Electronic engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil,
e-mail: <patrickelectric at gmail dot com>
The actual Arduino IDE, was initially created with Java and is still a simple IDE that does not provides autocompletion, sentence errors, assembly visualizer, field for compiling and linking flags, syntax highlighting and other features present in both Kdevelop and Qt Creator.
The other alternative IDEs for Arduino are:
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PROGRAMINO IDE: It provides good features and development options, but isn't a free or open source software.
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PlatformIO IDE: A good substitute to Arduino IDE. It's a modified Atom version, Doesn' have assembly visualization, serial plotting, data loggging and other important tools. It's written in CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Less and HTML.
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Embrio: An easy variable visualization ambient with real-time" plot with code editor. But, isn't free or open source.
Some developers and educators say that Arduino IDE isn't as good and comfortable as a development ambient for higher education and development. In order to the to fix this situations, the development of Arduino plugins for KDevelop, Qt creator, Visual Studio and Eclipse began, but generally the setup for such plugins is complicated and it's necessary a good understanding of these IDEs and OS'a ambient functionality.
Here I will showcase some of the features that I propose to implement. Right now I'm the second biggest contributor of a project called ArduIDE, a C++ IDE to help with software development to Arduino boards.
The initial idea is to work with KDevelop to port some implemented features that already exist in others embedded systems IDE, like: memory map view, assembly visualizer and others.
Some of the goals are:
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Port Arduino support from 1.6.0 to last Arduino version into KDevelop.
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Port and create others features like:
- Board selector.
- Clock selector.
- Serial monitor.
- Assembly visualization.
- Compilation flags editor.
- Real-time plotting with serial input, with integrator and derivator plot.
- Real-time data logging.
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Perform the upload process for Arduino boards with AVR processors.
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Perform the upload process for Arduino boards with ARM processors.
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(If time isn't a problem) Realize the upload process for Arduino boards with x86 processors.
With all Arduino features implemented, the development of ARM processors can start:
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Implement same features of Arduino development with ARM processors.
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Add support to JTAGs(Joint Test Action Group) with OpenOCD.
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Add GDB debugger with OpenOCD interface.
This section shows the estimated timeline of the project.
- Download and install tools.
Initial week, change ArduIDE features from Qt4 to Qt5 in KDevelop. Almost everything in ArduIDE is done with Qt4, Grantlee and QScintilla
It's possible to replace grantlee with QML since ArduIDE create only a dynamic webpage with examples and libraries installed on the system. Right now a good part of ArduIDE it's in Qt5 in my personal repository but isn't finished yet.
Some of the features that already exist in ArduIDE that will be ported to KDvelop:
- Board selector
- Clock selector
- Serial monitor
- Assembly visualization
- Compilation flags
After the transition from Qt4 to Qt5, the IDE needs to be updated to the last version of Arduino software and be compatible with the boards.
Test the software compatibility and programmability of KDevelop with Arduino's source code and libraries. After that, a plugin will be created to manage what kind of embedded system the project will use during the development, this same plugin will manage other plugins that will provide a variable system development. In the beginning will be only one children plugin to manage the Arduino environment and process. To perform such boards and processors management it's possible to use a generic makefile to compile and upload the project to Arduino boards. With selectors menu, like Board and processor clock, it's possible to use the Kdevelop module called Sublime with a drop-down menu in toolbar that will be display the options to the user, and with this information it's possible to modify a generic Arduino makefile to manage the project compiling and upload process.
The data-log can be added in a Dock, the same back-end of data-log can be used to the a plot system that will provide in the same Dock a user visualization tool to display the output data of the board.
With all Arduino AVR boards working, the process of Arduino ARM boards begun. Unlike the AVR boards which use avrdude, the ARM boars use bossac to perform the upload process. The same process of Arduino AVR can be used with the Arduino ARM boards, using a generic makefile, but with bossac and arm-none-eabi-binutils in the place of avrdude. The Arduino X86 boards uses a script to perform the compile and upload process. If time isn't a problem until now in the project the implementation of such feature will be performed. With arm-none-eabi-binutils we already have a .bin, .elf or .hex to be uploaded to an ARM processor. It's necessary something between the processor and the computer to realize the upload process, this thing it's called JTAG or programmer interface, can it be a Pirate BUS, JTAG, DTAG and ICSP interface or a simple FTDI232R/H to realize the midfield to the in-chip JTAG. It's possible to communicate with all this interfaces with OpenOCD, a list with all possible interfaces can be located here. Using OpenOCD can be a bit complicated but not impossible !
If the last point finish with success, this part can be done without so much problems. With a OpenOCD link with the board interface, it's possible to use the GDB with a remote access to the socket door that OpenOCD open to realize the communication with GDB and the hardware components of the processor debug. With all this steps done, we have created a awesome embedded system platform with our friend KDevelop :) The last week will be reserved to solve some bugs and finish some points in the documentation of the project.
- Download/Clone the repository (
git clone repository.git) - Create a build folder (
mkdir build && cd build) - Configure (
cmake ..), if you are using KDevelop from source (cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=PathToKDE5) - Compile and install (
make install)
The debug can be done using the output of qCDebug() function.
- Turn the debug variable true (
export QT_LOGGING_RULES="Kdev.embedded*.debug=true") - Highlight and show debug messages (
kdevelop 2>&1 | grep Kdev.embedded)
If you want to help us if a bug appears, please use kdevelop 2>&1 | grep Kdev.embedded > kdev-embedded-log.txt to save the debug message and send to us.