Video script

Prep

• Uninstall Arduino IDE on Fedora
• Fresh Virtual Machine, under Virtual Machine Manager:
  • TL;DR Ubuntu 24.04 Live Session (no install needed)
  • cp -v -t ~/.local/share/libvirt/images/ ~/Downloads/ubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso for ISO location
  • User session of QEMU

Preface

In this video, I will show you how to install the Arduino legacy IDE on Ubuntu 24, and Fedora 39. These instructions should work exactly with slightly older versions of each OS, and with derivative versions like Linux Mint or Rocky Linux 9. They should also work generally with any Linux distributions which support installing packages from Flathub or Snapcraft (flatpaks or snaps).

As described on Linsight.org, the new version 2 of the Arduino IDE is a refactor that currently has some bugs. To support the LiBCM update process, Linsight has opted to continue to use the Arduino Legacy IDE. Because Linux distributions keep their system packages up-to-date as part of their release cycle, their versions of certain software dependenies have updated beyond what the Arduino Legacy IDE will work well with.

To solve this, Linux packaging organizations like Snapcraft and Flathub, which continue to offer the Arduino Legacy IDE, also install a runtime environment to support the IDE. This means that using the system software GUI on distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or Manjaro to install the IDE will "just work", even when the instructions on arduino.cc will not.

Installing Arduino IDE: Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, open the App Center and search for Arduino IDE. Currently, the only option is the Legacy IDE. We are going to leave the selected channel on the stable version of 1.8.19 - note this version of the IDE was released in Dec 2021 and will likely not see another version bump.

Click Install > Authenticate. Once it is done installing, click Open. You will be notified that without access to the dialout group, your user will not be able to control serial devices in order to flash Arduino boards, and will give you some instructions for how to change that permission, including a reboot step. I am going to ignore that for now, but you should take time to follow those steps at this point.

Installing the Arduino IDE: Fedora

On Fedora, open the Software app, and in the top-left corner, search for Arduino IDE. Flathub has begun packaging the v2 IDE, for Fedora, but we're going to ignore that and click on the regular Arduino IDE, then click "Install".

I have already modified my system so that my user is in the dialout group:

(Open terminal and show this)

... You will encounter a similar prompt as with the Ubuntu installation process, instructing you on how you can add your user to the dialout secondary group. Do so.

Bonus: Compilation

This video is primarily oriented to users that are struggling with the conflict of information between what is documented on arduino.cc, and by downstream Linux packagers. The Arduino organization likely recognizes there is not one right of using Linux, and has as such not maintained their Linux install instructions for use by the general public. However, since this video was made in response to difficulties by LiBCM users to use Linux to install LiBCM firmware updates, I am also going to show you how to compile and update LiBCM.

To download the code, go to https://github.com/doppelhub/Honda_Insight_LiBCM. This URL is referenced elsewhere.

At this point, select the branch you want to install from. There are two options you care about: the main branch, which is most stable, and the prerelease branch, where you can check out the very latest publicly-released changes.

Select the right branch in this dropdown, and then under Code, hit "Download ZIP". Once this is done, you can extract the ZIP file using a file browser.

As documented in the Firmware Install - 1st Time video, you will need to edit the config.h file under Honda_Insight_LiBCM > Firmware > firmwareLiBCM > config.h. Here, I'm using the default Gnome text editor, and configuring LiBCM for basically the minimum install - 5AhG3, small grid-charger, no current hack.

Compiling the firmware in the Arduino IDE

Now, I'm going to open the Arduino IDE I installed in a previous step, and open the main LiBCM sketch we will be installing. Hit "File", then "Open", then navigate to the extracted ZIP, then to the Sketch (aka .ino) file, in Firmware > firmwareLiBCM > firmwareLiBCM.ino.

You will also want to set the board to the Arduino Mega, so that the compiler knows what kind of file to make. Under "Tools" > "Board", select "Arduino Mega or Mega 2560".

Finally, to test compilation, hit the check-mark in the top-left. As compilation proceeds, you may see warnings in the output, but you can tell whether the compilation succeeded by checking whether the compiler reports the ultimate size of the sketch's program storage space and dynamic memory:

"Sketch uses 40062 bytes (15%) of program storage space" ...

... and so on. At this point, so long as LiBCM is connected to your computer via its black USB cable, connected to the Arduino IDE in the Tools > Ports option, and as long as your system user is allowed to use dialout group resources, firmware installation will succeed, unless something has gone seriously wrong with LiBCM.

Future

If there's demand for it, I may make a short video showing some of the things that may go wrong while connecting to LiBCM using a Linux machine. Linux provides a lot of easily-accessible interfaces to hardware that make it easy to tell how the computer is interacting with USB devices, and over the years I've found it really helpful to bisect issues down to hardware or software ones.