You can use the super easy to use Arduino software to program them from a PC, Mac, or Linux based machine.
- These badges were designed entirely by Purdue students Thomas Kilbride and Lior Ben-Yehoshua. Scott Opell and Viraj Sina both contributed significantly to the default code that was running on your badges when you first walked in here.
- We maxed out the capacity of the world's 3rd largest PCB manufacturer for two days to make these boards. We're talking Foxconn level stuff here, guys. - We've open sourced the firmware source code, so feel free to hack/design/build away to your heart's content.
Ok, now onto business, we've come up with a little documentation and tutorial to get you hacking on our badge as soon as possible!
- Windows, Mac, or Linux PC (sorry no Solaris support...)
- Micro USB cable
- Arduino IDE
Each BoilerMake badge is equipped with a small nRF24L01 radio which allows it to send and receive messages from other badges. Here's how to do that:
- After installing the Arduino IDE, plug in the board to your computer via micro USB cable.
- All lights around the board should light up. If this not's the case, unplug and plug the board back in again.
- Download this GitHub repo here as a .zip file.
- Open the Arduino IDE and go to sketch -> import library -> add library -> find the rf24-master.zip and select it.
- Copy and Paste the code found here into your new Arduino sketch.
- Go to Tools -> Board and select Arduino Leonardo.
- Hold the button on the badge down
- Press the upload button (the arrow) in the Arduino IDE. When the IDE says "Uploading..." release this button.
- Press Ctrl + Shift + m to open the Arduino console.
- Change "No ending" to "Carriage Return" at the bottom of the console.
- Your board's ID will appear at the top, you might want to take note of this as other boards will be able to communicate to you using this ID.
- Type "help" for a list of commands.
- Type "send -l <1, 2, 3, or 4>" to send a pattern to another board.
- Hack!
If you want to write your own firmware for the device, feel free. You can get and edit the default .cpp file that's been loaded on there here.