First try

Before getting into any detailed knowledge, it's a good idea to try your first project. You'll have a first impression of what your board can do. Let's blink an LED.

Set up software

At first, you will set up the software for your board.

1. Open the Visual Studio Code. I believe most of you guys have installed it. We have created an extension for it. It is really handy and easy to use.

2. Install the extension MadMachine as shown below:

   1. click the Extensions button on the left bar.
   2. enter the extension name MadMachine in the search box.
   3. click the Install button.

3. Download the latest mm sdk. It is used to build your project. Choose the version marked with the label Latest. The versions marked with Pre-release are still for internal testing.

4. Open the Settings by clicking Code / Preferences / Settings to set the extension.

5. Click Extensions to expand it and find MadMachine. Indicate the mm sdk location in the box that matches your operating system. If you change the location of sdk later, you will need to update it again.

OK, the software gets prepared👏.

Create a project

Now, you will start your first project.

1. Click the Explorer button on the left bar. Then click the extension MadMachine on the bottom to show three functionalities. Click New Project.

2. Choose the project as an executable. Your project will run on the board after it is downloaded, so you need an executable. And the projects later in the following sections are all executables.

3. Choose the board for this project - SwiftIOFeather.

4. Name the project. You could choose any descriptive name you like for the project. Then press the Enter key.

5. Choose a location to store the project and press Open.

Well, the project is created and will open in a new window.

Write code

Then you will need to edit the code for the project.

1. Click on the Blink / Sources / Blink / Blink.swift to open the file. This file stores the main code for your project. So you will always edit this file for all your projects.

2. Copy the code below into the file. In the next section, you will learn more about the code.

Blink.swift

import SwiftIO
import MadBoard

@main
public struct Blink {
    public static func main() {
        let led = DigitalOut(Id.BLUE)

        while true {
            led.write(true)
            sleep(ms: 1000)

            led.write(false)
            sleep(ms: 1000)
        }
    }
}

Download code to the board

Now you come to the last step - download your project to the board.

1. Connect your SwiftIO Feather board to your computer. In the illustration below, the SwiftIO Feather board is plugged into the SwiftIO Circuit Playgrounds board. You can also disconnect them.

2. Press the download button.

3. Wait until the onboard LED turns to steady green.

4. Click the Build button to build your project.

5. Click the Download button. It will take a few seconds.

After it's done, the onboard blue LED starts to blink💡.