If you have been working with Arduino you may notice a small popup that tells you about a new update for Arduino IDE.
You may wonder if there are problems with getting the latest software because as you know its old systems may not work with the new software.
Recently an update came out for Arduino IDE 1.6.1. This version has quite a bit of changes from the old one and there are a few things you should know to help you get up to date on what has changed in this version. As for compatibility, it really depends what you are doing. Libraries should function the same but projects that go beyond just downloading to an Arduino UNO may have some issues.
For example, if you are programming an Attiny85 you may have to do some work to get it to work properly on this new software. I have confirmed though, that if you are using a teensy or sometimes called a teensyduino you are in luck because there is support for the new Arduino IDE. If you are using anything else not made by Arduino you may just have to do a quick Google search, I am sure there is plenty of help on any issues you may have.
So what lies in this new IDE software? First of all there was a BETA version out for quite a while and had some of the feature I will talk about, if you had version 1.0.6 all this will be new for you. Instead of listing all of the changes in a long list, I picked a couple to discuss because I feel that these are most important.
First upon installing the latest Arduino IDE you will notice that you will have to reinstall or update your drivers for your Arduino UNO. I do not know about other devices but I found it interesting that without the updated drivers my Arduino UNO would not show up in ports under tools. As far as I know, there were no fixes for the drivers other than making them compatible with the new IDE.
Another visible difference in this new IDE is the grouped boards and Port types. This feature is quite nice as it contributes to a cleaner look of the Arduino IDE. It is also easier to select the board you want to program. Though it is nice, I found that the Tools tab takes forever to pop up. This part is a little frustrating because on my computer it takes close to five seconds to open this tab up. When I am programming multiple Arduinos it is very frustrating to have to wait this long. It feels as if I did not click the tab. Sometimes I am fooled into clicking the tab again and it ends up not opening at all. I am assuming that this loading is caused by a scan that is done to find all the Arduinos plugged into the computer.
There are plenty of other small updates and fixes that this new version has like an option for 38400 baud rate, more info on memory usage when sketch is compiled, new libraries, and much more. You can actually read exactly what has been changed on Arduino’s website (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ReleaseNotes ). The final question is do you need to upgrade to the new Arduino IDE, of course because along with the visual changes there is a lot done on the insides to perfect libraries and fix bugs that will cause trouble in your Arduino experimentation.
You may wonder if there are problems with getting the latest software because as you know its old systems may not work with the new software.
Recently an update came out for Arduino IDE 1.6.1. This version has quite a bit of changes from the old one and there are a few things you should know to help you get up to date on what has changed in this version. As for compatibility, it really depends what you are doing. Libraries should function the same but projects that go beyond just downloading to an Arduino UNO may have some issues.
For example, if you are programming an Attiny85 you may have to do some work to get it to work properly on this new software. I have confirmed though, that if you are using a teensy or sometimes called a teensyduino you are in luck because there is support for the new Arduino IDE. If you are using anything else not made by Arduino you may just have to do a quick Google search, I am sure there is plenty of help on any issues you may have.
So what lies in this new IDE software? First of all there was a BETA version out for quite a while and had some of the feature I will talk about, if you had version 1.0.6 all this will be new for you. Instead of listing all of the changes in a long list, I picked a couple to discuss because I feel that these are most important.
First upon installing the latest Arduino IDE you will notice that you will have to reinstall or update your drivers for your Arduino UNO. I do not know about other devices but I found it interesting that without the updated drivers my Arduino UNO would not show up in ports under tools. As far as I know, there were no fixes for the drivers other than making them compatible with the new IDE.
Another visible difference in this new IDE is the grouped boards and Port types. This feature is quite nice as it contributes to a cleaner look of the Arduino IDE. It is also easier to select the board you want to program. Though it is nice, I found that the Tools tab takes forever to pop up. This part is a little frustrating because on my computer it takes close to five seconds to open this tab up. When I am programming multiple Arduinos it is very frustrating to have to wait this long. It feels as if I did not click the tab. Sometimes I am fooled into clicking the tab again and it ends up not opening at all. I am assuming that this loading is caused by a scan that is done to find all the Arduinos plugged into the computer.
There are plenty of other small updates and fixes that this new version has like an option for 38400 baud rate, more info on memory usage when sketch is compiled, new libraries, and much more. You can actually read exactly what has been changed on Arduino’s website (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ReleaseNotes ). The final question is do you need to upgrade to the new Arduino IDE, of course because along with the visual changes there is a lot done on the insides to perfect libraries and fix bugs that will cause trouble in your Arduino experimentation.
No comments:
Post a Comment