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Galago is an embedded hardware development platform designed to dramatically improve your electronics experience, whether you are building a project as a hobbyist, teaching (or studying) embedded development or designing products as a professional.
By combining an inexpensive, sophisticated ARM microcontroller board with a simple and powerful software development tool, Galago packs unparalleled capabilities in a pocket-sized package.
To get started with the Logiblock IDE, please see the Getting Started Guide.
Galago is outwardly similar to other hobbyist-friendly prototyping platforms such as Arduino, Teensy and mbed. However, unlike these other boards, Galago features a built-in hardware debugger and powerful - yet simple - software designed to enhance your development experience and help you get the most from the platform.
When you combine a tiny, fast and flexible ARM Cortex-M3-powered development board with an integrated hardware debugger, amazing things happen. You will develop projects faster and more accurately than other boards and can attain a level of project sophistication only possible with a full, source-level debugger built into every device. Stop guessing why your code doesn't work, and start making things better!
The most important part of hardware development is your interface to it, because great power is nothing without control. The Logiblock IDE, built for Galago, gives you that control. It features a full GNU gdb debugger under the hood with a simple, elegant interface that requires no learning process to get started.
Eager to get started? Take a look at the Getting Started Guide.
...and why do I need it?
A debugger lets you stop your code as it's running, look at the state of variables, make changes, and continue again. It's like the ability to take apart a machine or look at its insides while it's operating, or like a CT scan for software.
Fundamentally, developing software (and not just for hardware devices) requires three vital tools: a source editor, a compiler and a debugger. Theoretically, with just a source editor you could write code. You could not, however, build it, download it to a device or prove that it works. With a compiler, you can run software and observe the output. But when it doesn't work, what do you do? Make your best guess? Change or disable parts of the code? Burden the source with print statements? The answer, of course, is the debugger.
A debugger is software (and often a hardware interface) that gives you run- and stop-control of your program and allows you to inspect and modify its variables, memory and registers. Moreover, you can set breakpoints on lines of code which trap and pause the program when it reaches that line. This gives you the crucial ability to figure out when and why a section of code is being run, what caused it and why it's not working as designed.
Now that you know what Galago is and why debugging is important, take a look at our getting started guide.