Arduino Breakout for LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo

Arduino Breakout for LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo is an Arduino Yún compatible (share the same MCU model) and a Grove port feature expansion board for LinkIt^TM Smart 7688^{Duo [1]} ^[2]development platform. This breakout board allows you to use different features from Arduino Yún and LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo which will help you build rich applications based on various, robust and compiled Arduino sketches. This breakout board will save a lot of work and makes prototyping easier through simplified wiring. So it helps a beginner get a quick start. It supports serial buses like I2C, UART and provides access to reserved original pins of LinkIt^TM Smart 7688 Duo. It also comes with USB and Ethernet.

^[1] LinkIt^TM Smart 7688 Duo is an open development board based on the OpenWrt Linux distribution, MT7688 and ATmega32u4. The board is designed especially to enable the prototyping of Rich Application IoT devices for Smart-Home.

^[2]Only one controller board can be main controller board at the same time.

Features

Arduino Shield Compatible
1 × Ethernet to connect internet
1 × USB 2.0 for more peripherals
Grove interfaces: I2C × 2, Analog × 3, Digital× 6, UART × 1
4-pin debug port × 1, ICSP × 1

Application ideas

IoT/Gateway Device.
Robotics
Smart multimedia devices
Teaching and learning

Specification

Input voltage	5.0V (With USB Power port)
Operating voltage	3.3V
Debug pins connect with MT7688, Other pins connect with ATmega32U4.

Hardware Overview

Note: As you need to plug LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo on this breakout, align the side with USB micro type-B of LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo to the side with UART2 of Arduino Breakout for LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo.

Grove interface: Connect rich Grove interfaced functional modules. With this kind of ports, you never need jumper wire or soldering work, and you can make more powerful applications with those functional modules.

Parts list

Parts name	Quantity
Arduino Breakout for LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo	1PC

Getting started

Materials required

LinkIt Smart 7688 × 1
USB cable (type A to micro type-B) × 1
USB to Serial adapter × 1
Jumper wires × 3
Grove - Buzzer × 1

Make some sound with a Grove Buzzer

1. Refer this to connect your LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo to internet.

Note 1: You can find Pin 8, Pin 9 and Pin GND close to the port to be connected LinkIt Smart 7688.
Note 2: You can plug jumper wires into MT7688 UART2 port instead of soldering them to Pin 8, Pin 9 and Pin GND.

2. Open a console after connecting an USB to Serial adapter to LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo.

3. Connect all parts as shown below:

Note: Plug Grove - Buzzer into port D4.

4. Refer this to build the Arduino environment for LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo platform on host computer.

5. Download firmata. Refer to here to install Arduino IDE for LinkIt Smart 7688 platform, and flash the file firmata to developent board.

Note: Following steps are carried out on embedded OS(OpenWRT).

6. Type pip install pyfirmata into console and press Enter to install python library pyfirmata.

7. Create a file named buzzer.py with typing vi buzzer.py in console, copy the code below into it.

from pyfirmata import Arduino, util
from time import sleep
board = Arduino('/dev/ttyS0')
print "Start blinking D4"
while True:
  board.digital[4].write(1)
  sleep(0.5)
  board.digital[4].write(0)
  sleep(0.5)

8. Save buzzer.py and type python buzzer.py to run the example code.

9. Now you will hear the buzzing.

Related Projects

If you want to make some awesome projects by LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo, here's some projects for reference.

Smart router with WiFi Connection Visualization

This router has the below functions:

Let you know how many devices had connected to your router
Show you the real-time net speed by different color of the leds
Printer to display some message

If you like this router, please follow the below steps.

Facebook Like Monitor

It really feel good when you get a like from Facebook, this monitor will blink and vibrate when you got a new like. And there’s a 320x240 LCD Display to show you how many likes you ever got.

This instructable is not very complex, but may a little hard for the newbie. If you had ever use Arduino or others board like that, It may cost you 3-5 hours to make one.