Linduino

For an upcoming project, I needed to learn how to program the Arduino IDE to build a sketch for a new hardware platform. This all became possible when Arduino IDE 1.5 abstracted the way platforms are implemented, and even implemented their basic Arduinos in the same way.

To teach myself, I created a native Arduino core, targetting the local Linux userspace using gcc. Linduino is the result of my work. It does need a new name, as Linduino is the name Linear Tech chose for their Arduino boards, but I did not have anything better.

In effect, it compiles the current sketch using bog-standard compiler settings to create an executable for the local machine. The core currently consists of a few support components, including serial I/O using stdio, and timers using gettimeofday.

Linduino is not quite an Arduino emulator. It does not emulate the AVR 8-bit instruction set, and it does not emulate GPIOs, SPI, I2C, and several other bits of Arduino proper. Yet, it is useful for prototyping Arduino algorithms without uploading to a board. In the future it might be expanded by moving to windows ncurses and spending some screen real estate showing GPIO state and allowing other inputs.