Abstract: A major pain point of IoT development is: the hardware acquisition and setup path is too long; Development tools cannot support joint development of multiple devices. We use uDevice Center to move development boards/devices online, so that users can do IoT development and debugging online without buying hardware wiring. UDevice Center also supports information-rich multi-device co-development.
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Background IoT learning and development is difficult. For beginners, the way to get started is very long: buy development board from a treasure – > wait for delivery – > receive board – > figure out how to connect – > find a hub to connect a bunch of things to the computer – > install development software to get familiar with the development environment. That’s all you have to do to write the first line of code. Board selection wiring is the need for certain hardware expertise, which will let a lot of students without foundation directly give up.
At the same time, for embedded old birds, the development of IoT has also introduced new difficulties: in the past, it was easy to develop a computer and a board for equipment; Nowadays, IoT intelligent application development requires multiple devices to communicate online, which is not easy to develop. For example, a smart home house dozens of equipment, put on the ground to hang on the wall on the ceiling, how to develop? Most existing development tools do not support simultaneous development on multiple devices. With a computer development, the computer into eight claw fish are not enough, but also need to open more than ten interfaces to cut to cut, low development efficiency. If more computers are used for development, coding time is spent running around instead of focusing on solving problems.
IoT development pain points are: hardware acquisition and setup path is too long; Development tools do not support simultaneous development of multiple devices, nor do they support easy visualization of web application development. We suffer from this problem every day, so we developed uDevice Center – a flexible online multi-device development platform – to make IoT development easier
UDevcie Center The uDevice Center solves the preceding problems in the following ways:
Move IoT devices online and make ECS for IoT: users can do IoT development by installing software without buying boards and wiring; Providing informative multi-device development capabilities: Multi-device Complex Network Development, Made Easy!
Online IoT development platform – ECS for IoT
UDevice Center brings standard IoT development boards/devices online, allowing users to use IoT development boards like ECS servers. Users simply install the software and start programming and debugging with an online development board/device instead of buying a board to connect to. The simplified development path allows programmers to focus their time and energy on the development and debugging of business logic, accelerating the process of IoT learning and development. The benefits of flexible online platforms include:
There is no need to buy connected hardware, and there is no time and region limitation. You can do development wherever you want. You can choose a variety of development board models, which can increase and decrease the number of development boards flexibly. Flexible online platforms can help developers take advantage of common resources (such as whole-house Smart LABS) to start application development validation quickly, lowering the barriers to development and saving costs.
The system architecture of uDevice Center is shown in the figure above, which consists of IoT hardware, uDevice Center Infrastructure, and client AliOS Studio software. IoT hardware devices in the system are modules/development boards/smart devices/laboratories provided by Ali and its partners. UDevice Center Infrastructure platform shields the interface differences of different hardware in firmware burning/debugging/sensing/control in a standardized way, virtualizes these IoT hardware resources in a unified way, and then provides them to the vast number of developers over the network. The client AliOS Studio software provides a user-friendly interface to use uDevice Center Infrastructure services.
In addition, uDevice Center is an open platform that can provide supporting software for manufacturers who want to access the platform, helping manufacturers quickly access devices (chips/modules, etc.) to the platform and promote the use of developers.
Multi-equipment joint development
UDevice Center is deeply integrated with AliOS Studio IDE to provide IoT developers with information-rich multi-device co-development capabilities. The user interface of uDevice Center is as follows: the middle window shows the connected devices, where each dot is an actual IoT device. The suspension window on point ’07d ‘C’ displays the status information of the equipment in real time. The lines between points show the mesh network connection. The window on the right is the Shell interface of device ‘1D1C’.
The uDevice Center provides users with the following functions:
Multi-device code development/compilation/firmware burning Multi-device shell command line interactive debugging and device control Various state information of real-time display devices graphical display device (uMesh) connection networking This information-rich multi-device joint development and debugging can speed up the development and debugging of intelligent applications of the Internet of things.
Software Installation Procedure
Next we will explain the software to be installed using uDevice Center:
downloadVisual Studio CodeAnd install
To install the Alios-Studio plug-in: Launch Visual Studio Code and follow the steps below to install it
Linux OSX Windows (Optional) uDevice Center
The uDevice Center can be used in a flexible way, either as a standalone debugging tool for multi-device development or as a component of the AliOS Thing integrated development environment. Devices on the uDevice Center platform are allocated with Access keys. Please contact the AliOS Things team to obtain Access keys before using them (Email: [email protected] or scan to join the pins at the end of the article).
Currently supported development board models:
Esp32-devkitc (Wifi+Bluetooth) Kengke-MK3060 (Wifi) Kengke-EML3047 (LoRA) STM-Cortex M0, M3, M4, M7 seriesCopy the codeGet development board resources
Devices on the uDevice Center are allocated with Access keys. Before using the keys, contact the AliOS Things team (Email: [email protected]) to obtain Access keys. Please include the following information:
Personal Information: Name Contact Information Company name (optional) Board resource Requirements: Model, quantity, and usage duration
Used as a separate development debugging tool
UDevice Center can be used as a separate debugging tool in the development process. In this process, users can use other tools to edit and compile the code, and then use the resulting firmware as input to the uDevice Center to develop and debug the device. The procedure for using uDevice Center alone is as follows: Use other tools to edit code, compile and generate
The following takes qingke MK3060 development board as an example to introduce the development and debugging process using uDevice Center alone: Step 1. Use other tools to edit the code and compile to produce a burnable. Bin firmware
Step 2. Start the uDevice Center and enter your Access Key
Step 3. Familiarize yourself with uDevice Center
Step 4. Burn the firmware
Right click on an idle MXCHIP3060 development board and select “Program” to burn the firmware generated by Step 1 to the development board. Note: please check the model of the board, if the firmware is burned to the wrong model, the board will not start
Step 5. Shell interactive debugging
Right-click the MXCHIP3060 development board burned by Step 4 and choose “Shell” to interact with the development board on the command line
Used as an integrated development tool component for AliOS Things
The typical process for using uDevice Center as part of the AliOS Things integrated development tool is to set up an AliOS Things project – > edit and compile source code – > burn/debug the device through uDevice Center
The following uses qingke MK3060 development board as an example to introduce the development and debugging process using uDevice Center:
Step 1. Create a new project, edit and compile the code
Step 2. Start the uDevice Center. Repeat the preceding steps
Step 3. Burn the firmware
Right click on an idle MXCHIP3060 development board and select “Program Last Build” to burn the compiled firmware to the development board. Note: please check the model of the board, if the firmware is burned to the wrong model, the board will not start
Step 4. Interactive Shell debugging: Perform the same steps as above
Function points to be improved
Support GDB code level debugging support richer device status display rich hardware control functions
conclusion
UDevice Center is an online IoT multi-device development and debugging platform that enables developers to quickly and efficiently develop, debug, and test integrated IoT cloud applications. Through online hardware and virtualization, more novice developers can learn IoT development quickly and more experienced developers can develop and debug IoT applications quickly and efficiently.
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