To use the WICED Feather, you first need to install a board support package (BSP) that includes all the classes, drivers and example code that make it possible to create projects that can talk to the STM32F205 MCU and Broadcom radio.  This guide will walk you through the process of getting the BSP setup on your development machine.

Adding Adafruit Board Support

The first thing you will need to do is start the IDE and navigate to the Preferences menu. You can access it from the File menu in Windows or Linux, or the Arduino menu on OS X.

A dialog like this will pop up:

We will be adding a URL to the new Additional Boards Manager URLs option. The list of URLs is comma separated, and you will only have to add each URL once. New Adafruit boards and updates to existing boards will automatically be picked up by the Board Manager each time it is opened. The URLs point to index files that the Board Manager uses to build the list of available & installed boards.

Add the Adafruit BSP List

We will only need to add one URL to the IDE in this example, but you can add multiple URLS by separating them with commas. Copy and paste the link below into the Additional Boards Manager URLs option in the Arduino IDE preferences.

You should see something like this:

Click OK to save the new preference settings. Next we will look at installing boards with the Board Manager.

Add the Adafruit WICED BSP

Adding the link to the Adafruit board support package does not actually install anything, it only tells the Arduino IDE where to find the software.

Now that you have added the appropriate URLs to the Arduino IDE preferences, you can open the Boards Manager by navigating to the Tools->Board menu item.

Once the Board Manager opens, click on the category drop down menu on the top left hand side of the window and select Contributed. You will then be able to select and install the boards supplied by the URLs added to the prefrences.

Find the example named Adafruit WICED from the list and click the Install button:

Next, quit and reopen the Arduino IDE to ensure that all of the boards are properly installed. You should now be able to see the new boards listed in the Tools->Board menu.

Finally follow the OS specific steps in this guide for your platform to finish the installation - basically installing drivers and permissions management.

Upgrading From Earlier WICED BSP Releases (<0.6.0)

If you are using an earlier version of the WICED SDK (< 0.6.0), you will need to remove the old files from the /hardware/Adafruit_WICED_Arduino folder before starting this guide. You may also need to delete the 'arduino15/staging' dir in the Arduino installation folder before the BSP appears.