How do I use Microduino (mCookie) on Linux?

Question

I'm interested in getting the mCookie working in Linux — specifically, in Fedora 23. The Arduino IDE (version 1.6.4) is already available. I'm very familiar with Linux, fine with C, and completely new to Arduino.

The tutorials for Windows or Mac describe installing a customized version of the IDE along with drivers. Do I need special drivers on Linux? On the projects' GitHub site, I found the examples and a directory called 'avr' which has promising subdirectories like "bootloaders" and "libraries", along with files boards.txt and platform.txt.

Can I download this stuff and add it to the existing "system" arduino package somehow? How, and what will I need?

• mattdm: I'd tag this mcookie and/or microduino if I could....

Answer 1

First you will need the arduino 1.6.x package from updates, not the 1.0.x package from fedora. Then:

You will be adding a URL to the new Additional Boards Manager URLs option: https://github.com/wasdpkj/Microduino-IDE-Support/raw/master/package_Microduino_index.json

source

This tutorial tells you where and how to add that URL to the preferences, as well as how to actually install the required support files.

---

As of this writing, the platform configuration supplied as part of the above won't work out of the box in Linux; you will also have to edit ~/.arduino15/packages/Microduino/hardware/avr/1.6.7/platform.txt to:

• replace compiler.path={runtime.tools.avr-gcc.path}/bin/ with just compiler.path=/usr/bin/
• on the line starting recipe.ar.pattern=, change {archive_file_path} to {build.path}/{archive_file}

Hopefully this will be fixed in future versions.

---

You probably also want to prevent ModemManager from probing the serial device with this udev rule, just replace the vendor and product IDs as appropriate:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb-serial", ATTRS{idVendor}=="xxxx", ATTRS{idProduct}=="xxxx", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

• mattdm: Nice, thanks! This resulted in an error: Could not find boards.txt in /home/mattdm/.arduino15/packages/Microduino/hardware/avr/1.6.7. Is it pre-1.5? and exit on startup. However, when looking at that directory, there's an avr subdirectory with boards.txt in; I moved everything up one level and now it seems to be working....
• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: @mattdm: That would seem to be a problem with their files; I also see all boards.txt files (on my system) directly in the architecture-appropriate directories rather than in any subdirectories.
• mattdm: I guess I'll file a bug report.
• mattdm: Ugh, that also hardcodes compiler.path={runtime.tools.avr-gcc.path}/bin/ in ./packages/Microduino/hardware/avr/1.6.7/platform.txt, when it should be (I think) just compiler.path=/usr/bin/ ... fixed that, and now I've got an error about {archive_file_path}. I've got some further research to do here, I see.
• mattdm: So, from here, that should be replaced with {build.path}/{archive_file}. Now a really simple sketch compiles but does not seem to actually upload. That's the next step, I guess. :)