Getting started with PlatformIO

Posted on September 23, 2019

I’ve been wanting to look into PlatformIO as an alternative to the Arduino IDE. I’ve been hoping it might solve problems like:

Having to constantly change the Tools menu settings (see at right for an example) when I switch from one project to another. (I use different settings for different projects, and as far as I know, Arduino has no way to save the settings used for a particular project.)
Updating an installed library affects all my projects globally, and can sometimes have unintended effects. I’d rather be able to select library versions on a per-project basis.

Basically, PlatformIO appears to be a unified build tool, which can build and flash embedded projects for a wide variety of chips and boards. PlatformIO is not an API, but rather it reuses existing platforms like Arduino or mbed. However, you do not have to learn a new workflow or install new tools to use a different platform. Rather, you interact with the PlatformIO tool, and it automatically downloads toolchains and libraries when needed.

So, I gave PlatformIO a try, by running a “blinking LED” example on an Arduino Uno board. (Actually, I used a STEMTera, which is 100% Uno compatible.)

First, I needed to install PlatformIO. I did this on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine. The first step was to install the udev rules:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio-core/master/scripts/99-platformio-udev.rules | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-platformio-udev.rules
sudo service udev restart

Then I installed PlatformIO using pip:

sudo pip install -U platformio

And that’s it for installation! Now, following the quickstart guide, I was ready to try building an example. The first step was to create a project:

~$ mkdir -p pio/blink
~$ cd pio/blink
~/pio/blink$ pio init --board uno
********************************************************************************
If you like PlatformIO, please:
- follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest project news > https://twitter.com/PlatformIO_Org
- star it on GitHub > https://github.com/platformio/platformio
- try PlatformIO IDE for IoT development > https://platformio.org/platformio-ide
- support us with PlatformIO Plus > https://pioplus.com
********************************************************************************


The current working directory /home/ppelleti/pio/blink will be used for the project.

The next files/directories have been created in /home/ppelleti/pio/blink
include - Put project header files here
lib - Put here project specific (private) libraries
src - Put project source files here
platformio.ini - Project Configuration File

Project has been successfully initialized! Useful commands:
`pio run` - process/build project from the current directory
`pio run --target upload` or `pio run -t upload` - upload firmware to a target
`pio run --target clean` - clean project (remove compiled files)
`pio run --help` - additional information

This worked fine, although after printing all of this out, it hung for a long time. I’m not sure what it was doing, but it eventually returned my to the prompt after quite a while. Just be patient.

Then I created the src/main.cpp file as specified in the quickstart. After that, I just needed to do:

pio run

to build the project. And then finally, I flashed the code onto my STEMTera by running:

pio run -t upload

And it worked! I still have a lot to learn about PlatformIO, but it seems promising so far.