The Illuminato X Machina on Linux: Up & Running

Last Saturday Chris and I got the Illuminato X Machina IDE (pre-build binaries here, source code here) working on Gentoo Linux. Most users can just install the IDE and start hacking, but if you don't see a device in the IDE menu and your terminal board is powered up, here are some detailed instructions for setting up Linux properly.

Kernel Modules & Devices

The IXM Red Terminal Programmer is a usb-serial device. On my 2.6.28 kernel, the programmer will show up at /dev/ttyUSB0 (or 1, 2, etc.). This device is provided by the usbserial driver in the kernel. You can check for the module easily:

$ sudo modprobe -l|grep -i usb\/serial
/lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r10/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/usbserial.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r10/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.ko
$

Your distro may have the module built into the kernel instead (that's why you should just try the IDE first). If you need to build the module, you can configure your kernel as follows:

• Check off: Device Drivers > USB Support
• As module: Device Drivers > USB Support > USB Serial Converter support
• Check off: Device Drivers > USB Support > USB Serial Converter support > USB Generic Serial Driver
• As module: Device Drivers > USB Support > USB Serial Converter support > USB FTDI Single Port Serial Driver

After building the module, simply sudo modprobe ftdi_sio. You can check to see if the module is loaded with sudo lsmod. Modern Linux distros use udev, which means the device node should be created when you plug a terminal board in. If not you can look at the kernel documentation for usbserial for more information about device nodes.

That's it!

Pictures from my Aardvark!

Now I'm not much of a circles guy, I'm more into pictures and interaction so the past couple of days, I've been working on making images for the IDE...give me a touch screen with images and I'm happy. I sat down and figured out ways of making images easier to get on to the touchshield. Oh and it's on my mac too....

Now Windows users aren't the only ones that can take advantage of the new Open Gadget format; Mac users can go and download it over at the app store and run them in the Arduino Antipasto Aardvark IDE now as well! If you haven't toyed around with the Aardvark yet, the open gadget format is the new file format that allows you to keep the code for the modules in your gadget separate. You can now program an Illuminato and a Slide from one window and just switch between them.

The Aardvark also has drag and drop file transfer; anyone can add files easily to their Slide apps by simply dragging and dropping files on to the data tab of the module that their currently working on, then just click transfer and look at your images in all of their pixilated glory!

I'm sharing it over on the app store so anyone can check it out. [Mac] [Windows]