This guide describes the process of setting up Instant Contiki, the virtual machine that can be used as a development environment for Contiki, for VirtualBox. The guide on the Contiki website recommends VMPlayer, but doesn’t offer much of a guide, but because VMPlayer does not support Macs I use VirtualBox. I describe the steps below on how to set it up.
- Download VirtualBox
- Download Instant Contiki
- Create a new virtual machine with VirtualBox.
- Choose Linux and Ubuntu 32 bit.
- Use the default amount of RAM, for me this was 512MBs.
- Select “Use an existing virtual hard drive”.
- Inside the Instant Contiki download select the vmdk file that does not have the -s00* trailing.
- Create the virtual machine.
Troubleshooting:
- If your keyboard is not behaving as expected, the keyboard may be using the Swedish layout. You can change this by clicking on the keyboard icon at the top right of the screen.
- If your virtual machine screen is stuck at the same resolution install VirtualBox Guest Additions by clicking on the devices menu while in the virtual machine and select “Insert Guest Additions CD image…” and follow the instructions. Restart the virtual machine and after it is restarted go to the view menu and make sure full screen mode and scaled mode are unchecked and auto-resize display is checked.