Setting it up
Hello! Welcome to this little tutorial on how to modify your own Ringo and how to create your own versions of the firmware!
In this tutorial, you won't learn how to actually program, but how to set up the whole firmware for editing and compiling after you made your edits.
If you already have some experience in coding and compiling in different IDEs, you shouldn't have any problems. However, if you're still familiar with the language and never compiled your own firmware, don't worry, we'll guide you through this tutorial.
On the other hand, if you don't have any C/C++ experience, it's best for you not to go on with this tutorial and try to first learn the language.
All good? Okay, let's start!
All good? Okay, let's start!
IDE
The IDE or integrated development environment is a piece of software that is used to write, edit, modify, and compile your code in order to run it either via your computer or some other device.
In this tutorial, we're going to use Visual Studio Code or simply VS Code, a very popular IDE by Microsoft, which is used by developers at CircuitMess.
In this tutorial, we're going to use Visual Studio Code or simply VS Code, a very popular IDE by Microsoft, which is used by developers at CircuitMess.
It is really light and easy to use, whilst offering wide support of additional plugins that can be used if necessary. It is a "younger brother" of another very popular IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio.
VS Code logo
You can go to the VS Code official page to download and install the software.
There are versions available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and the installation itself is pretty straightforward.
There are versions available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and the installation itself is pretty straightforward.
Once installed, you should get something like this.
VS Code main screen
Before starting the development, there are a few plugins you need to install.
Click on the Extensions icon and type in 'platformio'. Select the first result PlatformIO IDE.
This one is used to connect your firmware to the specific hardware used by your device.
The installation should be quick and the files itself shouldn't take up too much space.
You can see a change in your VS Code.
Once that's done you'll get a new icon on the left-hand sidebar.
That should mean that the installation has been completed.
Now that this part is done, our IDE is ready.
We can move on to downloading the code and creating the project in which we'll modify the firmware.