VS Arduino
A complete Arduino development environment inside Visual Studio Code — Build, upload, monitor, plot, and debug without leaving your editor.
© 2026 HiTECH Corporation. All rights reserved.
Features
- Blazing-Fast Compile & Upload — Verify and flash sketches straight from the editor toolbar, powered by
arduino-cli. Build output streams live into the Output > VS Arduino channel.
- Integrated Serial Tools — A full-featured Serial Monitor (panel and tab views) with timestamping and line-ending control, plus a Serial Plotter offering multiple chart types (Waveform, Multi-line, Sensor, Digital Pulse, Bit Stream), zoom/pan, hover inspection, and one-click CSV export.
- Zero-Config Hardware Debugging — An embedded Cortex-Debug engine ships inside the extension. Press Debug Sketch and VS Arduino resolves the toolchain, GDB server, and SVD file automatically, then stops cleanly at your sketch's
setup() function. No companion extensions to install.
- Board & Library Managers — Search, install, update, downgrade, and uninstall platforms and libraries through a modern UI with per-version selection.
- Automatic IntelliSense — C/C++ configurations are generated and refreshed silently whenever your
#include set changes, so code completion always matches the selected board.
- Control Panel — Pick your board, port, and programmer from a dedicated activity-bar view; every selection persists across sessions.
Requirements
- Visual Studio Code
^1.80.0
- Arduino-compatible hardware (a board with debug support and a probe such as ST-Link, J-Link, or an onboard CMSIS-DAP is required for hardware debugging)
arduino-cli is managed by the extension; a custom binary path can be supplied via settings
Quick Start
- Install VS Arduino from the Marketplace.
- Open a folder containing your sketch (
.ino).
- Click the VS Arduino icon in the Activity Bar and select your Board, Port, and (optionally) Programmer.
- Press Compile/Verify (✓) to build, or Upload (→) to flash the sketch.
- Open Serial Monitor or Serial Plotter from the Command Palette to watch live data.
- Run VS Arduino: Debug Sketch to start a hardware debug session — execution halts at
setup(), ready to step.
Extension Settings
| Setting |
Description |
Default |
vs-arduino.arduinoCliPath |
Path to the arduino-cli executable |
"" |
vs-arduino.board |
Selected Arduino board FQBN |
"" |
vs-arduino.boardName |
Display name of the selected board |
"" |
vs-arduino.port |
Selected serial port |
"" |
vs-arduino.programmer |
Selected programmer ID |
"" |
vs-arduino.programmerName |
Display name of the selected programmer |
"" |
vs-arduino.sketchbookPath |
Path to your Arduino sketchbook directory, used to locate custom libraries |
"" |
vs-arduino.arduinoDataDir |
Custom Arduino user directory for libraries and sketches |
"" |
vs-arduino.baudRate |
Default baud rate for Serial Monitor and Plotter |
"115200" |
Advanced debugging behavior (toolchain paths, GDB server binaries, register formatting, RTOS panel) can be tuned under the Cortex-Debug settings section.
Commands
| Command |
Action |
VS Arduino: Select Board |
Choose the target board (FQBN) |
VS Arduino: Select Port |
Choose the serial port |
VS Arduino: Select Programmer |
Choose the upload/debug programmer |
VS Arduino: Compile/Verify |
Build the current sketch |
VS Arduino: Upload |
Build and flash the current sketch |
VS Arduino: Open Serial Monitor |
Open the Serial Monitor |
VS Arduino: Open Serial Plotter |
Open the Serial Plotter |
VS Arduino: Debug Sketch |
Start a hardware debug session |
License
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Third-party attributions are listed in ThirdPartyNotices.txt.
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