Panther Logger 1: Getting started

Plug in the screw terminal blocks and the micro USB cable into the USB connector on the Panther Logger (see video on right). Plug the other end into your computer's USB port. 

Use of a battery at this point is optional, but you will need one to use a cellular modem. See our battery recommendations page here. You will need to remove any connector from the battery wires, strip 1 to 2 centimeters of insulation off the wires and plug them into the battery screw terminal block on the Panther Logger with the positive wire on the right side (as indicated by plus sign on the board). Do not cut both wires at the same time. When a battery is plugged in, the power indicator LED will turn on if USB or solar power is applied. 

Go to our Github page for our Blink script here. Click the copy button in the upper right to copy the code then go to Arduino IDE and click file>new to make a new sketch. Highlight the default code that is there and erase it or just paste over with the code copied from Github. Save this new sketch as a new file name.

If you are not familiar with the basic structure of an Arduino C/C++ script read here. 

As you can see from this sketch, we try to provide lots of notes in all of our sketches to indicate what is happening. These notes or comments follow two forward slashes "//" or are written in between slash-star and star-slash... like this:

/* 

this is a note, it is not code

*/

The blink script will blink three of the four indicator LEDs in sequence and then blink them all together. 

We are now ready to upload this code to the Panther Logger. Ensure that the board is selected under the Tools>port menu and then click the upload button in the top menu area which looks like an arrow pointing to the right. 

NOTE: In the port menu the board will show up as "Adafruit Feather M0" because we are using that bootloader. If you do not see this then ensure that the board's power switch is on and that the USB cable is connected. 

If upload fails then click the reset button on the Panther Logger board once and then double click it. The top red LED, LED1, turns on and begins to slowly fade or pulse in and out. The processor is now in bootloader mode and the code should upload at this point. The Arduino IDE will normally reset the microprocessor before sending code updates, but sometimes this fails to happen. By clicking and double clicking the reset button we are manually stopping any program that is running and then putting the processor into a state where it is ready to accept new code.

After uploading the script, the LEDs on the board will blink in sequence and then blink together. Open the serial monitor with the magnifying glass button on the top right of the Arduino IDE window. The script will print messages to the monitor indicating which LED is blinking.

If all goes well then you have successfully uploaded code to the Panther Logger and are on your way to using the full functionality of this device. 

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