Android based IDE for a middle school electronics course

Community General Discussion
1

Hi all. Sorry for posting this here, but it is the only subforum I am currently allowed to post in.

I am running an electronics/programming course for a local middle school. All the kids have Chromebooks (school supplied) and I assumed I'd be able to use ArduinoDroid as I did a few years ago. However this is apparently no longer supported and will not load on the Chromebooks.

I tried the Linux install route but that failed. (The app installs but will not start.)

I don't want to require Windows machines for all the kids, because then some of the poorer kids will have to drop out.

Any ideas?

2

Search the forum on chromebooks, but I fear it will be bad news. If Chrome will not work, there are lots of Windows tiny PC's under $100 or maybe go the terminal route using Linux as the central.

3

There are on line simulators (wokwi, Tinkercad, ...) that could be used to test programming and basic circuits but it's not like playing with the real thing.

side note - you said

May be you should tell the school that being cheap in selecting a device led to having a device not suited for the learning objectives of your class... This way they won't repeat the error in the future.

4

It's a small school and this is an optional after school course, and the Chromebooks work pretty well for the rest of their curriculum - so I doubt that will fly.

5

OK - that's too bad.

6

Hi @billvon2. You can write, compile, and upload Arduino sketches on chromeOS machines using Arduino Cloud:

https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/360016495639-Use-Arduino-with-Chromebook#use-the-cloud-editor-in-the-chrome-browser

Please note that upload support is only available for the boards listed here:

https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/360014779899-Boards-compatible-with-the-Cloud-Editor#cloud-editor-on-chromebook

Arduino offers school plans for Arduino Cloud, which might be most suitable for your use case. You can learn about the plans here:

7

Thanks. I'll try that tonight.

8

A bigger school district with a bigger bureaucracy wouldn't be any better!

10

Just to be clear, did you try the actual Arduino IDE 2.x for Linux? There are a variety of factors in play

  • Has the school locked down the Chromebooks so that Linux is not allowed?
  • Do they have enough disk space remaining for a Linux partition
  • Are the Chromebooks Intel/AMD-based (x86_64) and not ARM, like with a Mediatek chip (no IDE 2.x for Linux ARM)
  • Will the hardware connected via USB work; will it require enabling "permissive passthrough"; or won't work at all
  • Nice to have: 8GB of RAM instead of 4GB (latter more likely for school-issued laptops)
  • Install requires manually adding some packages via apt
  • Will a near-future ChromeOS update break something for a month or two

Multiplying those factors to pick a number: maybe 20% chance the stars will align. But if they do....

11

Just out of curiosity, is there a way to install an Arduino Cloud "server" (whatever that happens to mean) "locally"? A lot of schools are pretty controlling when it comes to accessing external web sites...

12

Unfortunately, no. Although some components of Arduino Cloud (e.g., Arduino Cloud Agent, Arduino CLI) are open source, most of the components that would be considered the "server" are proprietary.