Arduino Grease
tl;dr Program robots to do what you say and let them help debug themselves through Serial.
Arduino tooling + a bundled local MCP server for agentic hardware debugging inside VS Code, Cursor, and Antigravity.
Prerequisites (Important!)
What this extension does (MVP)
- Connects to your microcontroller using arduino-cli, but communicates through Serial Port using a node.js MCP server.
- Starts a bundled MCP server (random Auth) at
127.0.0.1:333X (MCP endpoint: /mcp, health: /health) and Rest endpoints to handle the communication.
- Runs a SKILL file at the MCP, defining embedded debugging tools for agents.
- Auto-selects a target if exactly one recognized board is present; otherwise prompts you to pick.
- Adds Activity Bar actions for Verify/Upload/Serial Monitor/Serial Plotter/Examples/Managers/Board Template, to create an user friendly environment.
v1.0.6 — New Features
- Expanded Board Support: Install boards beyond the standard Arduino lineup directly from the Managers panel. Supported platforms include Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2040, ESP8266, ESP32, STM32 (Nucleo, Blue Pill), SparkFun (AVR, SAMD, Artemis), Adafruit (AVR, SAMD, nRF52), Seeed Studio (XIAO, Wio Terminal), ATtiny, and MCUdude cores (MiniCore, MegaCore, MightyCore). Click ||Install new board|| in the Board Manager to browse and install.
- Serial Plotter Legend: The plotter now shows a color legend for each data series below the graph. Click any colored label to cycle its color. Labeled serial streams (e.g.
sensor = 123, output = 456) are parsed automatically. A bg button toggles the background between dark and light.
- Plotter Opens in New Window: The Serial Plotter now opens directly in a detached window on the first click.
v1.0.5 — Previous Features
- Arduino Syntax Highlighting: Full TextMate grammar for
.ino files with Arduino-specific functions, types, and constants.
- clangd IntelliSense Bridge: Generates
compile_commands.json for semantic understanding; creates diagnostic collection for errors.
- Auto Board Core Detection: Detects FQBN on board connection and auto-prompts to install missing board cores.
- Grease & Graphite Themes: Two premium dark themes auto-applied on install. Activity bar moves to top.
- Accent Color Cycling: Clickable block cycles through 7 accent colors, updating the VS Code status bar color.
- Serial Auto-Disconnect: Serial communication turns off when opening Manager or Examples panels.
Inspiration
This was inspired by my work in 2015 on the "Mother Robot" a system that could build and improve its own "children."
The robots couldn't effectively see what was happening in the real world, relying on us to be their sensors and set goals. Now they can debug themselves, while we concentrate on setting their goals.
Install (VSIX / VSX)
- Build and package:
npm install
npm run build
npx @vscode/vsce package --skip-license --allow-missing-repository
- Install the generated
arduino-grease-1.0.6.vsix from your IDE's extension installer (VS Code/Cursor/Antigravity/Other VS-based IDEs).
Credits
As I always told my students, "If mechanical engineers are the knights, and computer scientists are wizards, then we roboticists are the paladins."
Designing algorithms is getting easier, and the next frontier is pracical/experimental. The real Robotics' bottleneck is where code meets metal.
This package was developed by Prof. Andre Rosendo.
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