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

Understanding IDE integration

Having a properly set up IDE is truly a blessing as we benefit from its features of code completion, functional linting, and so on. This way, we do not have to investigate the source code or documentation for every function we want to call.

In this section, we will look at the process of integrating TinyGo into VS Code, Goland, and other editors. This enables us to choose whatever editor we prefer to use.

VS Code integration

VS Code offers an extension system, which makes it easy to integrate the Go and TinyGo toolset into the IDE. We are going to install the Go Extension, which offers support for the Go programming language. Afterward, we are going to install the TinyGo extension, which brings TinyGo support.

The Go extension

We install the Go extension using the Extensions view using the following steps:

  1. Open the Extensions view either by clicking on the Extensions icon or pressing Ctrl + Shift + X.
  2. Search for Go.
  3. Select...