Building and Flashing Firmware

This section describes how to build and flash the Kegboard firmware on a standard Arduino device.

Install Arduino software

The Arduino project provides a free software development environment for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It includes a basic text editor, avr microcontroller toolchains, and many standard libraries. In short, it is everything you need to program an arduino board.

Download the software from the Arduino Downloads Page. Packages are available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Note

The latest tested version is Arduino 1.0.4

When unzipped you will have a single directory that contains all the arduino software. The name will be something like arduino-1.0.4/ (the version number will be different for previous versions.)

Place this directory somewhere appropriate. For Mac users, you can drag it to your Applications folder.

Compile and flash the firmware

A new Arduino board includes a basic bootloader on internal flash. The board needs to be programmed with the custom Kegboard firmware.

Binary versions of the Kegboard firmware are not provided, so you need to build it yourself. This process isn’t too hard. If you already have the Arduino software installed, and you have a clone of the kegboard repository somewhere, you’re most of the way there

The latest version of the Kegboard firmware is available in the kegboard distribution, under the directory src/kegboard/.

You can also download the entire Kegboard github repository as a zip file: Download Kegboard repository.

The file kegboard.ino is the main source to the firmware. This file is a C source file, using the file extension preferred by the Arduino development tools.

Compile

Open the file kegboard.ino in the Arduino studio application. You should see a listing of the source. You do not need to make any changes to the source.

Next, configure the Arduino environment to match your Arduino. In particular:

• Select the correct board type from menu Tools ‣ Board

• Select the serial port it is attached to from the menu Tools ‣ Serial Port

You now be ready to build the firmware. Select the menu item Sketch ‣ Verify/Compile.

Flash

To install the firmware, should select the menu File ‣ Upload to I/O Board in the Arduino software. The firmware will be uploaded to you device.

Depending on your hardware, it may be necessary to reset the board using the reset pushbutton when starting the upload.

Test pin

To simulate a flow meter, you can connect Pin 12 to either of the two flow meter pins with a short jumper wire. This pin continuously outputs a slow stream of pulses, much like a flow meter would do.