Installing the Arduino IDE on a Raspberry Pi 3

Installing the Arduino IDE on a Raspberry Pi 3

The Arduino IDE is free software used for writing and uploading programming code to Arduino microcontrollers. Here we show how to install it on a Raspberry Pi.

The Arduino IDE is free software used for writing and uploading programming code to Arduino microcontroller. Here we show how to install it on a Raspberry Pi.

Introduction

The Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE), or Arduino Software, is free software that is maintained by Arduino.cc.

It is basically a text editor for writing and uploading programming code to the Arduino and Genuino microcontroller boards which can be installed on a personal computer or run from their website.

The Arduino IDE is available for all the major operating systems, but this post will show how to install it on a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian Jessie or later.

Assumptions/requirements

Fully functional Raspberry Pi 3B (or later) with a keyboard, mouse and screen running Raspbian Jessie (or later). A connection to the internet is also required.

Installing the software

To make sure Raspbian is up to date using the following terminal commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing the Arduino IDE on a Raspberry Pi 3

Install Arduino IDE with:

sudo apt-get install arduino

To open, pull down the Menu and select Arduino IDE under Electronics.

Uploading the first sketch

After using the appropriate cable to connect the Arduino board to the Raspberry Pi, open the Arduino IDE.

To choose the type of Arduino board go to Tools > Board > and select the appropriate one. To select the port the Arduino is connected to, look under Serial Port under the Tools menu.

Example sketches can be chosen from Examples under the File menu. To test if everything is working choose Examples > 01.Basics > Blink. After pressing the Upload button (->) the Arduino’s onboard LED should start to blink on and off at one-second intervals.

The sketches directory

The default location for saved sketches is /home/pi/sketchbook. The libraries directory is also located here.

To make a quick backup of all the sketches including the sketches and libraries directories use:

sudo cp -rp /home/pi/sketchbook /copy-to-directory

After a fresh install, this backup can be retrieved by using:

sudo cp -rp /copy-from-directory /home/pi

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