Nuts and Volts - May/June 2018

but it shouldn’t be too hard. Since the data packet size is small, you can just send periodic datagrams that include temperature, moisture, and an identifier for the specific sensor, so you know who sent it.

Solar power adds to the fun. You’ll need an adequate solar panel, charge controller, and a battery to keep the Arduino powered through the day under various conditions. It will be important to measure the power consumed and the size of the solar system so that it can continue to work during a good portion of the day. I suspect that having it run during the dark hours will be difficult without a larger system; namely, the XBee transmitter will consume a significant amount of energy.

This whole system is a fun project, but the detailed design is beyond the scope of this column. If you do build it, though, please let us know and write it up for N&V!

IDE Madness

QI recently switched from the Arduino to a Raspberry Pi 3, and I miss the IDE running on my PC. I don’t want to tie up a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the Pi. Is there an open source or even commercial IDE solution for my PC?

Mike Winburn El Paso, TX

AFor those who aren’t familiar with the term IDE, it stands for Integrated Development Environment. There is a significant difference between the development model on the Arduino vs. the Raspberry Pi. The Arduino doesn’t typically have an operating system running on it, and has very limited memory and CPU resources. So, development is done on a host computer. That’s where the IDE runs.

For the Raspberry Pi — given that it typically runs some version of Linux — development is often done on the board itself. All the necessary compilers, interpreters, and virtual machines are on the device. This changes how development is done. It’s possible to develop on a host computer using a couple of different techniques, though. First, let’s explore the development tools that can run on the Pi.

To some degree, your choice of IDE will depend on what languages it supports and how well it integrates with them. Some are sophisticated language-sensitive editors, while others give you source-level debugging, documentation in-line, and UI development assistance. The unfortunate part is that installing these IDEs is rarely trivial.

I’m kind of old school. I use Emacs, which gives me the ability to do source-level debugging in most languages through its “GUD” subsystem. There is a steep learning curve, though. I’ve used Emacs for many decades, so the key sequences are just burned into my fingers.

Given the learning required to be effective, I don’t necessarily recommend this approach, but it is available. My son — who doesn’t have the patience to learn Emacs thoroughly (though I’m working on him!) — uses vim: a clone/upgrade of vi. I guess he’s old school too.

Then, there’s Eclipse. Eclipse is an open-source IDE that has modules for many different languages, though it was originally designed for Java. It’s big and heavy (memory and CPU). Some have gotten it to run successfully, but I find the UI to be needlessly complex and confusing. It’s great once it’s up and running properly, but getting it to that point can be harrowing.

Let’s instead look at something that might work. If you’re programming in Python — which many folks new to the Pi use — there is a nice-looking IDE called Wing. It uses the development model of running on a host computer and debugging remotely. Full support for that feature comes only in a paid version, but it sure looks neat. It runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Check it out at https:// wingware.com/doc/howtos/raspberry.

If you’re programming in C or C++ (or even Fortran), Code::Blocks appears to be pretty good. This one runs right on the Pi and is open source. It’s also available for other platforms. It doesn’t appear as though they publish binaries for ARM, but you can compile it from source if you’re adventurous. Maybe there are binaries out there somewhere. Here’s where the project lives: www. codeblocks.org.

Geany is another cross-platform IDE that has plug-ins for multiple languages from C to Pascal. It requires the GTK libraries, which are easily installed on a Raspberry Pi. Get more details at https://www.geany.org.

Another Python specific IDE is called Ninja-IDE. It seems to have many good error-finding tools and some nice UI ( http://ninja-ide.org).

For IDEs that run on the Pi, you can run them remotely using X Windows. If you have an X server on your PC or Mac, you can use the SSH command with the -X option to log into the Pi while simultaneously setting up a tunnel for the X Windows protocol. Then, when you run the IDE through that shell window, the IDE should pop up on your local machine.

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve covered a few nice ones that can get you started. There are more out there if you look around. Like I said earlier, even though I’m an Emacs devotee, I really like IDEs for their ability to help you find and fix bugs, as well as better understand code structure. I use Xcode whenever practical on my Mac.