Programming the Intel Edison:

Beyond the Arduino IDE

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Introduction
The majority of content in the wild for the Intel Edison seems to be focused on using the
Edison while it is attached to the Arduino-compatible development board. With the release
of the SparkFun Block line for the Edison, it becomes practical to use far less hardware to
access the resources of the Edison.

This tutorial will show you how to write C++ code for the Edison without using the Arduino
IDE or making the assumption that the Edison is mounted to an Arduino development
board.

Components Used
Were going to do this fairly minimally; were going to demonstrate the Edisons most basic
functionality without involving any fancy hardware. Youll find more examples involving
hardware in tutorials for individual blocks.

Intel Edison Starter Pack - Youll need the Console Block at a minimum to get your
Edison onto your local WiFi network.

Intel Edison Base Block (optional) - You may find that the latency of your WiFi
network is unacceptable; in that case, you can connect to the OTG port on the Base
Block to access the Edison via a USB RNDIS network interface. This is a highly

recommended upgrade, however, as it will allow you to upgrade the flash image on
the Edison to the latest version.

Edison Hardware Kit - One will be enough to make the Edison/Console/GPIO stack.

Recommended Reading
Writing code for the Edison without using the Arduino IDE is an advanced topic; were going
to assume that youre conversant in at least basic Linux command line syntax and C++
syntax.

Getting Started with the Edison - Getting the Edison powered up, connected to your
network, and getting to the command line. Also updating the firmware, which is
recommended before proceeding but not mandatory.

General Edison Block Guide - Just what it says. This will give you some help
understanding how to put the stack together and avoid inter-block conflicts.

Console Block Hookup Guide - More information on the Console Block.

Toolchain: Eclipse
There are two approaches to writing C++ code on the Edison: Using the Eclipse IDE that
Intel provides or going barebones using GCC and a command line directly on the Edison.

Using the Eclipse Environment

Intel has produced guides for installing the Eclipse IDE for Macintosh, Linux, and Windows.
Once youve installed it and launched it, come back here and well walk through connecting
the Edison to the IDE and loading an example program. The instructions there are
incomplete and without additional work, you wont be able to run programs on the
Edison.

Connecting to the Edison

In order to connect to the Edison, you need to have some sort of open TCP/IP channel to it.
This can be either through the USB-OTG port on the Edison or over your local WiFi
network. Youll need to know what the IP address of the Edison is; you can find more
information on that on the Edison Getting Started tutorial.
Once youve discovered the IP address of the Edison in question, heres how to connect:

As in the picture above, click on the Remote System Explorer button in the upper right
corner.

The IDE window should look like this. On the left side, theres a frame called Remote
Systems with two entries: Local and galileo. Delete the galileo entry (just click on it and
hit the delete key).

Now well create a new entry. Click on the Define a connection to a remote system button.

Choose SSH Only, and click next.

Enter the information for your device, as seen above as well. Click Finish (not Next). The
window will close, and a new item will appear in the list.

Select the Edison connection you just created, you should see a list of options in the lower
left that should look mostly like the above. In the Default user name field, you can put in
root; otherwise, itll ask for a user name when you connect and use that for future
connections.

Use the Connect option in the contextual menu (right click on PC and Linux, CMD click on
Mac). That will bring up this window

Make sure the IP address here looks right, then put in your password (if you have one). If
youve never logged into your Edison and set it up, the default can be made root and the
password can be left blank.
Check and make sure that the properties window in the lower left says Some subsystems
connected under connection status. You may need to click the Refresh information of
selected system button, at the top, before that will show up.
Youre now ready to write and run some code with the Eclipse IDE!