This is the software application that provides the tools needed to program the Arduino. It is a somewhat simplified version of the C programming language, and includes a source code editor, compiler, and debugger. It can be downloaded free from the Arduino website. There are other programming options, but this tutorial assumes you are programming with IDE.

An integrated development environment is a software program used for writing, checking, debugging and downloading software into the Arduino. Some IDEs also have data visualization tools for plotting the output of sensors.

See also: IDE.