Just cannot get this PlatformIO thing to work...

S

SteveCS

Well-known member
I have followed tutorials and burnt the midnight oil....

Still, I have this baffling PlatformIO thing sitting in front of me that I just cannot get my head around. To say it's not 'noob' friendly is an understatement :rolleyes:

I have had to move from the Arduino IDE (1.8.9 or the new one - which I don't like because nothing seems to work with it), because I am using some ESP32-S3-DevekitC-1 boards and they are taking 6 minutes to upload 'blink' which is ridiculous.
If I read the Verbose output, it just seems to be taking forever to assemble the required libraries.

Googled on how to speed that up and most people recommended PlatformIO. But that ain't helped either.

Hmmm.. maybe I should take up golf.
 
I think it's my Anti-virus Paul. Just tried disabling it and it worked far faster. Have to suss out how to allow Arduino in my Anti-virus.
I much prefer to stick with the Arduino IDE
 
SteveCS said:
I have followed tutorials and burnt the midnight oil....

Still, I have this baffling PlatformIO thing sitting in front of me that I just cannot get my head around. To say it's not 'noob' friendly is an understatement :rolleyes:

I have had to move from the Arduino IDE (1.8.9 or the new one - which I don't like because nothing seems to work with it), because I am using some ESP32-S3-DevekitC-1 boards and they are taking 6 minutes to upload 'blink' which is ridiculous.
If I read the Verbose output, it just seems to be taking forever to assemble the required libraries.

Googled on how to speed that up and most people recommended PlatformIO. But that ain't helped either.

Hmmm.. maybe I should take up golf.
Click to expand...

You could use VisualMicro with VisualStudio. It takes control of the Arduino Environment and is MUCH easier to use than PlatFormIO. I tried that and ran into the same problems you are.
With VisualMicro you can be working on two projects side by side. I am working on a project with and ESP32 communicating with a Teensy and it is very useful to have Serial Output from both devices available for debugging.

It has teh benefit of the Arduino IDE compatililty but with a much better development/debugging interface. Did I mention that it has run time debugging capabilities built in with the ability to single step code.
 
Serious suggestion if you are on a laptop. Changing my Windows power management setting to "best performance" on both battery and wall power fixed my long compilation issues. My hunch is that it is some kind of Windows efficiency profile.

I use PlatformIO and my very large Teensy based programs compile and upload within a couple of seconds. Our largest programs with many images and audio files embedded take 15 seconds max.
 
BriComp said:
You could use VisualMicro with VisualStudio. It takes control of the Arduino Environment and is MUCH easier to use than PlatFormIO. I tried that and ran into the same problems you are. With VisualMicro you can be working on two projects side by side. I am working on a project with and ESP32 communicating with a Teensy and it is very useful to have Serial Output from both devices available for debugging. It has teh benefit of the Arduino IDE compatililty but with a much better development/debugging interface. Did I mention that it has run time debugging capabilities built in with the ability to single step code.
Click to expand...

Hi Brian, I would like to try Visual Micro with Visual Studio, but I cannot make sense of the installation process. Do you have any notes on installation that you could share?
 
It's Bob actually but whatever!
Click this link to download https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/...2&source=VSLandingPage&passive=false&cid=2030. Be aware that it is likely to start downloading straight away.

Install Visual Studio Community. Instructions (Microsoft's) for installing Visual Studio are here:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/install-visual-studio?view=vs-2022
Further install instructions (from Visual Micro) are here https://www.visualmicro.com/page/User-Guide.aspx?doc=Getting-started.html
When you install Visual Studio you MUST selecy Linux and Embedded Development with C++ as a target (WorkLoad) to work with. If you will be doing other projects also select the appropriate target (WorkLoad).

Open/Start up Visual Studio.
On the TOP LINE click Extensions, then Manage Extensions on the drop down menu.

On the form Select Online, Visual Studio Marketplace.

In the Search field (top right) type Arduino.
Then in the centre field Select Arduino IDE for Visual Studio 2022 and go from there.

The Visual Micro extension will be installed when you Close Visual Studio.

I hope I have covered enough to get you going. I am afraid the install instructions given by both Microsoft and Visual Micro are written for someone who knows how to do it by someone who knows how to do it. A Common fault in the Software Industry!

Be Aware that I installed Visual Studio/Visual Micro quite a few years ago, so I am going from memory and looking at online instructioins without actually doing it.

When you have it installed please come back if you have further questions. There are probably many quirks that I have already sorted out in my head.

BYE THE WAY BEFORE INSTALLING VISUAL MICRO YOU MUST HAVE THE ARDUINO IDE AND TEENSYDUINO ALREADY INSTALLED.
 
Thanks, Bob. I will give this a try and report back. Part of my confusion is the overuse of "Visual". Visual Studio, Visual Micro, Visual Teensy, VS Code, etc.
 
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