The Ruby bindings allow you to control Bricks and Bricklets from your Ruby programs. The ZIP file for the bindings contains:
The Ruby bindings can be installed, but can also be used without installation.
The bindings are available as a GEM on rubygems.org. You can install them with the gem tool using the following command (in this case you don't even need the ZIP file for the bindings). Depending on your Ruby installation you might have to execute this with sudo or as administrator:
gem install tinkerforge
Alternatively, the GEM is also part of the ZIP file of the bindings. It can be installed from there as well with the following command which might has to execute with sudo or as administrator:
gem install tinkerforge.gem
Now you're ready to test the examples. The GEM does not include the examples. Those are available as part of the bindings ZIP file.
You can use the bindings without having to install them. Just copy the tinkerforge/ folder from the source/ folder in the same folder as your Ruby program. The section about testing an example has more details about this.
To test a Ruby example Brick Daemon and Brick Viewer have to be installed first. Brick Daemon acts as a proxy between the USB interface of the Bricks and the API bindings. Brick Viewer connects to Brick Daemon and helps to figure out basic information about the connected Bricks and Bricklets.
As an example let's test the configuration example for the Stepper Brick. For this copy the example_configuration.rb file from the examples/brick/stepper/ folder into a new folder:
example_project/
-> example_configuration.rb
In the example HOST and PORT specify at which network address the Stepper Brick can be found. If it is connected locally to USB then localhost and 4223 is correct. The UID value has to be changed to the UID of the connected Stepper Brick, which you can figure out using Brick Viewer:
HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 4223
UID = 'XYZ' # Change to your UID
If you did install the bindings then you're now ready to test this example:
ruby example_configuration.rb
If you did not install the bindings then you can also use the source of the bindings directly. Just copy the tinkerforge/ folder from the source/ folder to your example_project/ folder:
example_project/
-> tinkerforge/
-> example_configuration.rb
Now you're ready to test this example. You need to tell Ruby to look in the current folder for required modules using the -I. option:
ruby -I. example_configuration.rb
Links to the API reference for the IP Connection, Bricks and Bricklets as well as the examples from the ZIP file of the bindings are listed in the following table. Further project descriptions can be found in the Starter Kits section.