Getting started friction log

[mimming]

Here's my stream of consciousness as I got started. Feel free to break it up into other issues, close because I'm a n00b, whatever :)

Hardware

I wasn't sure which device should get male headers or female
I looked at pictures on adafruit's site and both versions exist
I reasoned that I want to be able to read the oled display, so i put female headers on the esp8266 board
Consider adding a picture of the assembled hardware

Push sample

Started at 2:15 pm

Started from here - https://github.com/googlesamples/firebase-arduino
Didn't have ESP8266 set up, so went here - https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino#using-git-version-
Followed instructions
Opened push sample
Removed auth() call and pointed it to mimming.firebaseio-demo.com. I'll use a demo firebase and unauthenticated pushes
Tried to compile push sample, saw error

In file included from FirebasePush_ESP8266.ino:20:0:
/arduino-sketchbook/libraries/firebase-arduino/Firebase.h:24:25: fatal error: ESP8266WiFi.h: No such file or directory
 #include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
                         ^
compilation terminated.
Error compiling.

I suspect my ESP8266 installation is bunk
Find reveals that the library is in the sketchbook/hardware/esp8266com/…

$ find ./ | grep ESP8266WiFi.h
.//esp8266com/esp8266/libraries/ESP8266WiFi/src/ESP8266WiFi.h

Maybe it's because my Arduino SDK is out of date. It's 1.6.4. Time to update to 1.6.7
Time to try to build again
Not sure which board I have or stuff so I guessed (it'd help if you gave advice hewre)

Looks like it worked
Now… I have no idea what that sample is supposed to do.
It'd help if the readme described what it should do or had a picture or something
It's not doing anything
Oh it looks like wifi config is not set
It'd help if the readme gave step by step about everything that i need to change (so far firebase name, auth token, and wifi info)
Set SSID to MyOpenWifiNetwork
Not working yet - wifi connect
Nothing in Firebase
Oh the code writes to serial. I'll look there next
I see that it's not connecting
(IT'd help if we had sample output on the docs)
Looks like it's having trouble connecting to GoogleGuest :(
Went to Google for help on wifi.connect - https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/WiFiConfig
Looks like I was running the function wrong. I thought it was taking "parameter name", "value" turns out it was "SSID", "Password" :
Building again

3:00pm (45 min in)
It connects now! Yay! But new problem

connecting........
connected: 192.168.146.4
Firebase request failed
POST /logs.json: connection refused
0�~?�4�!�{�OAa�connecting......
connected: 192.168.146.4
Firebase request failed
POST /logs.json: connection refused
0�~?�4�!�{�OAa�connecting....
connected: 192.168.146.4
Firebase request failed
POST /logs.json: connection refused

Maybe it does not work on demo firebases?
I created a new firebase : espbutton.firebaseio.com
I gave auth() my secret
Building again
Yay it's writing!

connecting......
connected: 192.168.123.45
{"name":"-K9-A4Ib_T54zVlGU9F2"}
{"-K9-A-Iy_WNj4Uu0mLen":1453849314558,"-K9-A4Ib_T54zVlGU9F2":1453849335015}

Confirmed on firebase dashboard

Bitcoin sample

Now that the push sample works, want the stream!
Opened up the other sample, the stream one.
Attempted to compile

FirebaseStream_ESP8266/FirebaseStream_ESP8266.ino:22:30: fatal error: Adafruit_SSD1306.h: No such file or directory
 #include <Adafruit_SSD1306.h>
                              ^
compilation terminated.
exit status 1
Error compiling.

:(
Went to library manager, and installed it
It'd be cool to call out that dependency on the readme?
Yay it compiles!
But I'm getting gibberish on the serial :( And the OLED isn't pretty :(
It prints a gibberish every 500ms, so I think it's trying to say connect
I added Serial.print("hello"); before the display inits. It looks like starting up the display is what distorts the serial
Moved the display init to bottom of setup
Still goes gibberish once the oled's begin is called
Commenting out all of the display code. I want to verify the firebase part works (just display data on serial)
Flashing again
I can see data on serial! Yay

data: {"path":"/_updated","data":"Tue Jan 26 2016 23:24:16 GMT+0000 (UTC)"}
event: 1
data: {"path":"/last","data":"389.82"}
event: 1
data: {"path":"/bid","data":"389.76"}
event: 1
data: {"path":"/ask","data":"389.96"}

Now to figure out what's up with the OLED
Taking a step back to verify the oled display works. I'll go through - https://learn.adafruit.com/digital-display-badge
Saw in this code that OLED_RESET should probalby be 3 (since it's same PCB)
https://learn.adafruit.com/digital-display-badge/code
Chagned OLED_RESET from 10 to 3
Flashed
Yay it's fixed

Now I want to get it to work with some LEDs, maybe APA102s? It worked really easy until I burned up my level shifter :D

[proppy]

Will file lots of issue based on your comments. Thanks a lot for taking the time to log this.

I few comments:

Maybe it does not work on demo firebases?

Yes, because they use a difference cert fingerprint, will should probably grew for -demo or allow to override the default fingerprint in the firebase constructor.

Now I want to get it to work with some LEDs, maybe APA102s?

I have a small Feather wing pcb with 3 APAs and a button, I will upload it to the hardware directory: it could make a nice companion to a new sample.

Alternatively you could go for: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2945

[proppy]

I believe we have bug for all the items described there. So let's close this report (feel free to open new issue for anything I missed).