Arduino IDE: the best alternatives
The Arduino IDE is a practical development environment for the Arduino. But for beginners and professionals there are some alternatives that make it even better. We'll tell you here which alternatives are worthwhile.
Visuino: program graphically instead of using the Arduino IDE
The Visuino software is aimed deliberately at developers who do not have much time for programming or who are very little experienced.
- When you create a new project, you always have an Arduino on the virtual "desk" at the beginning.
- With a right click you can change the model and adapt it to your personal Arduino. Accordingly, the model has more or fewer connection points for virtual cables.
- With Drag 'n' Drop you can easily drag various components or tools into the project. You will find their settings on the left edge of the screen. With a left click you can connect them to the Arduino with cables.
- Try it out and simply connect a digital out module to the Arduino for testing. At the end you can open the project with the Arduino IDE. The code is therefore automatically written for you.
Atmel Studio: The Arduino software directly from the manufacturer
Atmel Studio is software that was personally developed by the manufacturer of the Arduino MCUs.
- The software is well suited for developing and debugging programs for all AVR and SAM microcontrollers.
- Over 500 different MCUs can be programmed with it. There are also thousands of code examples.
- Unfortunately, the software with 887 MB is significantly larger than the normal Arduino IDE. The tool also only runs on Windows devices.
Xcode: Not only interesting for Apple
Xcode was originally intended only for programming Apple devices. But thanks to the broad community, the tool can be used extensively.
- Conveniently, an Arduino plugin can be installed, which enables you to program your Arduino via Xcode too.
- The programming is done as a C program. It hardly differs from that using the Arduino IDE.
- If you use Xcode anyway, you can save yourself another installation.
In the next article, you'll learn how to re-flash your Arduino's boot loader.