Quick Start Guide

Hardware Resources
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Congratulations on receiving your Blinks Dev Kit!
First things first, let’s make sure you have everything you need. Included in the box should be…

What’s Included

  • 6x Blinks

    • 6x custom PCBs,
    • 6x 3D printed bases
    • 6x 12 polarity aligned magnets
    • 6x CR2032 coin cell batteries
    • 6x battery/magnet security screw
    • 1x Carry Case (magnetic enclosure for carrying 6 Blinks)

  • Programmer

  • Service Port (used for Serial Monitor)

    • 1x Blinks Serial Adapter
    • 1x FTDI board (Red w/ usb on one side and 6 pins on the other)
    • 1x Molex cable (4 black wires)
    • 1x USB mini cable (6”)

If you’re missing one of the components, please reach out to us at info@move38.com!

Next up, you’ll need to make sure you have all the needed software, which you can get below!

Arduino IDE - Download it here
Blinks Library - Download it here*

*If you want to have the latest and contribute to the development of Blinks, here’s our Github Repo

Installing the Blinks Library

After you have installed the Arduino IDE (> 1.8.5) and launched the application, you will notice that Arduino has created a folder in your Documents folder, aptly named, Arduino. Follow these next 5 steps to have the Blinks library installed:

  1. Create a folder called ‘hardware’ inside of the Arduino folder ~/Documents/Arduino/hardware
  2. Download the Blinks Library if you haven’t already done so
  3. Unzip the Blinks Library
  4. Move the Blinks Library into the hardware folder
  5. Restart Arduino (quit and relaunch)

If you click on Tools in your menu bar, and navigate down to Board: you should now see Move38: Blinks Tile at the bottom. Select it.

Now if you go to File/Examples, you should see Examples for Blinks Tiles at the bottom of that list as well. Open the first one up and see if it compiles.

Windows Troubleshooting
No programmer detected?

Check to make sure you have the correct driver installed, relaunch the Ardunio IDE and then you should be able to select USBTinyISP from the Tools > Programmer dropdown in Arduino.

For the extra curious, here is the source code for that driver.

Faster Upload Time

  1. Download this file
  2. Move file to /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/arduino/avr (it will replace the existing file here
  3. Restart Arduino if it was open
  4. Now select the Blinks Programmer when programming and it should be roughly 4x faster upload speeds :zap:

Last but not least, here’s a handy little unboxing video that will walk you through some basics!

You should be good to go! For more robust documentation - including an API Reference Guide, details on hardware functionality and what Blinks are presently capable of - head to https://move38.com/letsdothis!

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Hello. Fyi, the “Faster Upload Time” file is currently (6/27/18) pointing to a non-existent location (i.e. 404 returned).

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Thanks for the quick find on that @kenj. Fixed and updated. The file should be available for download. (The issue was that the url had a typo and the file is actually called “programmers.txt”)

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One thing that confused me slightly when I was having trouble with the programmer:
this page:

says:

but, the the actual selection of programmer in the Arduino app is USBtinyISP – which is what these docs say, but I wasn’t looking at them when I was having the trouble :slight_smile:

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Thanks for pointing this out @eegorebulbous! I’m doing some revisions on the documentation today and will take a look at this!

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@eegorebulbous Thanks! we’ve got it fixed now :+1:

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I see you changed the docs near the top, but I was actually referring to near the bottom where it says:

Cheers :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the clarification. I just updated it.

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So it still looks to me like it says the thing that confused me – it’s in the Windows Troubleshooting section, as quoted below – it says Pocket AVR ISP driver – I was looking for that text in the Arduino Programmer menu, and it isn’t there. At the top of this Quick Start Guide, you mention that the Pocket AVR ISP driver is called the USBTinyISP – I just didn’t read the document carefully, and skipped to the end – I have a tendency to do that with documentation – I’m more hands on than read docs. The link does have a filename of USBTinyISP, but I still looked for the Pocket AVR ISP in the programmer dropdown after installing it.

Cheers :slight_smile:

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I ran into this over the weekend as well. I cleaned up the language here and over on Paper. Hopefully it’s more clear now for future users!

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yep – looks great, should be easy for future users :slight_smile: