Related
Recommended
John Donovan

Last week we wrote about Arrow’s RL78 Intelligent Cloud Connectivity Kit, consisting of an RL78G14 RDK and Bug Labs’ BUGswarm Internet connectivity software. The kit enables you control remote sensor-based devices—“swarms” of them even, to use Bug Labs’s preferred term—via Wi-Fi-based connections to the Internet. This time we’ll take a brief look at the software.


First download the files from https://github.com/buglabs/bugswarm-renesas and unzip them to a convenient place. In that directory are two binary files (ADKRenesasG14_R0.5.1_Hi_Speed.mot and …Low_Speed.mot) that we used last time to re-flash the RL78G14 with the demo program. The directory YRDKRL78G14 contains all the source files needed to generate the demo program, nicely packaged for the IAR environment.

If you have IAR Embedded Workshop for the RL78 installed click on ADKRenesasG14.eww to open the project. Two quick words of warning:

  1. If you aren’t using the latest version of Embedded Workshop you’ll get an error message to that effect and the program will shut down;
  2. If you’re using the Kickstart edition of EW things will blow up at the link stage, since the program takes up more than the 16 KB that version allows.

Still, even using the Kickstart version of EW you can learn a lot by exploring the source code to learn how the software works and takes advantage of the RL78.

If all goes well:

  1. On the RL78G14 RDK turn the second switch on SW5 OFF—this puts the chip into debug mode—then power up the board via the USB connector.
  2. Rebuild the project; click the Download and Debug icon; then Reset and Go.

The program should now be up and running. See last time’s post for how to monitor the board on the Internet. Once you’ve provisioned your board then each time you turn it on in the future it will automatically find your router and reconnect, so temporary loss of power shouldn’t represent a serious problem for remote M2M communications.

Next time we’ll look at how to connect your resources to the RL78 web portal and how the code works that makes it possible.