Everyone who starts learning Arduino is familiar with the Arduino IDE. It allows you to write sketches, check the correctness and load them into the memory of the Arduino boards. But is this the only way to develop programs for the Arduino? Not at all! Let's see what other development environments exist.
Necessary
- - Arduino;
- - computer.
Instructions
Step 1
Let's start with the PROGRAMINO development environment. This is a paid development environment, but you can try it out for 14 days for free. Programino, like other development environments, requires, however, that you have the Arduino IDE installed. When you start the program for the first time, specify the path to the arduino.exe executable file in the settings. To do this, go to the settings menu: Options -> Editor Settings. A window will appear in which you will need to specify the paths to the directory with the Arduino IDE and related libraries. We are now ready to write programs in Programino.
Step 2
The language used in this development environment is the same as in the original Arduino IDE - C. That is, in fact, if you are already writing sketches in the Arduino IDE, then you will not have to learn a new programming language, which is a big plus of this development environment.
However, in addition, this IDE offers such a convenient way of rapid development as code completion. That is, you don't have to constantly go through the Arduino command and method reference. You start typing the code, and the development environment prompts you to choose the one you want from the available options. For example, you type "digi" and the IDE offers you options: "digitalRead", "digitalWrite".
Let's write a simple sketch in which we will constantly poll one of the analog pins of the Arduino and output the readings to the serial port. Try typing the sketch by hand, rather than copying and pasting, to feel the convenience of Programino code completion.
Step 3
What else interesting does the Programino IDE offer? This development environment has several interesting tools available through the Tools menu. For example, notepad, LCD character designer, converter between DEC-BIN-HEX, serial port terminal, analog plotter and others.
Let's take a closer look at the Analog Plotter tool. This tool allows you to visualize what is coming into the COM port from the Arduino. This can be useful, for example, to display the readings of some analog sensors: temperature, humidity, pressure, illumination, and others.
For the plotter to work in the sketch, you need to activate the serial port at a speed of 19200 kb / s. The data is printed to the plotter using Serial.println (). Let's start an analog plotter. Press the Connect button to connect to the port to which we have an Arduino connected.
Step 4
Another interesting alternative to the Arduino IDE is B4R, or "Basic for Arduino". A link to the official site is also given at the end of the article. This development environment is interesting because it uses Basic language instead of C. It also supports code completion. Plus, it's completely free.
At the first start, the B4R environment also requires you to specify the path to the directory with the Arduino IDE, as well as, if necessary, additional non-standard libraries and common modules. These settings can be configured later via the Tools -> Configure Paths menu.
Step 5
Let's write a sketch like this and at the same time take a closer look at the B4R IDE.
In the central part there is a field for editing the code. On the right is the tabs area and the tabs themselves: available libraries, sketch modules, history and search. A tab with a magazine is open on the above photo. It can be seen that messages are displayed here, which are set in the program by the Log () command. In this development environment, you can set breakpoints, which is very useful in the debugging process, and also use bookmarks for faster navigation through the code.
You will not be able to start programming in this development environment right away, because it uses a different, more object-oriented language than the classic Arduino IDE, with a different syntax. However, the convenience of this environment and the availability of good guidance from the developers makes up for these disadvantages.
Step 6
There are other development environments for Arduino besides those listed. For example, Codeblocks. It has the same capabilities as those described by the IDE, so I will not describe it in more detail.
But now you know that there are alternative, much more convenient, development environments for Arduino. Using them will greatly simplify and speed up the development of your own sketches.
