Prepare your demo board

What the card is telling you

Each demo publishes what it needs, and setup reads it. You will see at most a few lines under Prepare your board, and the review below them still shows everything setting up will do. Preparing is not part of setup — it is something to have ready when the board starts trying.

• A Thread border router and its dataset. The board joins a Thread mesh, not Wi-Fi. See Connect to a Thread network.
• A relay running on your computer. Some boards have no radio at all. They compose and sign each message and print it on the serial port; a small script on your computer copies those lines onto a real socket.
• MicroPython already on the board. Some demos are files, not a firmware image, and publish no runtime to install first.

Running the relay

Download the demo bundle and use the Python relay in its README. Install pyserial, set the script's port to your ST-LINK COM port, and run it after setup releases that port.

The board prints HTTP request lines through ST-LINK. The script sends them over your computer's internet connection.

Close the browser's serial monitor and other terminals before running the relay. Stop the relay before sending setup again.

Installing MicroPython first

Where a demo is a set of .py files, the board has to be running MicroPython before those files mean anything. Install the build for your board from micropython.org, then come back and set the board up. Setup writes only the demo's files in that case, and erases nothing.

Boards with something attached

A matching chip does not prove a matching board. A camera module, a sensor on a particular connector or a specific pin layout are things only you can see, which is why setup asks “Which board is connected?” when more than one demo fits the chip. The demo's own What it needs list on the card is the exact hardware it was proven on.

Coming back to setup

Keep the setup tab open while reading these instructions. Close any terminal or relay using the board's port before continuing.