This article demonstrates how to develop for Arduino boards using only basic command line utilities, without having to use the Arduino IDE. The article has also been published on the FreeBSD Wiki.
Tested on FreeBSD 12.2 and above.
Prerequisites
Required ports:
devel/arduino-core
devel/arduino-bsd-mk
devel/avr-gcc
devel/avr-libc
devel/avrdude
comms/uarduno
With all the software installed, add the following line to /boot/loader.conf
in case you want the Arduino kernel module to load automatically on boot. If
you want to manually load the module whenever you need it, skip this step:
uarduno_load="YES"
Load the kernel module:
# kldload uarduno
Check your ~/.arduino/preferences.txt and see if the following lines
exist (source):
serial.port=/dev/cuaU0
launcher=/usr/local/bin/firefox
Add your user to the dialer group:
# pw group mod dialer -m $USER
Connecting the board
Standard Arduino boards connect as /dev/cuaU0 and/or /dev/ttyU0 on FreeBSD.
In case these serial ports don’t show up in /dev, you might need to press
your board’s reset button. After you’ve plugged your board into a USB port, you
should get the following output from dmesg. Although the output may vary, the
important thing is that your board is connected and detected.
ugen1.5: <Arduino (www.arduino.cc) product 0x0043> at usbus1
uarduno0: <Arduino (www.arduino.cc) product 0x0043, class 2/0, rev 1.10/0.01, addr 5> on usbus1
If dmesg returned information about your board, you should also see cuaU0
and/or ttyU0 in /dev. In case your board is still not detected —
considering it’s not a fake one, try using a different USB cable or reset it
again and make sure you’ve followed the setup steps correctly.
The Makefile
The only thing you’re going to need in order to get started is just a
Makefile that’ll be used to compile and upload your Arduino programs. Make
a new directory for your Arduino project and a Makefile with the following
lines:
ARDUINO_DIR= /usr/local/arduino
ARDUINO_MK_DIR= /usr/local/arduino-bsd-mk
#ARDUINO_LIBS=
AVRDUDE_PORT= your_board_port
ARDUINO_BOARD= your_board_name
SRCS= your_source_files
TARGET= your_program_name
include /usr/local/arduino-bsd-mk/bsd.arduino.mk
In my case my board is an Arduino Uno, so I’d have to set ARDUINO_BOARD to
uno. You can see which other board types are available in
/usr/local/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/boards.txt. If you want to install
new libraries, copy them over to
/usr/local/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/libraries/.
Avoid having source files named main.
Building and uploading a program
Write some Arduino code, and when you’re ready to compile and upload, run the following command:
# make install flash clean cleandepend
If all went well you should see the board executing the new code. If it
doesn’t, try to see what errors the Makefile produced.
Monitoring
The Arduino IDE provides a serial monitor feature, but FreeBSD has a builtin
monitoring utility which can be accessed directly from the terminal. Run this
whenever you want to monitor your board and exit with ~! (use the appropriate
port):
$ cu -l /dev/cuaU0
Using board types other than the Uno
As it’s mentioned above, we’re using the uarduno kernel module. Even though
the module’s description is “FreeBSD Kernel Driver for the Arduino Uno USB
interface”, you can, in fact, use different board types other than the Uno.
According to uarduno’s website, you can
modify /usr/ports/comms/uarduno/files/ids.txt to include more board types;
the two fields are Vendor ID and Product ID. Read the comments inside the file
for more information.
{ 0x2341, 0x0001 }, // Arduino UNO, vendor 2341H, product 0001H
{ 0x2341, 0x0042 }, // Arduino MEGA (rev 3), vendor 2341H, product 0042H
{ 0x2341, 0x0043 }, // Arduino UNO (rev 3), vendor 2341H, product 0043H
{ 0x2341, 0x0010 }, // Arduino MEGA 2560 R3, vendor 2341H, product 0010H
{ 0x2341, 0x8037 }, // Arduino Micro
When you’re done, clean and re-build the port.
Known issues and their fixes
Even though you might have plugged your board to your machine, you might notice
that there is no device appearing in /dev. Although there is no definite
answer as to why this is happening, make sure that the USB cable is connected
properly; on some boards, you have to hear a click sound.
When trying to use a new library, you might notice that your code doesn’t
compile. A common issue is that you haven’t stored the library in the correct
path. As mentioned, libraries are stored in
/usr/local/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr/libraries/, so you have to move it
there.