Arduino IDE 2.0 - Testing Release Candidate 3

Let’s examine the new Arduino IDE 2.0 (Release Candidate 3) and see what’s new, what works, and what still needs work!

The Arduino IDE 2.0 is the newest iteration of the popular Arduino IDE. As with its predecessor, it allows you to write sketches for microcontrollers made by Arduino and can be extended using the Boards Manager to use other manufacturers’ microcontrollers as well.

This new IDE features a sleek new design with a choice of Dark or Light modes, an improved Serial Plotter, and an integrated real-time debugger. It also adds features like code completion, and it integrates with the Arduino IoT Cloud to allow you to edit both your local and cloud-based sketches in one place.

The product has been in development for a couple of years now, and it finally made it to the Release Candidate version at the end of 2021. I’m examining Release candidate 3, which was released on January 11, 2022.

As with all release candidates, there are still a few bugs to be ironed out, and I’ll show you a couple of them in this video, along with some workarounds. If you’re viewing this in the future, then some of these bugs will likely be fixed.

Here is what we will be covering in today’s video:

00:00 - Introduction
01:30 - Arduino IDE Evolution
04:14 - Installing the IDE
08:40 - Basic IDE Features
11:38 - Preferences & Settings
14:35 - Run Blink on Uno
16:18 - Serial Monitor
20:07 - Serial Plotter
23:36 - Arduino IoT Cloud
25:22 - Boards Manager Intro
26:54 - Arduino Nano AVR
29:25 - Arduino Nano 33 IoT
30:38 - ESP32
33:20 - Seeeduino XIAO
36:32 - Raspberry Pi Pico
39:14 - Library Manager
42:53 - Summary - final thoughts
46:32 - Conclusion

As the new Arduino IDE 2.0 uses the same Sketchbook folder as the holder IDE, you’ll have access to all of your existing sketches and libraries when you install it. For that reason, I would recommend that you give it a try, you can always revert to the older IDE if you don’t like it.

I hope you enjoy the video, and if you want to discuss your experiences with the new Arduino IDE 2.0 the best place to do that is on the DroneBot Workshop forums, where you’ll find a dedicated discussion area for this new product from Arduino.

[Dronebotworkshop]

Hi everyone - It's come to my attention that there has been someone masquerading as myself, responding to some comments here with a link to a Telegram chat to win a prize from me. THIS IS A SCAM, I am not holding a contest, nor do I have a Telegram account. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE MESSAGES!!


Thanks!

Bill (The real one!)

[thisoldjeepcj]

I realize that making this video takes much more time than the length of the video itself. I want to thank you for your time and sharing what you've learned. Going through the IDE systematically and finding how things work and especially reporting the bugs help us subscribers and the whole community. I look forward to more and perhaps working with the live debugging. If that works well I may not use serial monitor near as much.

[allenmuirhead]

I’m a retired electrical engineer who used to manage my this sort of stuff and is now getting into arduino and rasp Pi for the halibut. This is a great place to start!

[duncan]

Another fantastic, well structured, educational video - this channel has been my route into electronics, keep up the amazing work!

[rmp]

I tried it. It works good. No bugs no hang ups. Easier to use than previous versions.

[todddrumheller]

As always your videos are wonderful, my robotics club and I are very grateful. My students affectionately refer to you as the Bob Ross/Mr. Rogers of controllers. You connect with them in a way that few can. Thanks for all help you provide.

[jgc]

Nicely done video, very well explained. Tried IDE 2.0 months ago and dropped it to revert to the old one due exactly to problems with the bootloader old or new on a Nano. Now I recently came back to it for my project and it's going way better.

[p.g.pg]

Merci, une fois de plus, pour la qualité de vos vidéos. Et surtout pour l'article rédigé auquel on a accès par le lien en description. La qualité de votre écriture est telle que la traduction automatique est excellente (en français, en tout cas). Ceci est d'une aide incomparable pour ceux et celles qui ne maîtrisent pas parfaitement votre langue.
Au plaisir de vous écouter/voir dans une prochaine vidéo et de vous lire dans l'article qui y sera joint....

[bobfrediii]

I love how he says “Arduino IDE 2.0 release candidate 3” every time lol

[mt-qcqh]

I'm running RC6 and I, like you use many different different processors. The best feature I have found is the board and port selection per window!

[happyfarang]

New IDE! Yay. very much needed.... I will give it a try. See how the intellisense holds up. It's so nice to have when you make bigger programs. A few bugs that fixes with a restart - i can live with that. I do wish they had added an open hardware simulator in it though. It would be a logical thing to have in the official IDE for Arduino IMO.
Thanks for the video. Great stuff as always, so yeah, Thank you

[dismaldunc]

Thanks Bill, this looks great, I had moved over to PlatformIO but as I don't understand all of its complexities when something goes wrong its takes an age to figure out what's happening. I think I might just use this form now on. As ever excellent work!

[BerndSchmitt-Martinique]

Hello Bill - to use your words - we should give them another shot and give it a try again in 2023.
I would recommend a completely separated installation for IDE 1.8.3 and IDE 2.0 - just to protect the OLD CONTENT.

Thanks for your video in the unmatched "WORKSHOP-QUALITY" and greetings from germany.

[deleo]

The best overview till now. All the bugs you have listed are the same I am facing here. Your "personal" fellings about the new IDE are mine too. I will be using it, but not now. Thank you for this video.

[GeekRedux]

2:10 The Arduino IDE was based off of Processing's IDE, but Processing itself is not an IDE, it's a programming language aimed primarily at helping visual artists without programming experience learn programming and make it easier to integrate digital media and data into their work.

[jacobofarache]

Your videos are EXCELLENT, for me they have become an essential library on these topics. I will be very attentive to all of them. Congratulations.

[MrEdwardhartmann]

Great video - thanks. I can't wait for the debug video. I think debugging is one of the most needed and least covered subjects in the maker world.

[anispinner]

Awesome job Arduino. An IDE built on top of a Visual Studio Code. This is what needed to be done long ago instead of trying to reinvent the wheel!

[anonymous.youtuber]

Fantastic video, very clear and crisp ! 👍👍👍

[thorntontarr]

Bill, you have saved all of us a huge amount of time with this video. As a PlatformIO coder, much of the good in 2.0 is quite obvious as you stated. The serial plotter feature is NOT available on PlatformIO; a feature in IDE2.0. A major PlatformIO feature: Rapid Compile&Upload. Your video showed quick compile and upload but were you just editing out the delays?