Jee Labs Talk

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1. tankslappa
   

   I just noticed there is a new Arduino IDE release. http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software I don't know what made me go and look at the site, I haven't been to the IDE download page for months, and now I pick the day after a release... I must be psychotic or something :o)

   I haven't tried it yet - I'll leave that for someone who hasn't got a heavily modified install with lots of add-ons like compiling/uploading to ATtiny installed!

   Maybe we should nominate a Jee-tester ;-)

   However there is one thing that makes me want to skip round the room going "yes, Yes, YEEES!"

        Added a String class.  

   http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ReleaseNotes

   Posted 04/09/2010 04:51:55

2. jcw
   

   As far as I can tell 0019 works fine with a couple of sketches, such as RF12demo.

   As for modified installs: consider putting your extensions changes in your sketches directory, under libraries/ and hardware/ - then you can upgrade without losing your custom changes. I think 0019 improves support for this.

   Posted 04/09/2010 14:02:01

3. edwardhorsford
   

   @steve be careful with the string class. Although it brings wonderful features, there's also great chance for overflows and such if you're not careful.

   Posted 04/09/2010 17:43:17

4. tankslappa
   

   @edwardhorsford

   Aye - Such is the joy of C... Someone please remind me how it became the dominant language, it still makes me shake my head is disbelief!

   Posted 04/09/2010 18:59:01

5. jcw
   

   The trouble is not C or C++ ... it's the severely limited RAM, and hence heap & stack space.

   Posted 04/09/2010 19:12:44

6. raalst
   

   Just quick question (because I'm lazy etc.) It seems that the GCC underlying the Arduino IDE reports on memory use, how do you guys get that information out ?

   I have had a few discussions with my arduino where it simply stopped functioning after I added new coding (with a large array declaration..).

   Trimming the array persuaded the Arduino to take up it's job again, but I would have loved to be able to check up-front whether the array would fit the memory.

   Posted 05/09/2010 09:32:55

7. jcw
   

   You can google for "avr-size" and check for some info.

   Here's a sketch which prints out the free memory at run time:

   static word memFree() { extern char brkval; char a; return brkval ? &a - brkval : 0; }

   void setup () { Serial.begin(57600); Serial.println("\nmemFree;

   // forces loading, adds approx 500 bytes to code footprint malloc(65535);

   Serial.println(memFree()); }

   Note that there has to be a call to malloc() somewhere for this calculation to work. I added one to make sure (which always fails, and therefore doesn't consume memory, but it still sets things up).

   Posted 05/09/2010 10:49:26

8. raalst
   

   avr-size is what I was looking for. Thanks.

   but now I do not seem to be able to find my .o files. I looked in /tmp and my sketch directories. Also the preferences file does not provide more clues (at least to my untrained eye). Does the IDE clean them up after use ? I did compile one of the sketches without uploading, thinking it would have to keep the file. I did a find from my home directory, but alas. Arduino 0018 on ubuntu. anybody any pointers?

   Posted 05/09/2010 15:50:02

9. tankslappa
   

   0018 introduced some "tidying up", which made it a complete pain if you wanted to get to any of the generate files (.hex for example). In windows they turn up in %temp%, but you have to copy them out before you close arduino, or it'll delete them all.

   No idea where they end up in ubuntu, sorry.

   Posted 05/09/2010 18:08:25

10. jcw
    

    Press the SHIFT key when clicking on the leftmost Run button, and you'll get more info on what the compile does, including where the files end up. This too was added in 0018, IIRC.

    Posted 05/09/2010 20:05:38

11. raalst
    

    just for the record, in (my) Ubuntu the IDE creates "anonymous" directories in the /tmp directory but deletes them after the compile. hopefully version 0019 does it differently.

    That shift-trick is very useful ! thanks !

    Posted 06/09/2010 20:51:52

12. andras
    

    I use 0018 on Ubuntu 10.04. The /tmp/buildxxxxxx.tmp is cleaned up here only after the IDE is closed.

    Posted 06/09/2010 22:02:31