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Best Simulators for Arduino

Preprint · January 2019

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.36535.16809

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 Best Simulators for Arduino
Author : Mohamed FEZARI
Badji mokhtar Annaba University

These days, Arduino simulators make it possible for anyone, meaning both beginners and professional
circuit designers to learn, program and test ideas without worrying about wasting time and money.

Arduino simulators are the perfect platforms for programmers and designers who want to learn the basics of
circuit schematics and design. With the help of an Arduino simulator, you’ll get an avenue to learn without
being afraid that you will damage your board and design equipment.

Students who face challenges purchasing electrical equipment without any clue on how they’ll work can
eliminate trial and error mistakes with the help of Arduino simulators, saving both time and money.

Another advantage of Arduino simulators is the fact that they support line to line debugging and the user
will identify exactly the spot where things went wrong. Arduino simulators come in all kinds of forms, and
they have been developed in such a way to be compatible with the main OSs.

In this article, we’re going to list the best Arduino simulators compatible with Windows PCs.

Arduino simulators for PC

Autodesk Eagle (recommended)

Autodesk Eagle provides powerful and easy to use tools for every engineer out there. You can now bring
your electronic inventions to life with the help of a complete set of PCB layout and schematic editing tools,
community-driven features and library content.

The key features of Eagle include the following:

  Schematic editor
 Modular design blocks – you can reuse the existing blocks of circuitry.
 Multi sheet schematics – you can keep designs of any size organized.
 Electrical rule checking – you will finally be able to have confidence in your schematic design.
 Real-time design synchronization – you can stay in-sync between schematic and PCB layout.
 PCB Layout editor
 BGA fanout – you can escape from your BGA in seconds.
 High-speed design – you can design with the latest technologies, including DDR4, PCI Express, or
USB-C.
 3D models for PCB layout – you can unite your PCB and enclosure seamlessly.
 Complete components – this is the one-stop shop for reviewing your component needs.

User language programs (ULPs) – you can improve your design tool process.

Get Eagle Standart version from Autodesk‘s website

– Get Eagle Pro now from Autodesk‘s website

Proteus

Proteus is a great Arduino simulator that combines simplicity with its various features and manages to make
Arduino simulation seem like the easiest thing. This simulator managed to make inroads in all kinds of
industries such as education, automotive, and IoT. It’s compatible with both Linux and Windows, and there
are lots of things to know about its offerings and its vibrant community.

The most prominent and exciting feature of Proteus is its ability to simulate the interaction between software
running on a microcontroller and any digital/analog electronics connected to it. The microcontroller model
sits on the schematics together with the other elements of your product design. Just like a real chip, it
simulates the execution of your object code.

Proteus includes various virtual instruments such as Oscilloscope, Logic Analyser, Function Generator,
Pattern Generator, Counter Timer and Virtual Terminal and also simple voltmeters and ammeters. More than
that, Proteus provides dedicated Master/Slave/Monitor mode protocol analyzers for SPI and I2C – you
simply have to wire them onto the serial lines and control/interact with the data live during the simulation
process.

Proteus offers an invaluable and inexpensive way to get your communication software right before hardware
prototyping.

Proteus also allows the following operations:

 Debugging: it can perform simulations in single step modes, and it works just like a debugger.
 Diagnostics: Proteus is equipped with comprehensive diagnostics or trace messaging.
 Co-simulate both low and high-level micro-controller code in the context of a mixed-mode
SPICE circuit simulation.
 Proteus improves efficiency, flexibility, and quality all over the design process.

Check out more info on Proteus.

Autodesk Circuits

Autodesk Circuits allows you to bring your ideas to life with online free and easy to use tools. In case you
are only a beginner, you can start with more simple experiments in the Circuit Scribe or the Electronics Lab.
Users who are more experienced can skip ahead and go straight to PCB Design.

Electronics Lab Hub includes the following:

 Real-time simulation: you can design and prototype before you build a circuit in real life; you can
use anything from resistors, capacitors, and potentiometers all the way to oscilloscopes.
 Arduino programming: you can program and simulate any Arduino code in the editor, and you’ll
have a full serial monitor and a growing collection of various supported Arduino libraries.
 Collaborative editing: you can invite others to collaborate in real-time on your designs.
 Circuit Scribe Hub allows you to design and simulate circuits, and then print and share your
templates. You can also embed your design and learn from the community of the developers of
Autodesk Circuit.

PCB Design Hub includes the following features:

 Schematic design: you can choose from a growing component library by the community, or you can
create your own components.
 PCB Layout: this includes all the tools that you need such as copper trace, copper fill, via and drill
holes and lots of silk screen tools.
Learning to code is much easier when you can program things that really work. Autodesk Circuits is a free
tool so you should go and check it out now.

Virtronics Simulator for Arduino

This Victronics Arduino simulator promises to be the most full-featured one that is available now.

Here are its most important benefits that it boasts:

 It features the ability to teach and demonstrate the inner workings of an Arduino sketch.
 You can test out a sketch without the hardware or before purchasing equipment.
 You can debug a sketch.
 Using it, you can demonstrate a project to potential customers.
 You are able to develop a complicated sketch faster than when using the hardware.

You can download the free version, try it out, and when you are ready, you can upgrade to the Pro version.
The software is designed for the Arduino Uno, Mega, and more standard Arduino boards. It performs lots of
processes including the following:

 It steps through the program line by line. If a new line is selected, the program will continue from
that point.
 Performs digital write, digital read, and PinMode for pins 0-53
 Analog read for pins 0-16 and analog write for digital pins 0-53
 Emulates Serial, LCD output, Ethernet, Servo, SD card, EEPROM, SoftSerial,SPI, Wire
 If,while,for,switch, do whileloop functionality
 Subroutines (multi-level) with arguments
 View variables in real-time
 Step Into, Step Over, Step Out of or Run mode
 Ability to edit sketch or open in Arduino IDE
 2 and 4 line LCD support only with improvised CGRAM
 2-dimensional arrays (without initialization).
Simuino is an Arduino UNO/MEGA Pin Simulator.
You can download the terminal version (latest version is v0.2.0) at web.simuino.com. NOTE: Downloads
available on code.google.com is no longer the latest!
Run your sketch and evaluate in/out status of the digital and analog pins. The GUI is based on ncurses, i.e.
run Simuino from a terminal window. Features animation in realtime according to actual delays in sketch.
The perfect tool for anybody who wants to get started with Arduino Sketch construction.
It is also possible to construct scenarios regarding analogRead, digitalRead and External Interrupts.
The purpose is to make the construction of a sketch easier. You can verify the functionality without having
the Arduino board available. Simuino runs the sketch and shows the status of the digital,analog pins and
serial output.
Source: C++ Platform: Linux (Ubuntu)
For more information, visit www.simuino.com
Way of working:
1. Start Simuino
2. Load your sketch into your editor of choice.
3. Edit logic,scenario data, log-text.
4. Load sketch into Simuino (command load in Simuino)
5. Evalute simulation by stepping in Simuino. Set values on the fly.
Repeat 3,4,5 until wanted result.

EMULARE

Emulare is a general purpose hardware emulator. It aims to provide a central interface to build
electronic simulations for embedded software development.

It allows to drag and drop components onto a diagram and connect the pins with wires. This allows to
quickly simulate complete boards. Using these board files makes it possible to develop software very
close to real hardware. This allows a much more efficient way of simulating software, instead of a more
traditional work method, like using visual C++.

At present emulare focuses on the ATMega line of microcontrollers.

It has full support for the AVR instruction set. It emulates all on board devices of the atmega328p.

These are:

 AVR memories (data, code, eeprom)

 Watchdog timer
 Power management
 Interrupts (intern and extern)
 I/O ports
 8 bit timer/counter with PWM
 16 bit timer/counter with PWM
 8 bit timer/counter with PWM and asynchronous operation
 SPI
 USART
  2-wire serial interface
 Analog Comparator
 Analog-to-Digital Converter

It has a GNU GDB RSP interface for debugging using AVR-GDB, or insight. It integrates very well with
eclipse-avr.

News: 2012-05-28: uploaded 1.9

CodeBlocks Arduino IDE

CodeBlocks Arduino IDE is a customized distribution of the open-source Code::Blocks IDE enhanced for
Arduino development. It provides more demanding software developers with everything a modern IDE
should have including code foldering, code completion, code navgiation, compiling as well as uploading for
Arduino. With a dedicated project wizard, it’s easy create a ready-to-go Arduino project. The distribution
integrates latest Arduino core files, standard Arduino libraries, AVR toolchain, Arduino Builder, a serial
terminal and most interesting, an API-level Arduino simulator (under development).

Features:
1. dedicated project wizard for Arduino development
2. integrated Arduino core files and libraries
3. compiled core files cached for faster compiling speed (comparing to original Arduino IDE)
4. integrated pre-configured AVR compiler toolchain
5. popular Arduino boards supported as build targets
6. uploading HEX to Arduino boards (Leonardo supported) by running the built target
7. Arduino API-level simulator (very early stage) integrated (as a build target)
Screenshots:

References
http://virtronics.com.au/Simulator-for-Arduino.html
https://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinosim/
https://www.makerspaces.com/arduino-uno-tutorial-beginners/
https://windowsreport.com/arduino-simulators/

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