Introduction to Arduino IDE | The Complete guide to IoT

In this Article we will know all about Arduino IDE and its components. The Arduino IDE is an open-source software that makes it very easy to write the program and upload it t the board or you can say to the microcontroller. As we have seen previously how difficult it was to remember the opcode and program microprocessor without using any software. But Arduino IDE makes our task very easy and efficient.

It is a cross platform tool means this software is available for various operating system like Windows, macOS, Linux. This software i.e the IDE on which we are working is written in JAVA language.

Know More about Arduino IDE and its Components

In Arduino IDE the program is written in slightly modified C, C++ language using special rules of code structuring. This software helps use to burn our code into the Arduino board and the burning of the code is not permanent i.e you can reprogram it if you want to change the content of the Arduino Board i.e they are Re Writable and the code remains there until new code is uploaded.

Arduino IDE also allows us to include 3rd party libraries to make our task easier and also we can program other boards which are not made by Arduino. This makes the Arduino IDE to program wide range of Boards make it more popular.

You can use this software with any Arduino Board.

How Arduino Board understand our code

Now do you know that C, C++, JAVA, Python are High level language it means the syntax of these programs can only be understood by the human beings as they are in normal English language. But computers don't understand English the only thing they understand is Zeros(0) and Ones(1). So the code written by us in these language must be converted into the machine readable form, to do so there are various steps involved this diagram depicts the same…

Here pre-processor, compiler, assembler, loader/linker are programs that convert one form of code to another and finally to machine code.

Similarly Arduino IDE also have a program known as avrdude to convert the executable code into hexadecimal code which will be loaded into the Arduino board.

With the rising popularity of Arduino as a software platform, other vendors has started to implement custom open source compilers & tools (cores) that can build and upload sketches to other MCUs that are not supported by Arduino’s official line of MCUs.

This is what Arduino IDE looks like

Arduino IDE have title bar, menu bar, toolbar with some common functions, editor to write and edit your code or program which you will be burning into the board, message area etc. we will discuss each and everything in detail.

Sketches

The text we write in notepad is called text file, the image in paint it is known as image file similarly in Arduino the file in which we save the code is called sketch, Interesting ?

Whenever you create a new file in Arduino its name start with sketch_monthDate(a/b/c..).ino example sketch_apr29a.ino you can save it by any custom name you want. The extension of Arduino sketch is .ino The title bar displays the name of the sketch file.

The menu bar consist of File, Edit, Tools, Sketch, Help lets discuss them one by one

File

• New
  Creates a new sketch with basic structure known as Bare Minimum code.
• Open
  Allow to open the saved sketches.
• Open Recent
  Gives the list of recently used Arduino sketches.
• Sketchbook
  Shows the sketches saved in My Document > Arduino folder.
• Examples
  It is best place to start and experiment by yourself, Arduino provides bunch of good examples to start your Arduino coding. Along with this it also contains examples of third party libraries which we will learn to install later.
• Close
  Closes the sketch.
• Save
  Saves the sketch with the current name. If its first time it will prompt to choose the name of the file.
• Save as…
  Allows to save the current sketch with a different name.
• Page Setup
  It shows the Page Setup window for printing.
• Print
  Sends the current sketch to the printer according to the settings defined in Page Setup.
• Preferences
  Opens the Preferences window where some settings of the IDE may be customized, as the language of the IDE interface.
• Quit
  Closes all IDE windows.

Edit

• Undo/Redo
  Undo or Redo your code content. i.e the code that you are writing can be brought to a previous version if you made any mistake.
• Cut
  This option removes the selected part of the code and place that content into the clipboard.
• Copy
  It copies the selected content to the clipboard.
• Copy for Forum
  It copies the selected part of the code with formatted version not like normal text, which is easy to paste in forums and ask your queries regarding any err faced.
• Copy as HTML
  Copies the selected part of the code to the clipboard as HTML, suitable for embedding in web pages.
• Paste
  Paste the content of the clipboard starting from the editor pointer.
• Select All
  It selects all code of the sketch.
• Comment/Uncomment
  Comment is a part of the code which is written only for the users to understand the code and what that particular part of the code is doing it is not compiled and put into the Arduino board while uploading the code. So this option makes the selected text as comment and remove the comment if already commented.
• Increase/Decrease Indent
  Adds or Removes the space from the starting of the particular line in the code.
• Find
  Opens the Find and Replace window from which you can find a part or syntax in the long code easily generally it is if your code is too long..
• Find Next
  Highlights the next occurrence – if any during the finding process as discussed above.
• Find Previous
  Highlights the previous occurrence – if any during the finding process as discussed above.

Sketch

• Verify/Compile
  It compiles and checks your sketch for errors.
• Upload
  Before uploading it compiles the code if no err is fount then it upload it ti the Arduino Board
• Upload Using Programmer
  This will overwrite the boot loader on the board; Will explain with example later…
• Export Compiled Binary
  Saves a .hex file.
• Show Sketch Folder
  Opens the current sketch folder.
• Include Library
  You can insert any library into your program through this menu or by manually adding a library to your sketch by inserting #include statements at the start of your code. We will learn how to manage libraries in our upcoming articles…
• Add File…
  Adds a source file to the sketch it will be helpful if your code is too long or if you are adding image or audio hex file and you want to keep it separate of main code for simplicity. We will learn this topic later in detail.

Tools

• Auto Format
  As the name suggest it auto format your code to look nice.
• Archive Sketch
  Compress the sketch into a zip file.
• Fix Encoding & Reload
  It fixes character mapping encoding according to Operating System.
• Serial Monitor
  Opens the Serial Monitor this is the toll we will be using mostly, almost in all of the program. It is a dialogue box which have a input area and a output area. The input can be given the the user when the program in the board is running. And the output part is for displaying the output if any sent by your board which must be programmed into the board. This Serial Monitor option is only available if your Arduino or any board is connected via USB to your PC/ Laptop and desired board and port is selected. More about serial monitor will be discussed later.
• Board
  It has the option to choose among the wide variety of boards which Arduino IDE supports. In our upcoming article we will be using Arduino Uno board so select this option only. We will discover more boards and in those articles we will discuss how to install new boards.
• Port
  This option gives the serial devices connected to your PC / Laptop. Choose the port which says Arduino. It is a COM port i.e communication port.
• Programmer
  We do not need this option. Because we will use on board programmer chip(previous article) to program our Arduino through USB.
• Burn Boot loader
  This is not required for normal use of an Arduino UNO boards.

Help

This menu contains various options for help on getting started with our first project etc.

• Find in Reference
  This option will find the help or reference of the selected syntax on the internet provided by their official website.

The Editor

The area inside the red colored box is the editor and it has every function to simplify and improve your coding speed.

The Message Area

This area gives message about all the event going on like file saving, compiling message, compiling error if any etc. At the bottom right corner of this message area is the area which display the board selected and port selected and some more information.

The Toolbar below menu bar

These are some highly used options so instead of going through menu simply click these tools for doing your required task. It have options for Verify/ Compile , Upload, New, Open, Save and Serial Monitor

So this was all about introduction to Arduino IDE in our upcoming articles you will learn how to write code, what is syntax, How to find error, How to select board and port and Upload your code, How to use Serial Monitor any many more so stay tuned, keep visiting

How did you like this post. Was it informative, Did you understood all the points, What problem you faced during reading this article. Do you have any doubts or any query…

Comment Down each and everything I am eager to hear from you.

In the next article we will look and understand what are LED’s so that we can build our first project. Till then KEEP LEARNING