I just saw before posting how you can program a Pro Mini with a normal Arduino. You remove the chip from the normal Arduino, then hook the two with supply to supply, ground to ground, the DYR to the reset, and flip the TX to the RX, and RX to the TX on the other card. You'd do this in case you don't have that USB to serial converter. (Inland Corp makes a working one)
Curious, I check the RFduino pinout, and while power, ground, and reset are easy to find, there is no clue about the TX and RX pins used on an RFduino. Does anyone know which RFduino pins are the RX and TX pins used by its USB shield?
Does anyone know if the RFduino's USB to serial shield even works with Linux in the first place?
The RFduino USB shield does not work on Linux. The company made the board libraries for Windows and Mac only. I wouldn't be surprised if they hacked up the bootloader with a machete to accomodate the Bluetooth chipset. I use Linux and bought an RFduino, and I won't try that one again. You'll have to figure out how to do ICSP with this Linux-hating device.
In the mean time, we Linux users should email them one email each at exactly the same time.
The RFduino USB shield looks like ttyUSB0 on Linux.
On Linux you have to be member of dialout group or whatever your distribution of
Linux has for group permissions on USB devices. It's a linux thing.
minicom or any of the serial port monitoring tools on unix/linux work fine with
the RFduino USB shield to talk to the sketch.
Bootloading is another thing though...
It is true that RFduino doesn't supply a loader specifically for Linux. Only for
windows and OSx.
So, on Linux you have to use RFduino's RFDLoader.exe for windows under WINE.
In wine configuration you symlink the /dev/ttyUSB0 to wines com1: port.
Then wine RFDLoader.exe $1 com1 $3 will work just fine.
$1 is the flags from Arduino IDE; com1 will be symlinked to /dev/ttyUSB0 by linux;
and $3 is the ihexfile from Arduino IDE.
Sounds like getting a @#$%ing Leonardo to work is child's play compared to getting the RFduino to work on Linux. One time at a MicroCenter I told a fellow customer that the RFduino doesn't work on Linux. His response was a stupid "Get a Mac." I guess he forgot that not everyone is loaded with money (or willing to pull their hair out trying to make a Hackintosh). Not to mention that I hate Apple for multiple reasons. (irreplaceable batteries in iJunk for starters)
My answer would be "Don't buy it".
My Leonardo woes, like the RFduino, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Especially those 32u4 chips.