[HH] Codebender - coding for Arduino in the cloud

[Tom Metro]

Codebender - coding for Arduino in the cloud
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Codebender-coding-for-Arduino-in-the-cloud-1655110.html

  The Arduino has come to define the hands-on microcontroller, for
  education and for practical applications. But the associated software
  tools are very much tied to the traditional desktop. Codebender is
  hoping to change that by taking Arduino development into the cloud
  while keeping it open source.

  Codebender is a web based development environment for Arduino which
  offers a simple syntax highlighting editor, compiler and tools to get
  the compiled code onto an Arduino. A user can create any number of
  projects, though currently projects are limited to a single file, and
  if wanted, seed them with one of a number of existing Arduino projects
  or libraries.
  [...]
  The core of the IDE, the editor, is based on ACE, the successor to
  Mozilla's Bespin project. The ACE editor offers automated indentation,
  syntax highlighting, parentheses matching, auto-completion, keyword
  highlighting and even comes with bindings for Vi and EMACS. To
  simplify the development process further, Codebender has a range of
  built-in libraries including the Adafruit LCD library, XBee and
  XBeeRadio, Webduino web server and others. By building in the
  libraries, all a user needs to do is include them in their Arduino
  sketch, reducing the time spent fiddling with the development
  environment and increasing the time spent writing and discovering
  what's possible with the Arduino.
  [...]
  One question that comes up is how does compiled code get from the
  cloud IDE into the serial-over-USB interface of the Arduino. The
  possibly surprising answer is a Java applet, designed to be embedded
  into Codebender's editor pages. The applet can request sufficient
  permission to get access to the virtualised serial drivers and upload
  code to the Arduino board. The applet also gives the user a serial
  console to track output from the Arduino. In the future, the
  developers want to look at the emerging JavaScript APIs for serial
  port access, but for now the Java applet will be the main way to move
  code from the cloud to the chip.

If your Arduino has Ethernet or WiFi, you can run a TFTP bootloader on
it, and a (modified, I'm assuming, to pull from the cloud) TFTP service
on a server to load code.

I wonder if this will enable Arduino development using things like
Chromebooks and tablets.

See article for more details.

 -Tom