Create your first project

You can create a new project where we can start and configure our micro instance

It says that you need to spend approx. 5USD but if you dig further you see this here:

so we configure this:

choose the micro (1 shared).. service and as the region somthing in the US except Northern Virgina….

Get yourself a coffee or a drink it takes some seconds and here you go.. you are entering a web based bash/shell by clicking on SSH…

Now the fun starts. If you are familiar with the commands just start hacking but if not google is really the answer…

lets try to follow the installation from the very first and lonely tutorial in iota.docs.

So we need node.js 8+..

You can do a lot of things wrong here allready and i did it myself by not installing the right repo of node.js — make sure it is 8+ otherwise you run into many compiling errors not really helping.

Ok first update the whole mashine

sudo apt-get update

Anyway that was only for the show — apperently we need to load the 8+ repository via a comand curl to our virtual mashine.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -

as mentioned there now we can install via the following command the repository.

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Next on the list is the npm manager

To varify that npm is installed just use

npm -v

ok should be good.

Too easy its we have vim installed its from now our favourite bash based editor

sudo vim test.txt

don’t forget to press TAB and i to insert text and than ESC and + : + q + ! you will love this editor :-)

Ok now we almost there — i think its ok to get both in one time answered. we needed the terminal before and internet too so… done

From here it should be a little dance — following the tutorial on the official iota docs site.

And if you have mastered the tricks and traps of vim than you will be seeing this

So further following the IOTA you will be ending up having made your first transaction on the tangle.

Troubleshooting (edit 24.06.2018): If you are having trouble sending an transaction (basically only receive the node info) please just try to disable using the PoW (Proof of Work) box (powbox) for outsourcing this computational task. Our node server in this example has the possibility to do the proof of work for you when calling the API (not every node has this enabled though)

//const remoteCurl = require("@iota/curl-remote")

//remoteCurl(iota, "https://powbox.testnet.iota.org", 500)

The second information i would like to add is that the server has been renamed from testnet to devnet. Which means tesnet is depricated and devnet is the new correct naming

So you change as well the server name to

const iota = new IOTA({ provider: "https://nodes.devnet.iota.org:443" })

Because we are on the tesnet (devnet) you can admire your work in the world wide web here by searching for the bundle, hash, transaction…

Congratulation!

As of writing the testnet health is exceptional but when i tried it first two month ago it was not that easy — hope you enjoyed this tutorial and looking fwd. to your comment and of course of more exploration of IOTA and its possibilities.

Cheers, Jan

Next Article: Exploring IOTA #2, retrieve your transaction and create your ‘wallet’

Edited (24.06.2018): Troubleshoot when the sendTransaction does not work as the remote PoW wasn’t successful