Install Arduino support on Linux

The Arduino system has been designed to be accessible to people at all skill levels, and Keyboardio is built on top of the Arduino platform because we share that goal. There are many ways to set up your system to work with the Keyboardio firmware, the most typical is to use the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE); an application that gives some visual context to the code you want to send to your Arduino device. This is the easiest process for folks who are new to Arduino, or to programming generally. If you follow the instructions below step by step you should be fine. :-)

Step One: Set up the Arduino IDE

1. Install version 1.8.8 or newer of the Arduino IDE from http://arduino.cc/download. Unfortunately, the version packaged in Ubuntu is too ancient to support Arduino's new way of doing 3rd-party hardware.

2. Assuming you're untarring in the download directory:

   $ cd ~/Downloads
   $ tar xvf arduino-1.8.8-linux64.tar.xz
   $ sudo mv arduino-1.8.8 /usr/local/arduino
   $ cd /usr/local/arduino
   $ sudo ./install.sh

3. On Ubuntu, you will have to prevent ModemManager from attempting to grab the keyboard virtual serial port when it goes into bootloader mode:

   $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keyboardio/Kaleidoscope/master/etc/99-kaleidoscope.rules
   $ sudo cp 99-kaleidoscope.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
   $ sudo /etc/init.d/udev reload

4. Then disconnect and reconnect the keyboard for that change to take effect.

5. To let Arduino talk to the device over the serial port, you'll need to be in the appropriate group. On Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions, the group you need is the 'dialout' group.

   From a shell:

   $ groups 

   If you see dialout in the list, you're good to go. If you don't, you'll have to add yourself and then get Linux to recognize the change in your current shell:

   $ sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
   $ newgrp dialout   # or su - $USER, or log out and in again

   On Arch linux, Manjaro linux, and probably other Arch derivatives, the group for the device access is uucp. To add yourself to this group if necessary, use

   $ sudo usermod -a -G uucp $USER
   $ newgrp uucp   # or su - $USER, or log out and in again
   

6. You may have to tweak the ARDUINO_PATH (put this line in your shell-rc)

   export ARDUINO_PATH=/usr/local/arduino

Next step: Add keyboard support to Arduino