I applaud you for coming up with a great idea, working hard on getting it running and sharing it with others so it can benefit them. It may not mean much to those who now use avrdude from command line or other text editors with plugins, but I remember how difficult it was when I was just starting out, and Arduino IDE was even more painful back then. This can really help out a lot of beginners and even professionals who sell boards for a living. I fully support this, and I believe it'll increase development speed a lot, especially the COM port buttons if you're programming a whole panel of boards. Speaking of panels, that was a very exciting behind the scenes images of Moteino boards! Also, please do a pull request to main Arduino, it totally needs to be there. Maybe tweak the bg color a bit to match the IDE theme? Thanks a lot for sharing! If there's a place to donate to Lowpowerlab, I totally would.
Appreciate the feedback, maybe I will do a video on various jigs I made for testing and programming. Yes avrdude is easy to use from the command line. The IDE has some advantages where when testing a board over avrdude. You can support LowPowerLab by getting a Moteino or other products at: lowpowerlab.com/shop/ Thanks!
@Felix if you don't have time to submit a PR for this to Arduino (or pretty it up and add some additional option fields like the number of recent boards to keep track of) I'm interested in contributing to it and polishing it up for a PR.
That would be awesome, I tried to do it one day but then I realized I modified other things others might not want (like replacing compile/upload shortcuts and and the "Uploading..." text) plus there are other changes at the HEAD compared to my 1.8.5 which might needs some checking. Probably not a lot of effort, just building and testing a little locally. I didn't add a recent-boards-limit since you have the CLEAR button, plus if there's more than the window width, they are hidden, some may think this is a bug though. It works well for me , I usually keep 3-5 most common boards that I switch between a lot. Would be nice to see this merge into the Arduino repo. Next up would be nice to skip recompile/checking if nothing changed in the sketch code and it's the same hex upload (skip everything and call avrdude or the upload app). That would save quite a few seconds every upload. Also skipping the verify step would save a ton of time - can be done with avrdude for instance (saves half the upload time roughly - useful for testing). When I ever get a day or two off (LOL!) maybe I can take a dive into figuring these things out, or maybe someone brave like you can do it :) Until then, using avrdude + the current IDE addon is pretty useful at least for me. If you're up to this in any capacity we can keep in touch and I will assist as much as I can - lowpowerlab.com/contact Thanks!
I am! I'm currently working a few projects and am a bit busy so can't guarantee I'd have anything super soon, but improving the GUI with changes like yours and a multitude of other things has been on my backburner for years. This gives me some examples and a place to start.
Downloaded your modified IDE and could not get it to launch, after installing, only my original IDE was found when I did a search for the modified IDE?
It is standalone so no install required, just unzip and run the arduino.exe from its own folder (you can also shortcut it to desktop). Thats the exact version you see in the video.
Rewatching your video and following all the links. You state : "If here’s enough interest maybe I can put together a pull request to Arduino. " Believe me I have thought the same thing in the form of why don't they make this easier? And I believe not enought has stumbled onto your add-on therefore don't comment on it.
Or, you know, install sublime text + stino, and get a text editor that isn't flaming garbage. Or move to platformio (which can be used via Sublime Text + deviot), and it can store configurations on a per-project basis. There's platformio support in atom too, if sublime text not being open source bothers you. Basically, if you're still using the arduino crappy-text-editor-with-a-macro-button they have the enormous gall to call an "IDE", well, **WHY**?
Connor Wolf Haters got to hate. Yes Felix could use another IDE but to each his own. You're missing the point here. He selflessly shared a fix to a problem he was having with the only hope that it would help someone else out.
Not everyone is as expert coder as you might be and they are more concerned with starting to learn how to code. There is still a huge user base for Arduino and that's where most people start, more notably because Arduino is still pretty easy to start with and well documented compared to something like platformio. This video addresses that audience which might not feel very enlightened when called garbage users. I am forced to regularly use the IDE for testing as part of catering to that market. Thanks for your very substantially passional comments :-)
Platformio's UI is just as, if not more confusing and cumbersome as Arduino's IDE is with regard to selecting boards and COM ports. While kind of ugly, this is much better than both solutions offer. I've been meaning to submit some changes like this to the official IDE repo for years. Props to Felix for actually doing it.
I applaud you for coming up with a great idea, working hard on getting it running and sharing it with others so it can benefit them. It may not mean much to those who now use avrdude from command line or other text editors with plugins, but I remember how difficult it was when I was just starting out, and Arduino IDE was even more painful back then. This can really help out a lot of beginners and even professionals who sell boards for a living. I fully support this, and I believe it'll increase development speed a lot, especially the COM port buttons if you're programming a whole panel of boards. Speaking of panels, that was a very exciting behind the scenes images of Moteino boards!
Also, please do a pull request to main Arduino, it totally needs to be there. Maybe tweak the bg color a bit to match the IDE theme?
Thanks a lot for sharing! If there's a place to donate to Lowpowerlab, I totally would.
Appreciate the feedback, maybe I will do a video on various jigs I made for testing and programming. Yes avrdude is easy to use from the command line. The IDE has some advantages where when testing a board over avrdude. You can support LowPowerLab by getting a Moteino or other products at: lowpowerlab.com/shop/
Thanks!
@Felix if you don't have time to submit a PR for this to Arduino (or pretty it up and add some additional option fields like the number of recent boards to keep track of) I'm interested in contributing to it and polishing it up for a PR.
That would be awesome, I tried to do it one day but then I realized I modified other things others might not want (like replacing compile/upload shortcuts and and the "Uploading..." text) plus there are other changes at the HEAD compared to my 1.8.5 which might needs some checking. Probably not a lot of effort, just building and testing a little locally. I didn't add a recent-boards-limit since you have the CLEAR button, plus if there's more than the window width, they are hidden, some may think this is a bug though. It works well for me , I usually keep 3-5 most common boards that I switch between a lot.
Would be nice to see this merge into the Arduino repo.
Next up would be nice to skip recompile/checking if nothing changed in the sketch code and it's the same hex upload (skip everything and call avrdude or the upload app). That would save quite a few seconds every upload. Also skipping the verify step would save a ton of time - can be done with avrdude for instance (saves half the upload time roughly - useful for testing). When I ever get a day or two off (LOL!) maybe I can take a dive into figuring these things out, or maybe someone brave like you can do it :)
Until then, using avrdude + the current IDE addon is pretty useful at least for me.
If you're up to this in any capacity we can keep in touch and I will assist as much as I can - lowpowerlab.com/contact
Thanks!
I am! I'm currently working a few projects and am a bit busy so can't guarantee I'd have anything super soon, but improving the GUI with changes like yours and a multitude of other things has been on my backburner for years. This gives me some examples and a place to start.
This will be use so much, I can't tell you enough!
Nice idea!
Downloaded your modified IDE and could not get it to launch, after installing, only my original IDE was found when I did a search for the modified IDE?
It is standalone so no install required, just unzip and run the arduino.exe from its own folder (you can also shortcut it to desktop). Thats the exact version you see in the video.
Rewatching your video and following all the links.
You state : "If here’s enough interest maybe I can put together a pull request to Arduino. "
Believe me I have thought the same thing in the form of why don't they make this easier? And I believe not enought has stumbled onto your add-on therefore don't comment on it.
Or, you know, install sublime text + stino, and get a text editor that isn't flaming garbage.
Or move to platformio (which can be used via Sublime Text + deviot), and it can store configurations on a per-project basis. There's platformio support in atom too, if sublime text not being open source bothers you.
Basically, if you're still using the arduino crappy-text-editor-with-a-macro-button they have the enormous gall to call an "IDE", well, **WHY**?
Connor Wolf Haters got to hate. Yes Felix could use another IDE but to each his own. You're missing the point here. He selflessly shared a fix to a problem he was having with the only hope that it would help someone else out.
Not everyone is as expert coder as you might be and they are more concerned with starting to learn how to code. There is still a huge user base for Arduino and that's where most people start, more notably because Arduino is still pretty easy to start with and well documented compared to something like platformio. This video addresses that audience which might not feel very enlightened when called garbage users. I am forced to regularly use the IDE for testing as part of catering to that market. Thanks for your very substantially passional comments :-)
Platformio's UI is just as, if not more confusing and cumbersome as Arduino's IDE is with regard to selecting boards and COM ports. While kind of ugly, this is much better than both solutions offer. I've been meaning to submit some changes like this to the official IDE repo for years. Props to Felix for actually doing it.