Customs the Arduino IDE

Arduino IDE

• Arduino 1.0.5
• Arduino 1.5.x
• Arduino 1.6.x
Arduino 1.0.5

• The Arduino IDE (at least since 1.05) has the wonderful
capability of being customizable for new types of hardware.
You can add code that supports pin/port assignments or even
new kinds of processors (such as the xmega) by re-writing
the core libraries and headers and placing them into new
directories within the Arduino environment directories.
Arduino 1.0.5

• boards.txt
• The most important single file is the 'boards.txt' file, located in the
following directory:
• {ARDUINO}/hardware/arduino/boards.txt
• where '{ARDUINO}' represents the directory into which the Arduino
IDE and supporting files have been installed. This may be
'/usr/local/arduino' or '/usr/share/arduino' or one of many OTHER
possible choices depending on your operating system.
ARDUINO 1.0.5
ARDUINO 1.0.5

• The prefix ('uno' in this case) is unique for a particular board.

So if you create a new board, you would write a similar
section and add it to 'boards.txt', with 'myboard' (or
whatever) in place of 'uno' at the beginning of each string,
and modify the description accordingly.
ARDUINO 1.0.5

• Custom Libraries
• Sometimes you will need to customize a standard library for your own
use. Unfortunately this may be due to the fact that, all too often, the
libraries don't support your hardware properly, and/or do NOT have the
common decency to mark members as 'protected' rather than 'private'
(forcing you to edit the library or clone it, rather than creating a derived
class). Fortunately, the Arduino IDE allows you to put your own libraries
into a user-specific location:

• {SKETCHBOOK}/libraries
• Where '{SKETCHBOOK}' is the location of your default sketchbook
repository (as specified in 'preferences').
ARDUINO 1.0.5

• Custom Libraries
• The Arduino IDE will look in {SKETCHBOOK}/libraries for matching
library names when you '#include' a header file in the main 'INO' (or
PDE) file. So you will always need to specify the header file in the main
'INO' file so that the Arduino IDE can locate it (along with any source
files).

• Additional information about custom libraries can be found here:

http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries

• See also the official Arduino IDE 1.5+ Library specification

Arduino 1.5.x

• Hardware Folders structure

• The new hardware folders have a hierarchical structure organized in
two levels:
• the first level is the vendor/maintainer
• the second level is the supported architecture A vendor/maintainer can
have multiple supported architectures.
Arduino 1.5.x

• Hardware Folders structure

• For example, below we have three hardware vendors called "arduino",
"yyyyy" and "xxxxx":
hardware/arduino/avr/... - Arduino - AVR Boards
hardware/arduino/sam/... - Arduino - SAM (32bit ARM) Boards
hardware/yyyyy/avr/... - Yyy - AVR
hardware/xxxxx/avr/... - Xxx - AVR
• the vendor "arduino" has two supported architectures (AVR and SAM),
while "xxxxx" and "yyyyy" have only AVR.
Arduino 1.5.x

• Architecture configurations
Each architecture must be configured through a set of
configuration files:
• platform.txt contains definitions for the CPU architecture used
(compiler, build process parameters, tools used for upload, etc.)

• boards.txt contains definitions for the boards (board name,

parameters for building and uploading sketches, etc.)

• programmers.txt contains definitions for external programmers

(typically used to burn bootloaders or sketches on a blank CPU/board)
Arduino 1.5.x

• Comments
Lines starting with # are treated as comments and will be
ignored

# Like in this example

# --------------------
# I'm a comment!
Arduino 1.5.x

• platform.txt
The platform.txt file contains information about a platform's specific aspects
(compilers command line flags, paths, system libraries, etc.).

• The following meta-data must be defined:

name=Arduino AVR Boards

version=1.5.3

• The name will be shown in the Boards menu of the Arduino IDE.
• The version is currently unused, it is reserved for future use (probably
together with the libraries manager to handle dependencies on cores).
Arduino 1.5.x

• platform.txt
The platform.txt file contains information about a platform's specific aspects
(compilers command line flags, paths, system libraries, etc.).

• The following meta-data must be defined:

name=Arduino AVR Boards

version=1.5.3

• The name will be shown in the Boards menu of the Arduino IDE.
• The version is currently unused, it is reserved for future use (probably
together with the libraries manager to handle dependencies on cores).
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• This file contains definitions and meta-data for the boards

supported. Every board must be referred through its short
name, the board ID. The settings for a board are defined
through a set of properties with keys having the board ID as
prefix.
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• For example the board ID chosen for the Arduino Uno board is
"uno". An extract of the Uno board configuration (in boards.txt file)
looks like:

[......]
uno.name=Arduino Uno
uno.build.mcu=atmega328p
uno.build.f_cpu=16000000L
uno.build.board=AVR_UNO
uno.build.core=arduino
uno.build.variant=standard
[......]
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• Note that all the relevant keys start with the board
ID uno.xxxxx.
• The uno.name property contains the name of the board
shown in the Boards menu of the Arduino IDE.
• The uno.build.board property is used to set a compile-time
variableARDUINO_{build.board} to allow use of
conditional code between #ifdefs.
• The Arduino IDE automatically generate a build.board value
if not defined. In this case the variable defined at compile
time will be ARDUINO_AVR_UNO.
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• The other properties will override the corresponding global

properties of the IDE when the user selects the board. These
properties will be globally available, in other configuration
files too, without the board ID prefix:

uno.build.mcu => build.mcu

uno.build.f_cpu => build.f_cpu
uno.build.board => build.board
uno.build.core => build.core
uno.build.variant => build.variant
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• this explains the presence of {build.mcu} or {build.board} in

the platform.txt recipes: their value is overwritten
respectively by {uno.build.mcu} and {uno.build.board}
when the Uno board is selected!
Arduino 1.5.x

boards.txt

• Moreover the IDE automatically provides the following properties:

• {build.core.path}
• - The path to the selected board's core folder
• (for example hardware/arduino/avr/core/arduino)
• {build.system.path}
• - The path to the selected platform's system folder if available
• (for example hardware/arduino/sam/system)
• {build.variant.path}
• - The path to the selected board variant folder
• (for example hardware/arduino/avr/variants/micro)
Arduino 1.5.x

• Custom board menus

• The board used in the example is the Arduino Duemilanove: this
board was produced in two models one with an ATmega168 CPU
and another with an ATmega328.
• We are going then to define a custom menu "Processor" that allows
the user to choose between the two different microcontrollers.

• We must first define a set of menu.MENU_ID=Text properties. Text is

what is displayed on the GUI for every custom menu we are going
to create and must be declared at the beginning of the boards.txt
file:
Arduino 1.5.x

• We have defined two options: "ATmega328" and

"ATmega168".
• Note that the property keys must follow the format
BOARD_ID.menu.MENU_ID.OPTION_ID=Text.
• Finally, the specific configuration for every option:
Arduino 1.5.x

• [.....]
• ## Arduino Duemilanove w/ ATmega328
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega328=ATmega328
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega328.upload.maximum_size=30720
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega328.upload.speed=57600
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega328.build.mcu=atmega328p

• ## Arduino Duemilanove w/ ATmega168

• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega168=ATmega168
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega168.upload.maximum_size=14336
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega168.upload.speed=19200
• duemilanove.menu.cpu.atmega168.build.mcu=atmega168
• [.....]
Arduino 1.6.x

• 1.6.3
• The new Board Manager solves those issues. We had figured
out a way to add custom boards in v1.6.3 of the Arduino IDE,
but it was not officially supported by Arduino. Thanks to the
hard work of Federico Fissore and the Arduino developer
community, we can now add new boards just as easily using
officially supported methods. Let's get started.
Arduino 1.6.x

• 1.6.4
• Version 1.6.4 of the Arduino IDE introduced official support
for adding third party boards (like the Adafruit Flora and
Trinket) to the new Board Manager. This addition is great
news, because it allows users to quickly add new boards with
the click of a button. Previously the addition of new boards
required a cumbersome manual installation process, or in
certain cases, the download of a completely separate version
of the IDE with the new boards added.
Arduino 1.6.x

• Index packet .json format

• https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-IDE-1.6.x---
package_index.json-format-specification

• https://
github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Unofficial-list-of-3rd-party-b
oards-support-urls