Arduino lesson 3 : About software :

About software :

All boards of arduino can be attached to one's PC with USB cable provided with package, but you have to install the recommended software for arduino board to be identified by computer and further processing.

Having software installed in your PC will let you power up your arduino board with your own codes at your hands because you can upload your codes and test them directly on hardware as many times as much your hardware doesn't get burnt.

The IDE provided by the arduino developers itself is a good way to start with as it has built in libraries to use and many much examples for different shields and as many functions u  can use for different boards directly.

Being more specific user can enjoy freedom of having a good support by this software and also provides you with the serial monitor options so you can take inputs and see output as accordingly on PC screen to manage and judge your code responses, and users can directly communicated with serial devices like GSM shields and other boards. the orignial arduino IDE looks like this.

You can download this software here. After clicking this link the download will automatically get started if not then u can visit this link to manual download the software from original site.

ARDUINO 1.6.4 :

The open-source Arduino Software (IDE) makes it easy to write code and upload it to the board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing and other open-source software.This software can be used with any Arduino board.

Getting familiar with Software :

To get started with the arduino boards it is very essential to know all things about software itself because before using hardware you will get into software to write codes for your board and then you will be able to test it on hardware after successful uploading.

First look :

when u firstly install the software it will look like this.

Brief description of every corner you will see

Starting new files and examples :

You can just follow pics to get to examples or start new file to write your own codes.

You can also get into different types of examples and after clicking on it a file will open in which the code is already written .

Edit your code :

 Once you have written your code you can use these handy option in edit menu bar.

Edit menu description

Sketch and import libraries of your need :

You can import different libraries to use their predefined functions and methods to reduce your lines of code and complexity the will help you a lot in writing efficient codes for hardware and external devices attached like LCD shield and GSM shield.

Tools for selecting board and serial port :

One should surely select the correct model and board of arduino from tools-board sub menu. it is must to do correctly because without this you cannot upload your code to your board correctly.

choose correctly the serial port from the serial port menu although mostly it is already selected by arduino software itseld but don't let it be do it your self for more authenticity.

Final thoughts :

You should know how to use this software it will let you do your work more efficiently and quickly so besides writing your own methods and writing codes of hundred lines try to use its predefined functions and methods so it will be pretty short and well defined code for your hardware also it will be more error prone.

Feel free to ask for more info leave your questions on comments section below