Michael, thanks for mentioning Simulator for Arduino. Most Arduino users are pretty much simulated out - there was a lot of discussion a few months ago, so we try to minimize our posts, but we don't mind replying to questions. I saw on the Other Software Development that someone is looking for 4.5k to develop a new Simulator - good luck.
Writing a Simulator is very hard, and we would like to think we are now mostly over the hill, and if anyone wants to build a new one - good luck it will sap all your energy. There are still many areas for improvement in the Simulator for Arduino and briefly these are:
- Implement custom libraries - this means walking through each library in turn
- Add variant Arduino boards such as Lilypad and Nano - this is now working but not released
- Add French and Italian - partly done for the Menus only at this stage but not released
- Improve error checking and handling
- Improve help to be more Arduino friendly
- Too many other issues to mention but mostly minor
Most of the Pro Users are very positive but we do get some angry remarks about a few bugs and we put this down to high-end professionals driven by intense passion.
With Emulators, these usually use JTAG which means losing 4 pins from PORTC which usually means the program cannot be run if you wan to use all the pins. The exception is the XMega but unfortunately there is not an Arduino for Xmega yet. The ARM Due looks very impressive but is not out yet.
Also, the Free version delay is only 30 seconds but increases by one second every time a new sketch is loaded. The idea being that is the Simulator gets used a lot, it becomes important to purchase the Pro Licence. As far as open source, we have not ruled that out, but we do need a method now to fund development of the project. The Arduino Team has made their money from selling 500k Arduino boards a year, and I heard a rumour that they are each worth over 10M each.