Nordic NRF51 & NRF52 FruityMesh Ubuntu development VM provisioned with Vagrant, VirtualBox and Parallels
Running this Ansible script in conjunction with Vagrant will set up a VM that contains all you need for NRF51 and NRF52 programming using the FruityMesh BLE framework. It also sets up a development environment for targeting Raspberry Pi using a cross-compiler toolchain. Please see below.
Mac OS X users that want to develop from their Mac natively - please see here.
- Clone this repo
- Customise Vagrant file, /etc/hosts and ssh keys
- Run Vagrant up
- ssh to vm
- Start developing
- Install VirtualBox from here.
- Install Vagrant from here.
- Install Ansible from here.
- If you are using Parallels, download it from here.
- And install the Vagrant-Parallels plugin from here.
git clone git@github.com:ihassin/fruitymesh-ubuntu-vm.git
or
git clone https://github.com/ihassin/fruitymesh-ubuntu-vm.git
The infrastructure as code for these VMs is in the infra sub-directory, so:
cd infra
cp Vagrantfile.vb Vagrantfile
cp inventory.ini.vb inventory.ini
Vagrantfile assumes a base box named 'ubuntu/trusty64'.
cp Vagrantfile.pvm Vagrantfile
cp inventory.ini.pvm inventory.ini
Vagrantfile assumes a base box named 'parallels/ubuntu-14.04'.
If you want to change the VM's IP address, or networking in general, please edit Vagrantfile to suite your needs.
The inventory file is set to load a DNS entry named 'fruity-vb' (for VirtualBox) and/or 'fruity-pvm' (For Parallels) . Make sure your /etc/hosts contains an entry for it. As an example:
33.33.33.55 fruity-vb # VirtualBox version
(Parallels will give you its box's IP as it's loading)
The IP must match the entry in the Virtualox Vagrantfile:
fruity.vm.network "private_network", ip: "33.33.33.55" # VirtualBox version
You can place your public key in infra/roles/common/templates/ita.pub. The keys there will be added to the 'deploy' user that the script creates. Placing your public key there will allow you to connect using ssh without the need to log in manually.
vagrant plugin install vagrant-parallels
# or
vagrant plugin install virtualbox
By default, the script will install Nordic SDK V11. If you want to use another version, please edit the following file: infra/roles/fruity/tasks/main.yml, comment out the V11 lines, and uncomment the lines for the SDK you want to use.
You can then bring up the box for configuring by issuing the following command:
cd infra
vagrant up --provider virtualbox
# or
vagrant up --provider parallels
It will take about 15 minutes when it installs for the first time.
Once you have done that, you can ssh deploy@fruity-pvm or ssh deploy@fruity-vb. At this time, deploy will not have a password. Change that quickly once you're on the VM!
If you want to access the VM using your own ssh key, insert your public key in common/files/ssh_keys.pub, or copy it in manually to ~deploy/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you copy it manually, it will be lost the next time you rebuild the VM, so do it once and for all in the Ansible script.
Please be aware that the deploy user has a blank password. Set one up:
passwd
Once the Ansible script finishes running, log on to the VM as the deploy user
ssh deploy@fruity-vb # or deploy@fruity-pvm
and attempt to build the FruityMesh image for the NRF51 by issuing:
cd nrf/projects/fruitymesh
make clean
make
And the flash the device with the resulting image built in _build/FruityMesh.hex using JLink. JLink can be found in ~/nrf/tools.
It's hard to get proper USB support for VirtualBox images, so a quick and dirty way is to copy the resulting hex file to the shared directory on your host machine. Do this by copying to /vagrant
Plug in the device while the Parallels UI is foremost, and it will ask you where to attach the USB port to. Select the VM and you'll have access to run JLink.
Vagrant has an implicit file share with the host at /vagrant (on the VM).
Andy McWilliams says: To save people running VirtualBox having to copy files around, we can do the below as su. The added benefit is that now you can use whatever text editor you like on your host machine. The VM becomes a tool just for compiling.
mv /home/deploy/nrf/projects/ /vagrant/
ln -s /vagrant/projects/ /home/deploy/nrf/projects
Some ServerSpec tests accompany this VM, just for fun. Execute them using:
rake
Run cucumber and see this run:
Feature: As a ninja developer
I want to have a FruityMesh development environment ready
So that I can write the next mesh killer-app
Scenario Outline: Having a VirtualBox Ubuntu VM to develop FruityMesh apps
Given I use <provider> to create a vm at <host>
When log on as "deploy"
Then I can build the "fruitymesh" image
And I see the result
Examples:
| provider | host |
| "VirtualBox" | "fruity-vb" |
| "Parallels" | "fruity-pvm" |
This VM comes with Minicom to allow you to communicate with the device over serial port. Establish communication using:
sudo minicom --device /dev/ttyACM0 --b 38400
This VM comes with screen to allow you to communicate with the device over serial port. Establish communication using:
sudo screen /dev/ttyACM0 38400
Check out my modified ping example that programs an RGB LED using GPIO pins to show signal strength status of connected devices on the mesh.
The Ansible script includes a role named 'pi' that sets up a cross compiler for the Raspberry Pi on the virtual machine. For it to have effect out of the box, please modify infra/roles/pi/vars/main.yml to have your Pi's user-name, IP and home directory for the demo project:
pi_user: pi
pi_ip: 192.168.1.10
pi_project: raspberrypi
It will place a file named 'hello-world.sh' in /home/deploy/<pi_project> that when run, will build and copy the binary to <pi_user>@<pi_ip>.
In order for that to work, you will need to copy the deploy's public key to the pi by issuing:
ssh-copy-id <pi_user>@<pi_ip>
Once that is set up, please run:
./hello-world.sh
You should see the program compile and then run (on the Pi). Happy hacking!
- Fork it (https://github.com/ihassin/fruity-ubuntu-vm/fork)
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature) - Create a new Pull Request
Our code of conduct is here.
MIT except where FruityMesh or Nordic Semiconductors licenses apply.