Installing Arduino IDE

In the last article unboxing and connecting the Arduino UNO was described. In this article how to install the IDE will be discussed. Primarily Fedora and Linux generic installation will be discussed.

Fedora

Fedora and all redhat derivatives uses yum for installation and de-installation. The easiest way to install Arduino IDE under Fedora is to issue the following command

~$ sudo yum install arduino

This command will download and install arduino package and its dependencies. After installation is complete, from terminal  bellow command should be issued.

~$ arduino

This will start the arduino IDE and flash a message box. The message box will ask to add the user to few groups;  Ok should be choosen here. Then it will show after the user login again changes will take effect. So just logging out and logging in is required at this point. Now the system is ready.

The arduino IDE can be started from terminal like above or it can be started from GUI Menu ( Programming -> Arduino ). Once the IDE is started, be familiarize with all the tabs and menu entries in arduino IDE. If arduino board is connected to the system via USB cable then "Tools" tab should be checked. Under "Tools" tab the "Boards" entry it should be checked and it should show the board attached or else the board should be selected manually.

 Next the "Serial Port" entry under the "Tools" tab should be checked. it should be enabled and should show the port, to which Arduino board is connected. In my case it shows "Arduino UNO" ( This is default) and "Serial Port /dev/ttyUSB0".

Hello World

Till this point it seems good. It is time to try out some adventures. for this purpose Select "File -> Examples -> basic -> blink". Corresponding sketch will be opened. Then from "Sketch" tab "Compile/Verify" should be selected. this will Compile the sketch. Next "Upload" should be selected from "Files" tab. When the uploading completes, a message will be flashed. 

Great ... The LED is blinking.

Concluding Remarks  

Here we discussed yum based installation. It is suitable for lazy and Dummies like me. But if some one want to try the harder way then please download the sources and be prepared to wait at least 3 hours until your cross compiler is ready and then manually setup everything. I am afraid of doing this adventure but this will teach how or what are the steps needed for cross compiler generation and setting up a cross compiler environment, Very Good exposure...

Blink sketch is just to check if the whole setup is working properly or not. One can try few other sketches from example too.

This concludes our second instalment in Arduino adventure. Stay tuned for the next instalment.

NOTE:  A nice document describing installation methods is available from Sparkfun here.