The Arduino movement has done a great job to make microcontrollers programming as easy as possible. Numerous small, cheap and easy-to-use MCU and add-on boards have seen the light and thousands of open source software libraries have been written to support all this hardware.

Now that most 8-bit processors have been covered it is time to move on, and what would be more logical than to continue on Linux, the popular open source operating system? Some Arduino Linux boards have existed — remember the Yùn? — but those were Linux boards with an 8-bit Arduino add-on.

Arduino Create now targets Linux too

With Arduino Create, the online integrated development environment (IDE) for Arduino the user now gets direct access to popular Linux boards like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and AAEON UP² as if they were Arduino boards. Generic Intel- and ARM-based platforms can be handled too but require more expertise from the user.

Debian is required

The dev board must run Debian or a derivative and the Arduino Connector utility must be installed on it. The online IDE has a wizard to help you get through the process. With the connector installed the board can communicate to the Arduino Create platform. Furthermore, an Arduino plugin is required to enable the Linux board to talk to your development computer.