Installing the Arduino IDE on the Raspberry Pi
The free Arduino IDE lets you develop for many types of Arduino boards (including the ESP8266) on many types of computers (Windows, Macintosh and Linux). Arduino recently released a version of the Arduino IDE for Linux ARM based computers. Imagine doing development work using a $35 Raspberry Pi computer instead of a PC or Mac that costs hundreds of dollars!
Preparation
It’s best to have the latest version of Raspbian Jessie with Pixel on your Raspberry Pi. The latest image of Raspbian Jessie with Pixel can be downloaded from
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
Details as to downloading the Raspbian Stretch image file and and installing it on a mini SD card can be found at: https://medium.com/@ronm333/buying-a-raspberry-pi-3-and-installing-raspbian-stretch-7a05be4a1f0
If you already have Raspian Stretch on your Raspberry Pi, you can update/upgrade by typing:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgradefrom a terminal window.
Downloading the Arduino IDE to Your Raspberry Pi
Go to: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and scroll down to see:
Click on Linux ARM. The software will be downloaded to your Downloads folder as: arduino-1.8.1-linuxarm.tar.xy You can use the Archiever application that came with the Pixel distribution to extract this tar file.
Open the applications menu by clicking on the raspberry icon at the upper left. Under Accessories click on Archiever.
To open the file you just downloaded, click on the Archiver menu and select Open. Navigate to your Downloads folder and select: arduino-1.8.1-linuxarm.tar.xy Wait until the red/green light at the lower right stops flashing.
In the Action Menu select Extract Files. The dialog box below appears.
Be sure to select “All files” and “Extract files with full path”. Click on the Extract button.
The final step is to install the Arduino IDE software. Open a Terminal window and type: cd Downloads. Type ls and press return. The directory, arduino-1.8.1 should be there. This contains the abstracted files. Change to this directory by typing cd arduino-1.8.1 and pressing return.
Now type sudo ./install.sh and press return. This installs the Arduino IDE.
The installer adds a new item to the Raspberry Pi’s applications menu (named Electronics). Click on it and select Arduino IDE.
My next post is an introduction to using the WeMOS D1 R2 mini board with the Arduino IDE.
