Arduino Yun - Introduction + Controlling GPIO via a web server

My Arduino Yun arrived over the weekend and I was surprised by how small it was compared to my Pi or Galileo. It is roughly the size of a credit card (see below).

Some of the things I really like about this:

• Built in Wifi, micro SD card reader and  Linux OS (Linino)
• Small form factor - ideal for applications that I am interested in like robotics and home automation
• Easy Wifi setup in any new location
• Ability to program sketches over Wifi and use the console terminal wirelessly to see events happening in the sketches.

This is a great guide to get started: http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoYun. I used it to setup WiFi and allow open REST API access.

My first goal was to set up a USB webcam and install motion on my Yun. I achieved this by using the package management to install the necessary driver and packages

opkg install kmod-video-uvc motion

I plugged in my webcam via a USB hub and I was happy to see that it showed up after using dmesg and lsusb.

I started up motion and was able to see that it streams to a Firefox browser seamlessly. Goal #1 accomplished.

Next, I wanted to use a web browser to control GPIO to enable my next project which is a web controlled robot. So I wrote a simple sketch that uses browser buttons to turn the on board LED on and off. The sketch can be downloaded  here.

To get this to work I had to do one step that was not clearly documented anywhere. I had to manually create a soft link in my /www/ folder for sd:

ln -s /mnt/sda1 /www/sd

Another key thing to note here, is that your sketch folder needs to have a www sub folder with the index.html and zepto.min.js file in it. When your sketch is uploaded via WiFi, the contents of the www folder and automatically copied to /www/sd/<sketchname> folder

The REST calls to /arduino are made from the index.html file. To undestand what the REST API is, I would encourage you to read up on it in the getting started URL mentioned above.

If you view the source of the html, you will see this:

<script type="text/javascript">

    function ledon()

   {

       $('#content').load('/arduino/ledon');

   }

   function ledoff()

  {

      $('#content').load('/arduino/ledoff');

  }

</script>

It basically passes the ledon/ledoff commands to the Arduino once the buttons are pressed. The sketch simply looks for this and manipulates the GPIO:

if (command == "ledon") {

       digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

 }

else if (command == "ledoff") {

       digitalWrite(13, LOW);

}

After you have uploaded the sketch over to your Yun, you can use any browser to go to http://your_yun_name.local/sd/webled

You should see these buttons which will allow you to control the on board LED.

Hope this helps others who are trying to attempt something similar.