Book Image

Creative DIY Microcontroller Projects with TinyGo and WebAssembly

By : Tobias Theel
Book Image

Creative DIY Microcontroller Projects with TinyGo and WebAssembly

By: Tobias Theel

Overview of this book

While often considered a fast and compact programming language, Go usually creates large executables that are difficult to run on low-memory or low-powered devices such as microcontrollers or IoT. TinyGo is a new compiler that allows developers to compile their programs for such low-powered devices. As TinyGo supports all the standard features of the Go programming language, you won't have to tweak the code to fit on the microcontroller. This book is a hands-on guide packed full of interesting DIY projects that will show you how to build embedded applications. You will learn how to program sensors and work with microcontrollers such as Arduino UNO and Arduino Nano IoT 33. The chapters that follow will show you how to develop multiple real-world embedded projects using a variety of popular devices such as LEDs, 7-segment displays, and timers. Next, you will progress to build interactive prototypes such as a traffic lights system, touchless hand wash timer, and more. As you advance, you'll create an IoT prototype of a weather alert system and display those alerts on the TinyGo WASM dashboard. Finally, you will build a home automation project that displays stats on the TinyGo WASM dashboard. By the end of this microcontroller book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to build real-world embedded projects using the power of TinyGo.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
10
Afterword

Setting up TinyGo

The easiest way to install TinyGo and all its dependencies is to follow the Quick Start Guides for Linux, macOS, Windows, and Docker at the following link: https://tinygo.org/getting-started/.

As these guides cover important parts, I will only cover the Quick Start part for x64-based architectures and only for Debian-based operating systems such as Ubuntu for Linux.

The first thing to do before we start the setup is to check the latest version of TinyGo. To do so, go to https://github.com/tinygo-org/tinygo/releases and check for the newest release. Now, keep this information written down somewhere or memorize it as we'll be using it later.

Installing on Linux

The following steps cover installing TinyGo on a Linux derivate, which is based on Debian:

  1. We use the following command to download the deb package from GitHub and install it using dpkg:
    wget https://github.com/tinygo-org/tinygo/releases/download/v0.15.0/tinygo_0.15.0_amd64.deb
    sudo dpkg...