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Installing a Board Package in the IDE 2

Learn how the new board manager tool works, and how to easily install the boards you want to use in the Arduino IDE 2.

Author Karl Söderby & Jacob Hylén

Last revision 04/16/2024

The board manager is a great tool for installing the necessary board packages to use your Arduino boards. In this quick tutorial, we will take a look at how to install one, and choosing the right package for your board!

You can easily download the editor from the Arduino Software page.

You can also follow the downloading and installing the Arduino IDE 2 tutorial for more detailed guide on how to install the editor.

Requirements

Arduino IDE 2 installed.

Why Use the Board Manager?

The board manager is a tool that is used to install different board packages on your local computer. So what is a board package, and why is it necessary that I install one?

Simply explained, a board package is written and designed for specific microcontrollers. Arduino offers several different types of boards, and these boards may also have different types of microcontrollers. While different microcontrollers accomplish tasks in similar ways, the way code is compiled, pins are mapped, and what features are available is tailor-made to the silicon itself, meaning that this will also be microcontroller-specific.

What a board package does is to act as a layer between all of this microcontroller-specific jargon, and you - the maker. The board package translates it into the Arduino API you are already familiar with so that you can program any of the microcontrollers in the Arduino ecosystem in the same way.

For example, an Arduino UNO has an ATmega328P, which uses the AVR package, while an Arduino Nano 33 IoT has a SAMD21 microcontroller, where we need to use the SAMD package. However, regardless of what microcontroller is on the board we are using,

digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH)

will turn on the built-in LED, and

analogRead(A0)

will read the analog pin 0 and check for a voltage.

In conclusion, to use a specific board, we need to install a specific board package.

Installing a Board Package

Installing a board package is quick and easy, but let's take a look at what we need to do.

1. Open the Arduino IDE 2.

2. With the editor open, let's take a look at the left column. Here, we can see a couple of icons. Let's click the on the Arduino board icon.

3. A list will now appear of all available packages. Now let's say we are using an Nano 33 BLE board, and we want to install the board package. Simply enter the name in the search field, and the right package (Mbed OS Nano) will appear, where the Nano 33 BLE features in the description. Click on the "INSTALL" button.

4. This will begin an installation process, which usually only take a few moments.

5. When it is finished, we can take a look at the core in the boards manager column, where it should say "INSTALLED", as well as noting which version you have installed on your machine.

Congratulations! You have now successfully downloaded and installed a board package on your machine, and you can start using your Arduino board!

Changing version

In some specific use cases you might want to downgrade the version of a board package that you have on your machine. Thankfully, the Arduino IDE has built in support to let you jump between versions with a breeze.

To change the installed version of a boards package, follow these steps:

Open the boards manager

Boards manager
Search for the name of the package you want to change

Boards manager
Select your desired version in the drop down menu

Boards manager
Press "INSTALL"

Boards manager

And that should be it!

To make sure that the process was successful, cross check what version is installed by looking at this little tag right underneath the package name.

What Board Package Should I Install?

Do you have an Arduino board in your hands, but are not sure what board package you need to install? When you plug a board in to your computer, and you don't have the appropriate board package installed, the IDE should automatically prompt you to install it. But, in case you need it anyways, you can find a list of boards and the board packages they belong to below:

AVR

The AVR boards package is based on the Arduino AVR Core, and includes the following boards:

The AVR board package comes pre-installed when you download the Arduino IDE, so if you have one of these boards - Great! You're already done and won't need to install it yourself. You can, however, still find it in the board manager if you want to change what version of the board package you have installed. For detailed instructions on how to do this, follow the steps above.