This is one of a collection of pages which, together, attempt to show you "everything" about the Arduino's programming language.

There is a page for you with more information about the project in general, and the way these pages are organized, if you want that.

Please visit my page about power browsing notes sometime.

This page, and the software it references, ©TK Boyd, 1/2010.

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While I said you would have to consult the other stuff online, and while if you've got this far, you've probably overcome the first of my "gotcha"s, I'm going to mention a "set-up" issue here anyway:

If you are having no luck connecting to your Arduino (or clone), be sure that you have the board and port properly set in the IDE.

The settings are to be found under Tools / Serial Port and Tools / Board.

"Arduino Duemilanove or Nano w/ Atmega 328" seems satisfactory for a ModernDevice.com BBB with an Atmega 328, and "modern" (post c. 5/09) boot loader, and version C board, with the "auto boot" mod done.

If your Arduino works some of the time, but you frequently have a failed upload, the following may help....

When your code has been modified... a) First, you should probably, on general principles, re-save it. That won't, of course, make any difference to the "upload to I/O board" (i.e. the Arduino) sync issues, but it should be part of your working routine. Hey! It's just a click of a button!

Once that is done,

b) Press down and hold the "reset" button on your Arduino.

c) Click the "Upload" button on your IDE

d) Wait for the message about the binary sketch size to appear....

e) ... THEN release the reset button.

If you don't need to do this on your system, I am very happy for you. On my system, the uploads seem to go faster, and I rarely have sync problems if I follow the above procedure.

Two minor annoyances....

First Minor Annoyance: The writers of the Arduino IDE's text editor think I'm more clever than I am... keeping the shift key down at the wrong time causes newly entered text to overwrite old stuff, rather than to be inserted, which is what I would expect. Furthermore, I THINK that there's a way to, in effect, "press the insert" key... without actually doing that. Whatever the explanation, from time to time I find myself in overwrite mode, which I almost never use, when I don't expect it. I think it may be something to do with using backspace (delete?) when the shift key is down.

Second Minor Annoyance: At 12/09, I don't think there is (yet) a find-and-replace function in the editor.

Neither "annoyance" is important! The Arduino IDE is brilliant... AND free, don't forget! I only mention them so that you don't waste time fighting with them to discover what I've already found, and have shared with you here.

Bad news. Don't take this TOO seriously, but if it applies to you, let me save you some time... for the moment. I doubt that the following will be true for all time.

At 12/09, I found the following at LadyAda, a pretty good source of Arduino information. As I said, the information may be dated. I'm sure that the nice people at Arduino HQ are working to overcome the issues. I also imagine that the release of Windows 7 will either cure the Vista problem, or introduce another round of similar woes. Of course if you convert to Linux you will be able to say goodbye to dancing to Mr Gate's jig!!

From LadyAda, in response to someone who wrote saying he was having problems using his Arduino on a Vista-powered PC:

(quote): Sorry pal, but Arduino and the avr-gcc/avrdude backend are pretty much not Vista-ready. Try XP/2000 which is much more likely to work! (end quote)

If you are using an Arduino happily with either Vista or Windows 7, please write, tell me. And include the version number of your Arduino IDE? It is shown... not well labelled for version 0017... in the window that opens if you invoke Help | About from the Arduino IDE's main menu.

Right! That's it for now for "gotchas" and annoyances. Back to stuff that is more fun.

The search engine is not intelligent. It merely seeks the words you specify. It will not do anything sensible with "What does the 'could not compile' error mean?" It will just return references to pages with "what", "does", "could", "not".... etc.

SPELL your search term properly. When I review search logs, it is amazing how many people ask the engine to search for something meaningless.

Why does this site cause a script to run? I have my web-traffic monitored for me by eXTReMe tracker. They offer a free tracker. If you want to try it, check out their site. And if there are Google ads on the page, they are run with scripts, too.

Ad from page's editor: Yes.. I do enjoy compiling these things for you... hope they are helpful. However.. this doesn't pay my bills!!! If you find this stuff useful, (and you run an MS-DOS or Windows PC) please visit my freeware and shareware page, download something, and circulate it for me? Links on your page to this page would also be appreciated!

Page WILL BE tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org