Chapter 2. Getting Started with the Arduino IDE

Now that you have Arduino connected to power, you are ready to start the IDE. In this chapter, I'll start by covering how to use the IDE in Windows. Then, I'll cover any specific change you might need to make if you are using a Mac.

For this chapter, the objectives are as follows:

• Load and configure the Arduino IDE
• Download and run a simple example program

As discussed previously, Arduino comes in many flavors and there are too many to include an example for each one. Sometimes, individual boards will need a special version of the IDE. This book will focus primarily on Uno, perhaps the most popular of Arduino variants. Here and there I'll also throw in an example or two from Mega and one of the small Arduino form factors, FLORA. There are two versions of the IDE: 1.0.x and 1.5.x. Most of your work will be done with 1.0.x, but I'll show you when to use 1.5.x for some newer versions of Arduino. You don't need a board to experiment with the IDE, but it will make much more sense if you have one.