Visual Studio Community: a free, accessible IDE for Arduino

Thanks to Ken Perry for investigating and recommending Visual Studio Community 2015 as an accessible Windows environment for programming Arduino. This method requires some time and effort to set up, but once it’s done it offers screen-readable line numbering, error reporting, serial monitoring and code completion, among other advantages. I found that JAWS 17 and NVDA 2016.1 work equally well with Visual Studio Community. If you’d like to give VSC a try, here’s how:

Installation

Arduino IDE

You’ll still need to start out by downloading the Arduino IDE; you won’t be opening or coding in this IDE, but a Visual Studio plug-in needs to use the Arduino compiler behind the scenes. If you already have the IDE, check to make sure it’s the latest version; if it isn’t, download the current version before moving on. (Note: at this writing, the current version is 1.6.9. It’s of course possible that a future version will be incompatible with VSC. A quick Google search of the current IDE version and VSC version should let you know whether they’re working together). It’s a good idea to put the Arduino folder at the root of your hard drive: by default it installs within C:\Program Files, which can cause problems with permissions down the line. If you already have the IDE installed, you can just copy the whole Arduino folder from C:\Program Files to C:\.

Visual Studio Community 2015

Visual Studio Community is available as a free download. While the initial download is relatively small, budget some time (it took me around 45 minutes with a decent wifi connection) for the VSC installer to acquire and configure additional files, and make sure you have 12 gb of free storage space (8 for VSC, 4 for Visual C++) before you begin the setup process. The necessary controls to move through installation are readable with both JAWS and NVDA. To monitor the progress of installation, use the touch cursor (JAWS) or object navigation (NVDA). You may notice some “phantom controls” above the progress information that refer to ending a session, cancelling setup, and choosing an installation location. Don’t worry about those; keep your attention on the reassuring movement of the files being installed and the progress percentage.

Note: Before you start the installation, read ahead to the section of Visual C++. If you choose a custom install for VSC, you can skip an extra step later on: however, I haven’t tested this myself so I’ll be describing the (probably longer) path I took.

When setup is done, activate the “Launch” button. You’ll be prompted to sign in or create an account to connect to developer services, but you can tab and choose “Not Now, Maybe Later” if you’d rather not.

Next, you’ll be prompted to choose your development settings (the default, “General”, is fine) and a color theme. Tab and choose to “Start Visual Studio”, and go make a cup of tea or something; it takes about two minutes for VSC to configure itself.

You are now in a world of buttons leading to tutorials, news, videos and more. You can tab through these if you’d like to explore them.

Visual C++

You’ll need to install Visual C++ before programming your Arduino. If you didn’t do this when you first installed VSC, navigate to the File Menu>New>Project. In the dialog box of extension providers that appears in focus, choose Visual C++. Tab several times to a list of extensions and choose “Install Visual C++”. This installation took me about 15 minutes and all screens were readable, although I encountered “phantom messages” similar to the ones I described when installing VSC.

The Arduino Plug-in

Navigate to Tools>Extensions and Updates to install the Arduino Plug-in, otherwise known as “Visual Micro”.

Within the Extensions and Updates dialog box, shift-tab once and change the combo box from “Installed” to “All” (sorry, this box’s label seemed unreadable by NVDA). Then, tab to the search box and type in “Arduino”. Tab to the table of extensions, where “Arduino IDE for Visual Studio” should be your top hit. Tab once more to Download, and press enter to initiate download and installation. (You may need to say “Yes” to a User Account Control at this point”). One more dialog box will appear; choose Install, and follow the prompt to restart VSC. (If you receive an error message stating that “per user extensions” could not be loaded, close VSC; set its properties to always run as an administrator; and reopen it.

When VSC restarts, you’ll be placed in a dialog box to configure IDE locations. (You’ll also be shown a window containing the Arduino for Visual Studio documentation). Choose your Arduino IDE version and the installation path for your Arduino IDE, then tab and choose OK. At this point, I was presented with a message reading “toolchain reloaded” and the only way to dismiss it was to close and reopen VSC.

Getting ready to program

Select your toolbars

Navigate to View>Toolbars and select all four Micro toolbars (Boards, Project, Programmer, Serial Communications).

Configure VSC to work with your board

Visual Studio Community can work with a wide variety of microcontrollers, including Arduino. You need to specify your board and how it’s connected before you can write programs to your Arduino.

Connect your Arduino and find out what com port it’s using. To do this, open your Device Manager and expand the “Ports, Com and LPT” section.

In VSC, navigate to the “Micro Boards” toolbar (you can do this by pressing Alt for the menu bar and then pressing Control+Tab until you find the toolbar). The first combo box you find, Micro Applications, will specify your IDE version. Tab once to the Board combo box and choose your Arduino model. (Pro tip: the first choice here is “Arduino Yún” which sounds a lot like, but emphatically is not, the same thing as “Arduino Uno”. Do not waste time choosing this option and failing to program your Uno: I’ve already done that for you).

After you choose your board, navigate to the Micro Serial Communications toolbar and choose your board’s com port.

Writing a Program

To create your first project, navigate to File>New>Arduino Project. Give your project a name and press enter. A blank sketch is always populated with lines for “Void Setup” and “Voic Loop”, along with comments (bracketed by /* and */) explaining what those sections mean. If you’re writing code by hand, leave these in place; if you’re pasting in a code example that already has these sections, select and delete the existing text before you paste.

Uploading the Program

To upload your program, press Control+F5. If VSC finds errors, it will list them for you, by line and column number. If not, it will let you know whether the program finished uploading. In either case, to dismiss the message and get back to your code, press Escape.

Closing and re-opening your program

VSC refers to programs, which can include your Arduino sketch and any associated files, as “Solutions”. Navigate to File>Close Solution when you’re done working with a program, and follow the prompt to save or discard changes. To open a program you’ve previously created, navigate to File>Open>Arduino Project.