Quick Jump to Start NodeJS Development on LTPS Boards

Introduction

Unlike Node.js, Git and Python 2.7, NPM is not installed on each LTPS by default. To install it, you should connect to the LTPP board from an SSH client and do the following steps:

# Setup package repositories (if it's not done already)
smart channel --add a0 type=rpm-md name="LTPS all" baseurl=${RPMSBASE}/all/ -y
smart channel --add a1 type=rpm-md name="Tibbo LTPS general" baseurl=${RPMSBASE}/cortexa8hf_neon/ -y
smart channel --add a2 type=rpm-md name="Tibbo LTPS tpp" baseurl=${RPMSBASE}/tpp/ -y
smart update
 
# Install NPM
smart install nodejs-npm -y
 
# Enhance Git functionality. Required if you want to install NPM modules directly from Git.
smart install git-perltools -y
 
# Install build-essential (GCC, Make, libraries etc). Required for on-board compilation of native C addons.
smart install packagegroup-core-buildessential -y 

Define your Tibbits layout

Various Tibbits require various resources. For instance, a relay Tibbit set into the socket S1 of the LTPP3 board will require the S1 interface lines to operate as general-purpose I/O (GPIO) lines. The RS232 Tibbit set into the same socket will need a UART to be enabled and mapped to this Tibbit's interface lines.

The LTPP3 gives you an interactive graphical tool to define your Tibbit configuration (to specify what Tibbit goes into what socket). The tool also checks out if there are no problems/mistakes with your configuration. As soon as the desired layout is created and saved, you should reboot the board to let the new configuration take charge. See the video below to get the idea of the configuration process.

When giving our code examples a try or testing your own projects, don't forget to define the proper Tibbit configuration before running the corresponding code.