Your First Experiment

Let's build a tiny but complete experiment: blink an LED once a second, then run it. It touches every part of the workflow — adding hardware, building a graph, and pressing Start — in about ten minutes.

No hardware handy?

You can still follow along. Build the graph exactly as described; when you press Start, the Output nodes will simply report that no device is attached. Swap in a real LED whenever you like.

What you'll build

StartExperiment → Loop ─▶ Output (ON) → Delay (0.5s) → Output (OFF) → Delay (0.5s)
                                                                          ↓
                                                                    (loops back)

When the loop finishes its repetitions, control returns and the experiment ends.

1. Open GLIDER

Launch the app (see Installation). You'll land in desktop mode: a canvas in the middle, a Node Library to add nodes, a Properties panel for the selected node, and the File / Edit / Experiment / View / Hardware / Run / Tools / Help menu bar.

Start fresh with File → New.

2. Connect a board and add an LED

Open the Hardware panel and add your controller — an Arduino over USB, a Raspberry Pi, or a Bluetooth device — then connect to it. (Full details: Devices & Hardware.)

Add a Digital Output device for your LED and note the pin it's on (say, pin 13, the Arduino's built-in LED). Give it a friendly name like led.

Connecting later

You don't have to connect hardware before building the graph. Design first, connect when you're ready — GLIDER will bind your nodes to devices when you press Start.

3. Lay down Start and End

From the Node Library, add a StartExperiment node and an EndExperiment node to the canvas. Every experiment runs from Start to End along execution wires — if you're fuzzy on exec vs. data wires, see How GLIDER Works.

4. Add a loop and the blink steps

Add these nodes from the library:

Node	Role
Loop	Repeats the blink a set number of times
Output ×2	One to turn the LED on, one to turn it off
Delay ×2	Hold the LED on, then off, for half a second each

Select each node and configure it in the Properties panel:

• Loop — set the number of repetitions (e.g. 10).
• First Output — bind it to your led device and set its value to ON (HIGH).
• First Delay — set the duration to 0.5 seconds.
• Second Output — bind it to led, value OFF (LOW).
• Second Delay — 0.5 seconds.

Binding a node to a device

Hardware nodes like Output have a device selector in their Properties. Pick your led there so the node knows what to drive. A digital output offers HIGH/LOW; a PWM output would give you a slider instead — see Devices & Hardware.

5. Wire it up

Drag from one node's exec output port to the next node's exec input port, in order:

1. StartExperiment → Loop
2. Loop's body → Output (ON) → Delay (0.5s) → Output (OFF) → Delay (0.5s)
3. Loop's "done" → EndExperiment

The loop drives its body once per repetition; when it's out of repetitions it follows its "done" exec output to EndExperiment.

Exec wires make it run

Connect the exec ports (the "go" pulse), not just data ports. If Start does nothing, an exec wire is missing somewhere between Start and End.

6. Press Start

Open the Run menu and choose Start (or use the Start control in the toolbar). The LED should blink ten times, half a second on and half a second off. Use Run → Stop to end early.

Emergency stop

There's an emergency stop bound to Ctrl+Shift+Esc that immediately drives devices to a safe state — handy while testing new hardware.

7. Save your work

File → Save writes everything — the graph, your led device, and the experiment's metadata — into a single .glider file. Reopen it later, share it, or run it on a touchscreen Runner.

Where to go next

• The Node Graph

  Loops, sequences, timers, logic, and math — the full toolkit.

• Devices & Hardware

  PWM, servos, analog inputs, I²C, and Bluetooth devices.

• Camera & Recording

  Record synchronized video and data while your experiment runs.

• Functions

  Package a routine (like this blink) so you can reuse and one-tap it.