Book Image

Intel Galileo Networking Cookbook

By : Marco Schwartz
Book Image

Intel Galileo Networking Cookbook

By: Marco Schwartz

Overview of this book

Arduino is an electronic prototyping platform used by millions of people around the world. Intel Galileo is fully Arduino compatible; hence it combines the high performance of Intel with the simplicity of Arduino Software Development Environment. This makes it the ideal platform to build exciting projects, especially in the field of web-based connected applications and the Internet of Things. The book features several recipes all based on the Intel Galileo board, and that exploit the powerful features of the board. Each chapter explores a given field using the Galileo board. The book is mainly divided in three parts. The first part is all about learning the basics of the Intel Galileo board, but it uses some of the powerful features of the board such as connecting external sensors and complex hardware devices, compared with more basic Arduino boards. Then, the book dives into the topics related to networking and the Internet of Things. You will learn how to run a web server on the board and log data using a cloud-based service. Finally, the book ends with a chapter that aims to build a complete home automation hub using the Galileo board. This chapter uses everything that was learned in the book to make a home automation system using the Galileo board and Arduino.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)
9
Index

Using the IoT Linux image

Using the simple Linux image that we described in the previous recipe is great, but it can be quite difficult to use. You need to manually login to your board, and then use command lines to install new modules and run your applications. For example, you would have to use terminal software (such as PuTTY) to access the board.

Luckily for us, Intel has come up with a whole suite of software to allow you to code your application directly with a graphical interface, without typing a single line of code into a terminal. In this recipe, we are going to see how to install this software suite.

Getting ready

This software suite comes in two parts— a new image, called the IoT image, that you need to install on the SD card, and also some software called (Cross-Platform Development Kit) XDK that needs to be installed on your computer.

The first step is to download this IoT image from the Intel website:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/downloads

This is the page you will see when going to this web address:

Getting ready

Download the image from the web page. Then, go to the following address to download the Intel XDK software:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/xdk-iot

You will be redirected to the page where you can download the Intel XDK software for your operating system:

Getting ready

How to do it...

Installing the Intel IoT image is a bit more complex than it is with the simple Linux image. It varies depending on your operating system. Luckily for us, Intel has written guides to help install this image, depending on your operating system:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/downloads

Simply follow the corresponding guide before continuing this recipe.

Installing the Intel XDK software is actually much easier. You simply need to execute the installer and just let yourself be guided by the instructions. When you first launch the software, you will be asked to create an account on the Intel website.

This is what the software looks like:

How to do it...

Congratulations, you are now completely ready to use the Intel IoT development suite on your computer!

How it works...

The Intel IoT image and Intel XDK work together to make development on your Galileo board much simpler. XDK is able to locate your Galileo board automatically on your network, develop applications in Node.js inside the software, and then automatically upload and run these applications on your Galileo board!

There's more...

You will see that the Intel XDK software offers much more than what we are going to use in this book. You can actually develop mobile applications that work on your phone and communicate directly with your Galileo board, right from Intel XDK!

You have other options to program your board at this point. The first option is to use Eclipse, which also lets you program the board, but by using C/C++ instead of Node.js. The next option is to use the special version of the Arduino IDE for the Galileo board, which lets you program the board with the well-known Arduino language.

See also

Using this recipe will allow you to make nearly all the recipes in the subsequent chapters of this book. Look at the remaining recipes in this chapter to see how to access your board once the IoT image is installed.