Click here to Skip to main content
65,938 articles
CodeProject is changing. Read more.
Articles / IoT

Install Arduino IDE on Intel® IoT Platforms

5.00/5 (1 vote)
11 Jun 2015CPOL7 min read 8.3K  
This guide will teach you how to install the Arduino* IDE and connect to your Intel® Edison or Intel® Galileo board on Windows* OS, Mac* OS X, or Linux* OS.

This article is for our sponsors at CodeProject. These articles are intended to provide you with information on products and services that we consider useful and of value to developers

Get access to the new Intel® IoT Developer Kit, a complete hardware and software solution that allows developers to create exciting new solutions with the Intel® Galileo and Intel® Edison boards. Visit the Intel® Developer Zone for IoT.

Overview

This guide will teach you how to install the Arduino* IDE and connect to your Intel® Edison or Intel® Galileo board on Windows* OS, Mac* OS X, or Linux* OS.

Requirements

Choose your operating system

Install Arduino (Windows)

  1. If you haven't already, install 7zip, a free archive utility that can be downloaded at: www.7zip.org.
  2. Download the Arduino IDE from the Arduino Software page. Be sure to download the version for your operating system. Download the .zip file rather than the .exe file.
  3. Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the Arduino IDE .zip file.
  4. Right-click on the .zip file, point to 7-zip, and select Extract to "arduino-…".

    Image 1

    Figure 1 - Extract Arduino IDE with 7zip
  5. Open the extracted folder (Figure 2). You can move this folder wherever you want. A common place is to create a C:\Arduino folder. For this example, we will stick with the Downloads folder where it was extracted.

    Image 2

    Figure 2 - Open arduino.exe
  6. Double-click arduino.exe. The Arduino IDE opens.
  7. Choose Tools > Board > Boards Manager. The Boards Manager opens.

    Image 3
  8. In the list of boards, select your board type. For example, if you have an Intel Edison board, select Intel i686 Boards, which includes the Intel Edison board.
  9. Click Install. When the installation process is finished, click OK.

Now that you have installed the Arduino IDE, see

Blink example for Arduino IDE

for steps to run a sample application to blink an LED on your board. Install Arduino (Mac OS X)

  1. Download the Arduino IDE from the Software Downloads page. Be sure to download the version for your operating system.
  2. Navigate to the folder where you copied the Arduino IDE .zip file and double-click it to open the archive. This will unzip an application in the Downloads folder called Arduino.

    Image 4

    Figure 3 - Extraction window
  3. Rename the Arduino file ArduinoEdison or ArduinoGalileo and move it into Applications.

    Image 5

    Figure 4 - Arduino IDE in Applications
  4. Double-click your renamed file and this window should open.

    Image 6

    Figure 5 - The main Arduino IDE opening screen
  5. Choose Tools > Board > Boards Manager. The Boards Manager opens.

    Image 7
  6. In the list of boards, select your board type. For example, if you have an Intel Edison board, select Intel i686 Boards, which includes the Intel Edison board.
  7. Click Install.
  8. When the installation process is finished, click OK.

Now that you have installed the Arduino IDE, see Blink example for Arduino IDE

for steps to run a sample application to blink an LED on your board.

Install Arduino (Linux)

  1. To check if you have Java installed, open a terminal and enter the command:
    java

    Image 8

    Figure 6 - Install Java via command line
  2. If you see the above message, you do not have Java installed and you will need to install it. To install the Java package, enter the command:

    sudo apt-get install default.jre

    You may be prompted to enter your user password.

    Image 9

    Figure 7 - Java installation output
  3. Download the Arduino IDE from the Software Downloads page. Be sure to download the version for your operating system. Newer versions of Linux will use a .txz rather than a .tgz file type.
  4. Navigate to the folder where you copied the Arduino IDE .tgz or .txz file and double-click it to open the archive.
    Note: to decompress from the command line use xz use
    unxz IntelArduino-1.6.0-Linux64.txz
    
    if you don't have xz installed, use
    $ sudo apt-get install xz-utils 
    for Ubuntu or other debian-based machines
    or
    $ sudo yum install xz
    Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, or similar machines
  5. Click Extract and navigate to the directory where you would like to unzip the Arduino IDE. In this example, we will leave it in the Download directory. Click Extract.
  6. The extracted folder should contain a file named arduino, as well as several folders (Figure 8).

    Image 10

    Figure 8 - Arduino IDE folder after extraction
  7. Open up a new Terminal window.
  8. Navigate to the Arduino IDE folder. In in this example, the command will be cd Downloads/arduino-x.x.x/, where x.x.x is the Arduino IDE version number you downloaded.

    Note: When you start typing in cd Downloads/arduino, you can press Tab to auto-complete the folder path.

    Image 11
    Figure 9 - Navigate to the Arduino IDE folder via command line
  9. To run Arduino with administrator privileges, enter the command:

    sudo ./arduino.

    If prompted, enter your password. The Arduino IDE opens.

  10. In a serial communication window, check the availability of /ttyACM* port by entering the following command:

    ls /dev/ttyACM*

    Note: If the /ttyACM* port is not available, here are several reasons why:

    • The modem manager is using the port. When the port becomes active, the modem manager can claim the port, blocking the IDE's access to the port. The exact command to remove it will depend on your Linux distribution. For example, the command

      sudo apt-get remove modemmanager

      may work.
    • The /ttyACM port was not created automatically when you plugged in your board. To add the port, do the following:
      1. Create a file: etc/udev/rules.d/50-arduino.rules
      2. Add the following to the file:

        KERNEL=="ttyACM[0-9]*", MODE="0666"

      3. Restart udev by entering the following command:

        sudo service udev restart

        If you are using a virtual machine (VM), you may need to reboot Linux within the VM.

    Note: If you get a message asking if you want to visit the Arduino download page to update, select No.

  11. Choose Tools > Board > Boards Manager. The Boards Manager opens.

    Image 12
  12. In the list of boards, select your board type. For example, if you have an Intel Edison board, select Intel i686 Boards, which includes the Intel Edison board.
  13. Click Install.
  14. When the installation process is finished, click OK.

Now that you have installed the Arduino IDE, see Blink example for Arduino IDE

for steps to run a sample application to blink an LED on your board.

Troubleshooting

If you have any issues which you cannot resolve, see the Intel Edison Forums to post your questions and look for solutions.

Resources

  • For a good hardware primer, check out the Grove Starter Kit Wiki, which includes an overview and example code for all the hardware included in the Grove Starter Kit Plus. If you have other hardware, searching for the name of your hardware in conjunction with "Arduino" will come up with example code and libraries to use.

    Note: The Intel Edison board with the Arduino expansion board and the Intel Galileo board can be treated as an Arduino Uno and is compatible with all Arduino Uno sensor shields. However it should be noted that Pins 10 and 11 on the Intel Edison board are NOT in fact capable of variable voltage output (PWM), despite being marked so on the expansion board.

  • Edison Arduino Expansion Board Hardware Guide
  • Edison Arduino Expansion Board Schematic
  • Edison Breakout Board Hardware Guide (For Edison pinout, see page 9.)

Intel® Developer Zone for IoT

Start inventing today with the Intel® IoT Developer Program which offers knowledge, tools, kits and a community of experts to quickly and easily turn your innovative ideas into IoT Solutions.

Dream it, Build it with the Intel® IoT Developer Kit for Intel® Edison and Intel® Galileo platforms. These kits are versatile, performance-optimized and fully integrated end-to-end IoT solutions supporting a variety of programming environments, tools, security, cloud connectivity and hardware.

For more resources and to learn how the new Intel® IoT Developer Kit v1.0 can help streamline your IoT projects:

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)