FLProg is an alternative Arduino programming environment. Project Description

In a previous post, I talked about the background of the appearance of the FLProg project. Now I want to tell you more about the project and its status today.
The main goal of the project is to include people unfamiliar with programming with the Arduino board users. This is possible thanks to the experience of industrial programming, which has been accumulated over the years by manufacturers of industrial controllers.
The project consists of two parts. The first part is the FLProg desktop application, which is a graphical programming environment for Arduino boards. Secondly, this is the site FLProg.ru, through which members of the user community of the program can communicate with each other, find out the latest project news, download the latest version of the program, and find the necessary information on working with the application.

Let's start in order.
The FLProg program allows you to create firmware for Arduino boards using the graphic languages ​​FBD and LAD, which are the standard in the field of programming industrial controllers.


I expanded the classical functionality of these languages ​​a little, adding functional blocks responsible for working with external devices. They are wrappers on libraries designed to work with them.
A project in FLProg is a collection of boards, on each of which a complete module of the general circuit is assembled. For convenience, each board has a name and comments. Also, each board can be minimized (to save space on the work area when work on it is finished), and deploy. A red indicator in the board name indicates that there are errors in the circuit board.

View of the program window in the FBD language mode


View of the program window in the LAD language mode


The circuit of each board is assembled from functional blocks in accordance with the logic of the controller. Most functional blocks have the ability to configure, with which their work can be configured in accordance with the requirements in this particular case.



Also for each functional block there is a detailed description, which is available at any time and helps to understand its work and settings.



When working with the program, the user does not need to write code, control the use of inputs and outputs, verify the uniqueness of names and the consistency of data types. The program monitors all this. She also checks the correctness of the project as a whole and indicates the presence of errors.
To work with external devices created several auxiliary tools. This is a tool for initializing and setting the real-time clock, tools for reading the addresses of devices on the OneWire and I2C buses, as well as a tool for reading and saving button codes on the IR remote control. All defined data can be saved as a file and subsequently used in the program.




In the following publications I will talk about the project website and the prospects for the development of the project.