Arduino for Visual Studio Code

Welcome to Arduino ^preview for Visual Studio Code! The Arduino extension makes it easy to code, build, deploy and debug your Arduino sketches in Visual Studio Code.

• IntelliSense and syntax highlighting for Arduino sketches
• Verify and upload your sketches in Visual Studio Code
• Built-in board and library manager
• Built-in example list
• Built-in serial monitor
• Snippets for sketches
• Automatic Arduino project scaffolding
• Command Palette (F1) integration of frequently used commands (e.g. Verify, Upload...)
• Integrated Arduino Debugging ^New

Prerequisites

Arduino IDE is required. Please install it from here.

• The supported Arduino IDE versions are 1.6.x and later.
• The Windows Store's version of Arduino IDE is not supported because of the sandbox environment of Windows app.

Installation

Open VS Code and press F1 or Ctrl + Shift + P to open command palette, select Install Extension and type vscode-arduino.

Or launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl + P), paste the following command, and press enter.

ext install vscode-arduino

Commands

This extension provides several commands in the Command Palette (F1 or Ctrl+Shift+P) for working with *.ino files:

• Arduino: Board Manager: Manage packages for boards. You can add 3rd party Arduino board by configuring Additional Board Manager URLs in board manager.
• Arduino: Change Baud Rate: Change the baud rate of selected serial port.
• Arduino: Change Board Type: Change board type or platform.
• Arduino: Close Serial Monitor: Stop serial monitor and release the serial port.
• Arduino: Examples: Show example list.
• Arduino: Initialize：Scaffold a VS Code project with an Arduino sketch.
• Arduino: Library Manager: Explore and manage libraries.
• Arduino: Open Serial Monitor: Open serial monitor in the intergrated output window.
• Arduino: Select Serial Port: Change the current serial port.
• Arduino: Send Text to Serial Port: Send a line of text via the current serial port.
• Arduino: Upload: Build sketch and upload to Arduino board.
• Arduino: Verify: Build sketch.

Options

The following Visual Studio Code settings are available for the Arduino extension. These can user preferences Ctrl + , or workspace settings (.vscode/settings.json). The later overrides the former.

{
    "arduino.path": "C:/Program Files (x86)/Arduino",
    "arduino.additionalUrls": "",
    "arduino.autoUpdateIndexFiles": false,
    "arduino.logLevel": "info"
}

• arduino.path - Path to Arduino, you can use a custom version of Arduino by modifying this setting to include the full path. Example: C:\\Program Files\\Arduino for Windows, /Applications for Mac, /home/$user/Downloads/arduino-1.8.1 for Linux. (Requires a restart after change). The default value is automatically detected from your Arduino IDE installation path.
• arduino.additionalUrls - Additional URLs for 3rd party packages. You can have multiple URLs in one string with comma(,) as separator, or have a string array. The default value is empty.
• arduino.autoUpdateIndexFiles - Controls auto update of package_index.json and library_index.json index files. If enabled, each time when you open Boards Manager/Libraries Manager, download latest index files first. Otherwise, using index files cached on local disk for Boards Manager/Libraries Manager. The default value is false.
• arduino.logLevel - CLI output log level. Could be info or verbose. The default value is "info".

Debugging Arduino Code ^preview

Before you start debug your Arduino code, read this doc and get to know the basic mechanism about debugging in Visual Studio Code. Also see debugging for C++ in VSCode for your reference.

Make sure your Arduino board can work with STLink, Jlink or EDBG. The debugging support currently is fully tested with the following boards.

• MXChip IoT Developer Kit - AZ3166
• Arduino Zero Pro
• Arduino M0 PRO
• Adafruit WICED WiFi Feather
• Adafruit Feather M0

Steps to start debugging:

1. Plugin your board to your development machine properly. For those boards don't have on-board debugging chip, you need use STLink or JLink connector.
2. Go to Debug View (Ctrl+Shift+D). Set breakpoints in your source files.
3. Press F5 to select debugging environment.
4. When your breakpoint is hit, you can see variables and add expression to watch on the Debug Side Bar.

To learn more about how to debug Ardino code, visit our team blog.

Supported Operating Systems

Currently this extension supports the following operatings systems:

• Windows 7 and later (32-bit and 64-bit)
• macOS 10.10 and later
• Ubuntu 16.04
  • The extension might work on other Linux distro as some user reported but without gurantee.

Contact Us

If you'd like to help us build the best Arduino experience with VS Code, you can talk directly to the product team in our gitter chat room.