In years past the Arduino IDE downloaded quickly and without any issues. I tried to install the Arduino on my desktop computer and on my laptop computer. The exact same problem arises on both computers and prevents me from using the IDE. I am running Windows 10. The problem is the Arduino:avr1.8.6 boards platform. I have went through the steps using the Boards Manager feature within the Arduino IDE. It did not work even after turning off every firewall and antivirus software. My internet is slow, but it is the same internet connection that I used to have no trouble downloading the Arduino IDE. The connection tries then gets timed out. I am wondering why accessing the Arduino IDE has been made so very difficult. I have looked up all kinds of help things on the internet, and help things that have been posted from the Arduino Forum. I simply can’t get the Arduino:avr1.8.6 to work it always times out. Can someone give me simple step by step things to make the Arduino:avr1.8.6 where it will load and my Arduino IDE working? Thanks!
Is there a particular reason you are installing the really old no longer maintained version 1.8.6. The 1.x version went to 1.8.19 prior to 2.x becoming the new IDE?
The installation of 1.8.19 is somewhat easier in certain situations involving the internet. The 2.x version uses the internet more.
Well, good news. My daughter-n-law figured it out and showed me what to do. In the past you didn’t have to jump through all these hoops to get the Arduino IDE installed.
@KeithHilton is referring to the version of the "Arduino AVR Boards" platform (which has the machine identifier arduino:avr), not to the version of the Arduino IDE application.
The latest version of Arduino AVR Boards is 1.8.6. If you look in your Boards Manager, you will likely see you have this version installed.
Perhaps tell us what you did to fix it so others may benefit.
Ok, I did have a very hard time understanding what he was talking about and obviously misunderstood.
Can you post the solution here? There are other people that might encounter the same problem and can benefit from it.
Yes, I would like to help others. When the IDE download would run it would automatically download everything until it got to: Arduino:avr1.8.6 boards platform. In trying to load that it would time out. My daughter-n-law looked up the solution on the Arduino Forum. It said to increase the time so it would not time out. The time was set on 60, so she increased the time to 600. When she did that it no longer timed out when she ran the download. After her Arduino started working she helped me increase the time and the program ran. So the solution to the IDE loading has already been put on the Forum. Hope this information helps.
The real question is why someone would set up the download to quickly time out. Not everyone is on high speed internet. Some people like me live out in the country and the internet is sometimes slow in the rural places.
Thanks for taking the time to share your solution @KeithHilton!
This is not the intention. Here is how the timeout system is described by the Arduino developers in the relevant documentation:
network connection timeout
An overview of the significant sequence of operations for downloading a file from the Internet might be described something like this:
- Client sends a GET request to the server.
- Client waits for a connection to the server.
- Connection is made between client and server.
- Server provides the file data in a response to the request.
- File data transfer completes.
- Connection is closed between client and server.
It is necessary to give the server some time to accept the connection at step 2 of the above sequence, but this doesn't require the transfer of any significant quantity of data, so it should occur in a matter of seconds. If the connection is not made within a matter of seconds, then it is certain that there is a fatal problem with the system and a connection will never occur. So it would not make any sense at all for Arduino IDE to wait forever at step 2. This is why a timeout was implemented.
In this intended use case, 60 seconds is a very conservative timeout value. It would be very rare for it to take anywhere near that long to establish a connection.
Note that the timeout is only intended to apply to step 2. It is not intended that the timeout apply to step 4 (the actual file transfer).
Unfortunately it does appear that the timeout is having a different effect than intended, as some users (including myself) are indeed experiencing spurious failures with the default timeout value. The Arduino developers are tracking the problem here:
Please only comment on the GitHub issue thread if you have new technical information that will assist with the resolution. General discussion and support requests are always welcome here on Arduino Forum.
Is there such a thing as network timeouy in IDE 1.x? This topic was posted in the 1.x category.
I'm not sure if a timeout mechanism is present in Arduino IDE 1.x. @KeithHilton was very vague about the solution they found, but I am certain it was the configuration of the timeout via the Arduino CLI network.connection_timeout configuration key. That was added only a year ago, long after the time of Arduino IDE 1.x.
Which version of the IDE are you using?
- If you're using IDE 1.x, can you please post the filename and the content of the file that your daughter-in-law modified.
- If you're using IDE 2.x, the solution was indeed given in various topics and involved modifying the arduino-cli.yaml file (search results: Search results for '#development-tools:ide-2-x deadline order:latest_topic' - Arduino Forum).
If you're using IDE 2.x, I will move your topic to the correct category.
The version of the IDE I downloaded was Arduino IDE 2.3.7. Here is a screen shot of the 60 to 600 we changed to prevent it from timing out. board_manager:
additional_urls: []
network:
connection_timeout: 600s
I moved your topic to a more appropriate forum category @KeithHilton. The Development Tools > IDE 1.x category you chose is for discussions about the Arduino IDE 1.x version series (e.g., Arduino IDE 1.8.19). For discussions where the primary subject matter is a version of Arduino IDE from the 2.x version series (e.g., Arduino IDE 2.3.7), the Development Tools > IDE 2.x category should be used.
In the future, when creating a topic please take the time to pick the forum category that best suits the subject of your question. There is an "About the _____ category" topic at the top of each category that explains its purpose.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
I will try my best to put any future topics in the correct place. That requires learning about the Forum as well as the Arduino. Both take time and effort and even those things do not guarantee perfection.
Could you help me find what you suggested, I could not find it? "About the _____ category" Thanks
If you navigate to a category, you will find a post with the title "About the ___ category" where ___ represents the name of the category. You can open that post to see what the category is about.
The first few lines of that post will also show when you hover the mouse over the category name as shown below
Unfortunately the "About the IDE 1.x category" is not quite correct anymore as it mentions the IDE without a version; this is part of the history of the forum and was never adjusted.
Note that in general we're not too critical; there is often a thin line and a question might fit in multiple categories. We just try to keep it organised.
@pert
1
The description for IDE 1.x states
Can you please adjust this so it reflects IDE 1.x?
2
The description for IDE 2.x states
Maybe time to adjust this as well? It's not really testing anymore 
And maybe add "NOT for problems with your project.".
I can tell you haven't had to use an unreliable internet connection. For some of us it can take upwards of 10 minutes just to get connected and even then the connection may not stay up for more than a few minutes.
I certainly have.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "get connected", but as for connecting to a server, I can't imagine a server would wait anywhere near that long for a connection to be established with a client. So you would have bigger problems than Arduino CLI's timeout if that was the case. But even if you had the extremely unlikely situation where it was normal for a connection to take 10 minutes, then you simply adjust the timeout configuration accordingly. So there is no problem in that specific regard.
A default configuration is designed to be suitable for the great majority of users. I am confident that 99.9% of users are going to be able to make a connection within 60 s. It is of course unfortunate for that hypothetical 0.1% of users who will find the default configuration to be unsuitable, but that is why it is configurable. It doesn't make sense to have a default configuration that will result in Arduino IDE hanging a library or boards platform installation for 10 minutes if something goes wrong during a connection just to accommodate the hypothetical one-in-a-million user who has the worst imaginable Internet connection, but is also at the same time somehow able to utilize that connection to download hundreds of megabytes of files.