So now I have used the official Arduino IDE for some time to program the ESP8266. It is a convenient and quick-to-get-started method (check ). But recently I plan to write an application that I feel it would be uncomfortable to write codes using the limited features of Arduino IDE. I find particularly two feature-rich IDEs out there, which are free and highly recommended by communities, namely Atom and Visual Studio Code. With Atom, we need to add the PlatformIO extension for programming embedded systems, including the ESP8266. While with VS Code, we need to install either PlatformIO or Arduino extension. I had difficulties to get both Atom-PlatformIO and VS Code-PlatformIO working.

Somehow the PlatformIO installation was not able to complete. I suspected it was caused by my office internet proxy. I spent quite some time to solve it but did not succeed, so I abandoned it and tried the Arduino extension. Getting the VS Code with Arduino extension working was not that straight forward either.

If you search for the Arduino extension, you will find two choices, either developed by Microsoft or Steve Yin. Initially I chose the one developed by Microsoft.

Well, Arduino extension is just an extension that allows users to tell the VS Code where the tools for compiling and uploading code reside. So we must have the official Arduino IDE installed because its tools for compiling and uploading will be used by the VS Code. Then we need to specify the Arduino IDE path in the VS Code ‘User Settings’. Btw, my OS was Windows 8, and I installed the official Arduino IDE version 1.8.2. For unknown reasons compiling sketch using VS Code was always fail with a message saying ‘ [Error] Exit with code=undefined’. Actually, I also had an Ubuntu machine, and I managed to get the Arduino extension working. I could compile and upload codes to the ESP8266.

Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Makefile project. Select File->New->Project Then select Visual C Projects and scroll until you see Makefile Project. Select Makefile project, select a name for your project and whether you want VS to create a directory and import into Subversion or another version control management system.

But for some reasons, I still preferred to work on my Windows 8 machine. So, then I gave the Steve Yin’s Arduino extension a try on my Win 8. The compile and upload options in User Settings were more complicated than those of Microsoft one. But happily I succeeded to compile and write bits of codes to the ESP8266 flash memory. The easiest way to specify the compile and upload options is by adapting them from the command list spat out from the Arduino IDE console output. Again, you can follow this to program ESP8266 using Arduino IDE. Here is my VS Code ‘User Settings’.

Hello, I am creating a script to auto-detect the arduino on the serial port. For some reason the code I found for this only displays ONE port even if there are TWO ports available. Arduino is on COM5. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Where are backup files for word kept on mac download. Got it Cyrille. Private Sub autoconnect() For Each sp As String In My.Computer.Ports.SerialPortNames Try SerialPort1 = New SerialPort(sp, 9600, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One) SerialPort1.ReadTimeout = 700 SerialPort1.WriteTimeout = 700 SerialPort1.Open() Dim ListeningWatch As New Stopwatch Dim serialMessage As String SerialPort1.Write('Arduino') ListeningWatch.Start() While ListeningWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds.

That seems promising Reed! But I still can't get it to work yet. I tried it in my code and also downloaded the tool and clicked on 'Find USB-Serial converters using WMI' but I get 'An error occurred while querying for WMI data: Access denied'. Also downloaded the official tool from microsoft and got access denied. I am logged in as the administrator on this PC not sure what else it could be. EDIT: I checked the COM Security 'Access Permissions' and 'Launch and Activation Permissions' all local access are set to allow.

I restarted my PC too just in case recent windows updates were messing with it. Also tried it first thing after rebooting to make sure nothing else was interfering.

I wonder if you aren't going through a lot of effort for nothing. I'd be willing to bet that anyone who knows what an Arduino is also knows enough to figure out which COM port it is using. Considering that every tutorial on getting started with the hardware includes instructions on finding the COM port, I think it would be safe to assume that users of your application could select the correct COM port for your software. Now then, if your software is meant to work with some specific firmware running on an Arduino, then discovering a COM port with the 'Arduino' description is not sufficient. Suppose the user plugged in some other Arduino that wasn't running the intended firmware?