third party not invited

situation

issue

step by step

intro

folder

platforms

boards

cpus

• software

  so first off, download and install the appropriate arduino beta software

  if you have an arduino due, you can read more about it on the official site

• once you have your specific operating system flavor of arduino installed, navigate to the arduino folder inside hardware

  ---

  windows

  [install location]/hardware/arduino/

  mac

  [install location] -> right click arduino -> show package contents

  contents/resources/java/hardware/arduino/

  ---

  regardless of which operating system you are on you will find two folders here, avr and sam

  grab your third party hardware folder (typically containing boards.txt, bootloader folder, cores folder, programmers.txt) and create a new folder for it here

  in this example, we have created a new folder named '644' which contains the sanguino core from 'picasso' github

• creating the new platform

  now that we have a new folder setup with our hardware (in this case, the '644' folder), you will want to copy the platform.txt file from the 'avr' folder and paste it in your new one

  editing the new platform

  open the newly pasted platform.txt file in your favorite text editor

  1. find the line containing name= (line 5 in the recent release)
  2. change the name= value, we changed ours to urm, other chips so name=urm, other chips is what we typed
  3. you can leave the rest alone unless you know what your doing, it's a bunch of compile flags. the folks at arduino did a good job of keeping everything modular
  4. save this file
  5. relaunch arduino and booom, you now have a new 'boards' sub menu with

  results

  

  in the image above you now see a sub menu in 'boards' with a section title of 'urm, other chips'

• editing the boards file

  with platforms out of the way, in your new folder (again 644 in our case), find and open boards.txt

  add menu.cpu=Processor to the top of the file, this will invoke the 'processor' sub folder under 'tools'

  save, relaunch arduino and booom, you now have a new 'boards' sub menu with

• so you want to add a different cpu

  well, you can do what you did in the platforms and boards section over and over, but what if you simply have a processor variant

  here, we are going to add an 328 non-pico to the mix, but we don't want it in a new subfolder, we simply want to add a processor to the mix

  1. open the boards.txt file from the 'avr' folder
  2. find atmega328diecimila section and scroll down to ###########
  3. just above that, we will start adding our new board
  4. give your new cpu a menu name and identifier
     menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier]=[menu name]
     it's important to continu using menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier] for the following
  5. remember to add the following items as required the below list is specific to our build environment and for example purpose only
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].upload.maximum_size=32256
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].upload.speed=115200
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].bootloader.high_fuses=0xde
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].bootloader.extended_fuses=0x05
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].bootloader.file=optiboot/optiboot_atmega328.hex yes, we shoehorned the optiboot onto the 328 non pico
     • menu.cpu.atmega328diecimila.[identifier].build.mcu=m328au it's what we called it in the avrdude.conf file
     • save your boards.txt file
     • relaunch arduino

  results

  

  sub menu in 'boards' with the identifier 'three two eight'

  

  sub menu in 'processor' with the identifier 'non picante (bootloader)'