Gecko OS Studio Quickstart

Follow the steps below to prepare your device and set up your Gecko OS development environment for developing Gecko OS Apps.

  1. Download Gecko OS Studio (GSS)
  2. Install GSS
  3. Get Started with GSS

Note : You can use the GSS to set up your device with the latest Gecko OS firmware .

Special terms used in Gecko OS documentation

Special Notes

Downloading GSS

Download GSS for your operating system:

Installing GSS

Run the downloaded executable to install GSS. The installer removes and replaces any previous version.

Getting Started with GSS

Open GSS.

Log in to your Silabs account. If you do not already have a free account, click Create an Account and follow the steps to create one.

After you log in, GSS displays the welcome screen.

Selecting Your Device

Click Device in the menu to open the Device tab:

Connect the device to the USB socket and power it up. GSS detects the device. If it is the only Silabs device detected, GSS selects it automatically:

When the device is selected, GSS moves to the Projects tab.

You may wish to set up Gecko OS on your device, with no associated Gecko OS App. If so, follow through the steps below in Setting Up Your Device with Gecko OS .

Otherwise, skip to Selecting Your Project .

Setting Up Your Device with Gecko OS

Select AEM Power Source

The WSTK power source selector switch should be set to the AEM (Advanced Energy Monitor) position. The AEM provides features required by the GSS.

Flash Gecko OS to Your Device

On GSS, click the Setup Device with Gecko OS button to flash the latest version of Gecko OS to your device.

GSS takes a few seconds to set up your device.

When the Device Ready notice appears, your device has a standard Gecko OS image for your platform.

You can now connect to the device via the UART and use the Command API. See Opening a Gecko OS Terminal .

When you move to other GSS screens, the Setup Device with Gecko OS button appears again. There is no need to set up the device again.

You can also move on in GSS to create a project, build it and download it to your device.

Selecting Your Project

GSS opens the Projects screen:

Hello World

We demonstrate building and downloading a project with the Hello World example project.

Choose Clone Example :

On the Clone Example screen,

GSS creates the project, showing progress:

Finally the Project Created screen appears.

In the specified workspace directory, GSS created the sdk-wgm160p-x.x.x-x directory containing sdk files, and the hello_world project directory.

Choose Open Project Folder to open the project directory. You can view and edit the project source files in the IDE or text editor of your choice. For example, here is main.c :

When you are ready to build, in the Project Created screen, choose Program Selected Device to build the project and write the hello world code to the device.

The hello_world app runs each time the device reboots.

To view the output you can use a serial terminal program such as TeraTerm. See Opening a Gecko OS terminal .

In the case of the hello_world project, the App prints "Hello world!!" to the terminal. 

[Ready]
>

Hello world!!

Browse the examples to see how Gecko OS Native C APIs are used in a range of applications. You can clone an example even when you have no physical development platform. Just choose the required target platform, clone the example and press Open Project Folder in the Project Created screen.

Using the IDE

On the Project Created screen, you can choose Install IDE & Open Project .

Alternatively, to install the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), choose the Tools tab and click Install Gecko OS IDE .

With the IDE installed, you can choose Open in IDE in the Project Created screen.

In the IDE you can edit, build, download, run and debug your App. You can also browse through the source for all example applications, under the sdk-wgm160p-x.x.x-x project, applications folder.

To build your app in the IDE, in the Project Explorer panel, right click on the project to build. In this case the project is hello_world . In the context menu, choose one of the build options:

The IDE builds the project and displays output in the build console.

If you have a Gecko OS terminal connected to the board port, the App output appears on the terminal, similar to the following: 

[Ready]
SILABS-HELLO-0.0.0-local, Gecko_OS-STANDARD-4.0.17-1380, WGM160P


Hello world!!
LOCAL>

Downloading Resources

Choose the Download Resources option on the project Gecko OS menu to download resources to your Gecko OS device. Resources include the webapp, Wi-Fi firmware and other resources related to Gecko OS and your App.

Command Line Make

The GSS IDE uses the make utility to build Apps. Using make from the command line can provide additional options. See Using Gecko OS Make .