Installing Board Definitions in the Arduino IDE

Getting Started with the Arduino Board Manager

Starting from the Arduino Software (Integrated Development Environment or IDE) version 1.6.2, all Arduino AVR boards are installed with the Arduino IDE, by default. Some development boards, require an additional core to be installed; therefore Arduino implemented the Boards Manager as a tool to add cores to your Arduino IDE.

What is a Core?

The cores are necessary to make new microcontrollers compatible with your Arduino IDE and, possibly, the existing sketches and libraries. Arduino develops the cores for the microcontrollers used on their boards, but anyone may develop a core for their own boards following the rules and requirements laid out by Arduino.

The Arduino website also has great instructions on installing Arduino cores. For more information on using the Arduino IDE Boards Manager, check out their tutorial or click the button, below:

What is a Board Definition?

A board definition is the associated variants and pin configuration files in a core, that are provided to integrate a board's microcontroller into the Arduino IDE and board's pin layout with available methods for each pin's functionality. For more details, check out the documentation for the platform specifications

Suggested Reading

For more basics on Arduino, check out our tutorials below: