Arduino IDE on Chromebook

Have you ever felt the need to program an Arduino from a Chromebook. There are simple ways such as using the web interface or the cloud but if you were able to run Arduino IDE directly from Chromebook, you would have less limitations. This is the objective of this article.

Latest version of ChromeOS (2019 or later) provide this capability natively. Here are the details on how you can do it:

1) Enable Linux environment on the Chromebook

• Left: go to Chromebook Settings

• Right: Under "Advanced" or "Developers" turn on Linux development environment

• Left: Input configuration for Linux and click on "Install"

• Right: Wait until installation completes when the terminal interface with Lunux is brought up

2) Install Arduino IDE for Linux on Chromebook:

When you receive the terminal interface to Linux, you will see the initial prompt as:

haragutchi@penguin:~$ 

Now, before we continue on the Linux terminal interface, we need to get some additional information:

• Left: Get the ChromeOS information on the Chromebook Settings under "About ChromeOS"

• Right: Go to https://www.arduino.cc/en/software, under "Legacy IDE" section and right click on the version of Lunux you need the Arduino IDE for (64 bits or 32 bits). Then click on "Copy link address"

• Go now to the Linux terminal interface on the Chromebook and paste the link after the command "wget"

haragutchi@penguin:~$ wget https://downloads.arduino.cc/arduino-1.8.19-linux64.tar.xz?_gl=1*1yuhs9*_gcl_au*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*FPAU*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*_ga*MTE2OTEwODM0OC4xNzIwMTAyNTQy*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTcyMDEwMjU0MC4xLjEuMTcyMDEwODM3My4wLjAuMTE0NTgwMTIwNw..*_fplc*YTlEaFVEJTJCWDJqUWJuM2dkdGYlMkZMcWhKVXhQZ3k5RTAlMkZINWR6YkpidlBCcjhWZzVhZGY3Y082WWl5MXlCc09rZUFxaDNiU2JhTHdmTXo0WlNOTGFZVHhWU2VxT1MycWdIMjAlMkZIeVpVYVhGQTZadzlvdTlWQ2J6cTclMkZRTzd2QSUzRCUzRA..

Resolving downloads.arduino.cc (downloads.arduino.cc)... 104.18.11.21, 104.18.10.21, 2606:4700::6812:a15, ...

Connecting to downloads.arduino.cc (downloads.arduino.cc)|104.18.11.21|:443... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 128583740 (123M) [application/x-tar]

Saving to: ‘arduino-1.8.19-linux64.tar.xz?_gl=1*1yuhs9*_gcl_au*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*FPAU*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*_ga*MTE2OTEwODM0OC4xNzIwMTAyNTQy*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTcyMDEwMjU0MC4xLjEuMTcyMDEwODM3My4wLjAuMTE0NTgwMTIwNw..*_fplc*YTlEaFVEJTJ’

arduino-1.8.19-linux64 100%[==========================>] 122.63M  43.6MB/s    in 2.8s    

2024-07-04 11:57:37 (43.6 MB/s) - ‘arduino-1.8.19-linux64.tar.xz?_gl=1*1yuhs9*_gcl_au*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*FPAU*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*_ga*MTE2OTEwODM0OC4xNzIwMTAyNTQy*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTcyMDEwMjU0MC4xLjEuMTcyMDEwODM3My4wLjAuMTE0NTgwMTIwNw..*_fplc*YTlEaFVEJTJ’ saved [128583740/128583740]

haragutchi@penguin:~$

• Unpack the Arduino IDEcode. You will have to use the same name you got in the download report above in yellow. Then, use this full name and install it from the Linux terminal interface:

haragutchi@penguin:~$ sudo apt-get install xz-utils

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree... Done

Reading state information... Done

xz-utils is already the newest version (5.4.1-0.2).

xz-utils set to manually installed.

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 62 not upgraded.

haragutchi@penguin:~$ sudo tar -C /opt -xf arduino-1.8.19-linux64.tar.xz?_gl=1*1yuhs9*_gcl_au*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*FPAU*MjAzNDE3OTY4LjE3MjAxMDI1NjI.*_ga*MTE2OTEwODM0OC4xNzIwMTAyNTQy*_ga_NEXN8H46L5*MTcyMDEwMjU0MC4xLjEuMTcyMDEwODM3My4wLjAuMTE0NTgwMTIwNw..*_fplc*YTlEaFVEJTJ

haragutchi@penguin:~$ cd /opt/arduino-1.8.19

haragutchi@penguin:/opt/arduino-1.8.19$ sudo ./install.sh

Adding desktop shortcut, menu item and file associations for Arduino IDE...

 done!

haragutchi@penguin:/opt/arduino-1.8.19$

• You are now ready to start Arduino IDE from the Start App screen in your Chromebook.

For details on STEM opportunities go to https://www.innovationinternational.org

To contact me simply send me an email to haragutchi@gmail.com