PlatformIO Core

PlatformIO Core (CLI tool) is a heart of whole PlatformIO ecosystem and consists of

• Multi-platform Build System
• Development platform and package managers
• Library Manager
• Library Dependency Finder (LDF)
• Serial Port Monitor
• Integration components (Cloud & Standalone IDE and Continuous Integration).

You can head over to the PlatformIO Core page at platformio.org for a detailed explanation on its system requirements, development version, troubleshooting,... but we are documenting here the basic procedure to install it on you machine and build a simple sketch.

Requirements

The basic requirement across the different platform is having Python 2.7 in the system (PlatformIO does NOT support Python 3 yet).

Linux

Ubuntu/Debian users may need to add own user to the dialout group if they are not root, doing this issuing a sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER.

Install "udev rules file 99-platformio-udev.rules (an instruction is located in the file).

MacOS

Please check that you have correctly installed USB driver from board manufacturer.

Windows

Please remember to select "Add python.exe to Path" on the "Customize" stage when installing Python 2.7 in your system. Otherwise Python Package Manager pip command will not be available.

Please check that you have correctly installed USB driver from board manufacturer.

Installation

All commands below are meant to be executed from the console/terminal application. Use cmd.exe for Windows.

1. Check a python version (only Python 2.7 is supported):

python --version

2. Install a platformio and related packages (same instruction to upgrade):

pip install -U platformio

Notes

There are alternative ways to install PlatformIO Core on your system. Check the PlatformIO Core page at platformio.org to see them. You can also install the development version of the tool or install it in a virtual environment, for instance.