Arduino PlatformIO: Five Minute Zero to Hero - From Install to Compile to Flashing

Curious about PlatformIO and how to install and run it for Arduino development? Join Dave in his Shop as he first installs, builds and flashes with the Arduino IDE before he shows you how to add PlatformIO to the mix!

A good "Boards Manager" Url to use in Preferences is:

The Heltec ESP32 module used in the video is available at the following link:

Software Prerequisites: Install the following!

Even though we will not be actively using their IDE, the Arduino software must be installed on the machine even though we'll be using VS Code. Thus, we install the desktop IDE and then never use it. You may wish to launch it and install the ESP32 platform to make it useful for quick scratch projects, etc.

(2) Install Visual Studio Code from

Visual Studio Code will be our editor and IDE.

(3) Install the PlatformIO IDE

PlatformIO IDE is an "environment" for VSCode that includes the compilers, tools, and everything you need to compile, build, and run projects for many systems. The Arduino ESP32 is but one of those, so we must install the ESP32 platform within PlatformIO:

(4) Within PlatformIO/VSCode, install the Espressif ESP32 Platform for Arduino

[mrhomely]

Yes please do include more libraries Dave! Good stuff sir, well done

[Marc_Miller]

I appreciate you wearing gloves to keep your hands from getting all greasy and grimy while handling that ESP board. ;)

[buddtermin]

Dave...thank you for making these videos, and I hope you don’t stop! Have learned a lot so far and really enjoy the FastLed projects and effects!

[RyanDurbin]

This is exactly the kind of video I need and you're my man!!!! Please do more of these. You're helping a lot of people learn coding from a true master

[token]

Quickly becoming one of my favorite channels

[BearFulmer]

Oh my, I finally got this to work, i had to slow that video down to catch the adding of arduino.h into the top of the main.cpp. was scratching my head for hours. upon initially watching the video i skipped ahead to the platform io not realizing you install the arduino ide just to get some of the dependencies/libraries. in the end Hero, thanks

[NuzzelingDoves]

wow! This was so good. I was on the Fluke 9000 Series microprocessor Troubleshooter development team back in the 80's- I got to play with all the 8 biters back then, and hand coded much of my work. The C++ stuff was out of my class at the time. ..after almost 30 years...I'm tinkering again, and love it. Thanks for the help!

[Tjup]

Diffently on right track, im glad i find our channel

[muzaffar.ahmadi]

Yes please I would like a video in how to add external library like fastled...instructions for MAC OS are the same I hope 🤞 as I will be installing on my MacBook Pro...thanks again for the great videos you make...

[MisterDeets]

My Heltec ESP32 and Neopixels are due in tomorrow. Will be enjoying the process of learning what you are laying down very soon. Thanks for the tutorials. Also thank you for Task Manager. It's the best feature in Windows and I use it frequently.

[scottstevens]

I just caught the ending, never before noticed a throw back to the Friendly Giant . 😀😃😄😁

[dereksloan]

All your videos are great. I would love to see some more on platformIO and microcontrollers. I also miss your sidekick.

[dandy]

Great video, I just got my ESP-32 in the mail. The Arduino Editor is dookie and I had no idea PlatformIO was a thing. Keep it up Dave!

[AlwaysBolttheBird]

In case anyone is following this something that I had to do is also install python on my machine to get PlatformIO to work. Great video

[XDYL]

Yet another Great Tutorial from the master, Cheers Dave

[talesmaschio]

I moved to PlatformIO a few months back and it’s really a big difference. Arduino IDE has its merits but eventually you reach a point where you need a more capable tool. Thanks for the excellent content you bring us, I enjoy a lot watching to your channel.

BTW, since you mentioned the ESP32: have you checked Tasmota on GitHub? It’s a very, very capable firmware for the ESP8266, and there’s a beta version for the ESP32 growing fast. With it you can even take advantage of ESP32 versions with an Ethernet port as the ones from Olimex. Go there and take a look I think you’ll like it.

[delugeia]

Would love to see more PlatformIO topics!

[PrzemyslawDrewnowski]

Was playing with some diy lenses for an led project (why to have the LED emit the light if you can make the led project it in any shape or form onto any other object and have more flexibility? =P) and I noticed that your window's green light was 100% green, only the G pixel on the OLED display of my phone's screen was lit, you do really love primary colors, down to making me think that I did something wrong with the lenses 😅

Btw, thanks a lot for the inspiration! It's an amazing hobby! As you I'm someone that figured out only recently that you can make something beautiful out code and a couple of diods and I cannot wait to complete a couple of projects with my small twist on LED installations and share my designs with the community in order to give back what I was gifted with.

[nunosantos]

Hello dave, i like the way you present and explain stuff, i really do. It would be awesome if you could put more videos on MicroControllers and how to program them. Thanks and keep up with the excellent work.

[joryp]

Excellent, you can't make it easier for beginners! One subject I have issues with is building binaries that also succesfully initialize spiffs.