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tinyos / tinyos-main

Main development repository for TinyOS (an OS for embedded, wireless devices).
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Modernize TinyOS Web site #286

Open atzounis opened 10 years ago

atzounis commented 10 years ago

Hello everybody, After a discussion I had with Mr Andras Biro though the [Tinyos-help] list, I was encouraged to post my intention to help with building a new web site and forum for TinyOS whenever the leaders of the community decide to renew it. In the spirit of making it easier and friendlier for someone to start with TinyOS. People wiling to create easy step-by-step tutorials similar to the ones at: http://www.eetutorials.com/articles/articles.category.php?type=c&id=29 organize and populate driver/utility repositories, eclipse plugins etc, are also very welcome. In my humble opinion it would be nice for an entry-level user to be able to find how to run his first Blink app in a few steps without being a Linux-guru. If this approach is not the main concept, or is far from the mission of TinyOS, please excuse me for wasting your time. Best regards, Antonis

phil-levis commented 10 years ago

This sounds like a great idea to me - I am going to start working on the repository and such next week, once I have given my final exams.

Phil [sent from a phone]

On Jun 3, 2014, at 6:28, atzounis notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello everybody, After a discussion I had with Mr Andras Biro though the [Tinyos-help] list, I was encouraged to post my intention to help with building a new web site and forum for TinyOS whenever the leaders of the community decide to renew it. In the spirit of making it easier and friendlier for someone to start with TinyOS. People wiling to create easy step-by-step tutorials similar to the ones at: http://www.eetutorials.com/articles/articles.category.php?type=c&id=29 organize and populate driver/utility repositories, eclipse plugins etc, are also very welcome. In my humble opinion it would be nice for an entry-level user to be able to find how to run his first Blink app in a few steps without being a Linux-guru. If this approach is not the main concept, or is far from the mission of TinyOS, please excuse me for wasting your time. Best regards, Antonis

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

andrasbiro commented 10 years ago

As the opening comment says, I'm also supporting this idea.

ppannuto commented 10 years ago

Is this substantively different from: http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos-wiki/index.php/TinyOS_Tutorials or would we be better served trying to just improve those (and maybe make them more prominent? e.g. a link from the main repo readme?)

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:01 AM, András Bíró notifications@github.com wrote:

As the opening comment says, I'm also supporting this idea.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-44967820.

cire831 commented 10 years ago

I think we would want to take what we currently have and fix it. It has bit rotted over the years and could use a good clean up.

Starting from scratch seems like a lot of work.

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Pat Pannuto notifications@github.com wrote:

Is this substantively different from: http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos-wiki/index.php/TinyOS_Tutorials or would we be better served trying to just improve those (and maybe make them more prominent? e.g. a link from the main repo readme?)

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:01 AM, András Bíró notifications@github.com wrote:

As the opening comment says, I'm also supporting this idea.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-44967820.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45007498.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher

atzounis commented 10 years ago

Sure, Nobody said starting from scratch. There s a huge load of footage to be used. 

-------- Αρχικό μήνυμα -------- Από: Eric Decker notifications@github.com Ημερομηνία: 04/06/2014 7:06 (GMT+02:00) Προς: tinyos/tinyos-main tinyos-main@noreply.github.com Κοιν.: atzounis atzounis@gmail.com Θέμα: Re: [tinyos-main] TinyOS Web site (#286)

I think we would want to take what we currently have and fix it. It has bit rotted over the years and could use a good clean up.

Starting from scratch seems like a lot of work.

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Pat Pannuto notifications@github.com wrote:

Is this substantively different from: http://tinyos.stanford.edu/tinyos-wiki/index.php/TinyOS_Tutorials or would we be better served trying to just improve those (and maybe make them more prominent? e.g. a link from the main repo readme?)

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:01 AM, András Bíró notifications@github.com wrote:

As the opening comment says, I'm also supporting this idea.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-44967820.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45007498.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

phil-levis commented 10 years ago

I think it would be good to have a high-level plan: what are the major things we think need to change? From my perspective, the very steep learning curve is the biggest issue. The tutorials jump in pretty fast, and from the perspective that you want to get up to speed with heavy systems work. I think having some tutorials that are more application-focused (and simpler!) early on would be good.

cire831 commented 10 years ago

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Philip Levis notifications@github.com wrote:

I think it would be good to have a high-level plan: what are the major things we think need to change? From my perspective, the very steep learning curve is the biggest issue. The tutorials jump in pretty fast, and from the perspective that you want to get up to speed with heavy systems work.

I think having some tutorials that are more application-focused (and simpler!) early on would be good.

Something that makes the steep learning curve easier would be most welcome.

I see two parts

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45640964.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher

atzounis commented 10 years ago

Good morning, Hamds-on tutorials would be a great idea. I tottally agree.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 2:45 AM, Eric Decker notifications@github.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Philip Levis notifications@github.com wrote:

I think it would be good to have a high-level plan: what are the major things we think need to change? From my perspective, the very steep learning curve is the biggest issue. The tutorials jump in pretty fast, and from the perspective that you want to get up to speed with heavy systems work.

I think having some tutorials that are more application-focused (and simpler!) early on would be good.

Something that makes the steep learning curve easier would be most welcome.

I see two parts

  • getting a development environment set up (getting sources, getting toolchain, configuring environment, etc.)

  • getting started with understanding simple TinyOS code and how to deal with it. Something progressive. (a little more complicated than Blink

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45640964.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45686397.

Antonis P. Tzounis Phd Candidate, Programmer - MSc Computer Science School of Agricultural Sciences | University of Thessaly Laboratory of Agricultural Constructions and Environmental Control | CERETETH Fytokoy Str, 384 46, N.Ionia, Magnisia, Greece

Tel.: +3024210-93257 | Mob.: +30 6934 00 12 12 | Skype: antonis.tzounis E-mail: atzounis@gmail.com atzounis@gmail.com | Web: http://lacec.agr.uth.gr http://lacec.agr.uth.gr

bradjc commented 10 years ago
  • getting a development environment set up (getting sources, getting toolchain, configuring environment, etc.)

190 should help with this. No need to set env variables and tinyos-tools should be able to install everything (so theres no need to say, "now go to support/sdk/... and run ./configure && make ... to use a different tool).

We really should be able to get tinyos installation to roughly this:

<package-manager> install tinyos    # installs tinyos-tools, nesc, embedded gcc compilers
wget http://tinyos.net/releases/tinyos-2.1.3.tar.gz
tar xf tinyos-2.1.3.tar.gz

which would just be a huge improvement.

gnawali commented 10 years ago

Phil -- can parts of your TinyOS book be repurposed to partly address the steep learning curve?

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014, Eric Decker notifications@github.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Philip Levis <notifications@github.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','notifications@github.com');> wrote:

I think it would be good to have a high-level plan: what are the major things we think need to change? From my perspective, the very steep learning curve is the biggest issue. The tutorials jump in pretty fast, and from the perspective that you want to get up to speed with heavy systems work.

I think having some tutorials that are more application-focused (and simpler!) early on would be good.

Something that makes the steep learning curve easier would be most welcome.

I see two parts

  • getting a development environment set up (getting sources, getting toolchain, configuring environment, etc.)

  • getting started with understanding simple TinyOS code and how to deal with it. Something progressive. (a little more complicated than Blink

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45640964.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45686397.

phil-levis commented 10 years ago

In all honesty, not really. The book is written to a systems programmer audience. It explains a lot of the ideas and concepts in detail. It's also written in a traditional academic manner, not showing anything until it's explained. I once hear Kathy Sierra talk about the approaches one should take when writing a programming instructional book and they're at times polar opposite from what the academic approach does. The book is good as a detailed reference, but not a tutorial.

Anyways, let's sort out cleaning up the code and toolchain for 2.1.3 then focus on these materials.

Phil

On Jun 13, 2014, at 6:01 AM, gnawali notifications@github.com wrote:

Phil -- can parts of your TinyOS book be repurposed to partly address the steep learning curve?

  • om_p

On Wednesday, June 11, 2014, Eric Decker notifications@github.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Philip Levis <notifications@github.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','notifications@github.com');> wrote:

I think it would be good to have a high-level plan: what are the major things we think need to change? From my perspective, the very steep learning curve is the biggest issue. The tutorials jump in pretty fast, and from the perspective that you want to get up to speed with heavy systems work.

I think having some tutorials that are more application-focused (and simpler!) early on would be good.

Something that makes the steep learning curve easier would be most welcome.

I see two parts

  • getting a development environment set up (getting sources, getting toolchain, configuring environment, etc.)
  • getting started with understanding simple TinyOS code and how to deal with it. Something progressive. (a little more complicated than Blink

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45640964.

Eric B. Decker Senior (over 50 :-) Researcher

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tinyos/tinyos-main/issues/286#issuecomment-45686397.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

atzounis commented 10 years ago

Dear Phil As you already proposed, some step-by-step tutorials on how to implement some real life apps, more complex than blink, would be a good idea.