2.00b Toy Product Design
Let's Play - Toobers!
Electronics 2Installing the Arduino IDE
Set Up your Computer for Programming
We'll be using an Arduino "Integrated Development Environment" (IDE). An IDE is a program made for editing code files. Although code files are text files and could be edited in a text-editing program, an IDE usually includes many features that help make programming easier. The Arduino IDE not only lets us write and edit programs for the Arduino microcontrollers, it also helps us to upload the programs to the Arduino microcontrollers.
There are two versions of the Arduino IDE: a web-based Arduino Web Editor and a desktop version of the Arduino IDE for Windows or Mac OS. We strongly recommend that you use the desktop version instead of the web version, since the board driver management is all contained within the desktop software. If you choose to use the web-based version, you will also need to use a separate plugin to manage the connection between the microcontroller and your computer. The plugin is sometimes a bit flaky. We will be supporting the desktop version in this class (i.e., that is what the staff will be most familiar with, and the screenshots in these instructions will be from the desktop version).
Windows Arduino IDE Installation
To install the Windows version of the Arduino IDE:
- Go to the Arduino software downloads page.
- Click on the "Windows Win 7 and newer" option.
- On the subsequent page, click the "Just Download" button (or contribute, if you wish) and the installer will start to download onto your computer.
- Once the download is finished, "Open" the installer.
- The installer will start. Agree to everything. There may be a number of popups asking for various permissions.
Once the installer is complete, there will be a shortcut to the Arduino IDE on your desktop, or a square in the Windows 10 interface. Watch the video below for a demonstration of the steps above. (Caveat: events in the video take longer than shown!)
Mac OS Arduino IDE Installation
To install the Mac OS version of the Arduino IDE:
- Go to the Arduino software downloads page.
- Click on the "Mac OS X 10.10 or newer" option.
- On the subsequent page, click the "Just Download" button (or contribute, if you wish) and the installation zip file will start to download onto your computer.
- Once the download is finished, "Open" the installation zip file. The zip file will uncompress and Finder will open with the contents of the zip file.
- Drag the Arduino application to the Applications folder.
- (Optional) Drag the Arduino application to your Dock.
Watch the video below for a demonstration of the steps above. (Caveat: events in the video take longer than shown!)
Open the Arduino IDE
Go ahead and click on the icon that downloaded to open the Arduino IDE. If you see a nice teal-looking text editor, you're all set for lab! See you soon!