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Chapter 8 ■ Persistence-of-Vision Display 93

You can now find and launch the Arduino LINUX is, will no doubt find you lots of helpful
software in your Applications folder. Since you material.
will use it frequently, you may wish to right-click
its icon in the dock and set it to Keep In Dock. Configuring Your Arduino
You can now skip the next subsection, which is Environment
for installation on LINUX.
Whatever type of computer you use, you should
now have the Arduino software installed on it. You
Installation on LINUX must next make a few settings. You need to specify

Many different LINUX distributions exist, and for the port that is connected to the USB port for
the latest information, refer to the Arduino home communicating with the Arduino board and we
page. However, for most versions of LINUX, must specify the type of Arduino board we are
installation is very straightforward. Your LINUX using. But first you need to connect your Arduino
will probably already have installed the USB to your computer using the USB port or you will
drivers, the avr-gcc libraries, and the Java not be able to select the serial port.
environment that the Arduino software needs. The serial port is set from the Tools menu, as

So, if you are lucky, all you will need to do is shown in Figure 8-19 for the Mac and Figure 8-20
download the tgz file for the Arduino software for Windows—the list of ports for LINUX is
from the Arduino home page (www.arduino.cc), similar to the Mac.
extract it, and this will be your working Arduino If you use many USB or Bluetooth devices with
directory. your Mac, you are likely to have quite a few

If, on the other hand, you are unlucky, then as a options in this list. Select the item in the list that
LINUX user you are probably already adept at begins with dev/tty.usbserial.
finding support from the LINUX community for On Windows, the serial port can just be set to
setting up your system. The prerequisites you will COM3.
need to install are Java Runtime 5 or later and the
We can now select the board we will use from
latest avr-gcc libraries.
the Tools menu, as shown in Figure 8-21. Select
Googling the phrase “Installing Arduino on the option for the board you are using.
SUSE LINUX,” or whatever your distribution of

Figure 8-19 Setting the serial port on the Mac