Codebender - coding for Arduino in the cloud http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Codebender-coding-for-Arduino-in-the-cloud-1655110.html
The Arduino has come to define the hands-on microcontroller, for education and for practical applications. But the associated software tools are very much tied to the traditional desktop. Codebender is hoping to change that by taking Arduino development into the cloud while keeping it open source. Codebender is a web based development environment for Arduino which offers a simple syntax highlighting editor, compiler and tools to get the compiled code onto an Arduino. A user can create any number of projects, though currently projects are limited to a single file, and if wanted, seed them with one of a number of existing Arduino projects or libraries. [...] The core of the IDE, the editor, is based on ACE, the successor to Mozilla's Bespin project. The ACE editor offers automated indentation, syntax highlighting, parentheses matching, auto-completion, keyword highlighting and even comes with bindings for Vi and EMACS. To simplify the development process further, Codebender has a range of built-in libraries including the Adafruit LCD library, XBee and XBeeRadio, Webduino web server and others. By building in the libraries, all a user needs to do is include them in their Arduino sketch, reducing the time spent fiddling with the development environment and increasing the time spent writing and discovering what's possible with the Arduino. [...] One question that comes up is how does compiled code get from the cloud IDE into the serial-over-USB interface of the Arduino. The possibly surprising answer is a Java applet, designed to be embedded into Codebender's editor pages. The applet can request sufficient permission to get access to the virtualised serial drivers and upload code to the Arduino board. The applet also gives the user a serial console to track output from the Arduino. In the future, the developers want to look at the emerging JavaScript APIs for serial port access, but for now the Java applet will be the main way to move code from the cloud to the chip. If your Arduino has Ethernet or WiFi, you can run a TFTP bootloader on it, and a (modified, I'm assuming, to pull from the cloud) TFTP service on a server to load code. I wonder if this will enable Arduino development using things like Chromebooks and tablets. See article for more details. -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
