Introduction to the Swift For Arduino IDE.

Programming the Arduino UNO using Swift For Arduino.md

Programming the Arduino UNO with Swift For Arduino

This is an introduction to programming a Arduino UNO board with the Swift For Arduino IDE.

In the Arduino IDE, programs are structured with two main functions:

void setup(){
    
}

void loop(){
    
}

In the Swift For Arduino IDE there is no need for the setup() function, you just do your initial set-up in the first part of your program, then instead of the loop() function you use a while(true){} statement with the running program. So a program in Swift For Arduino looks like this:

// 0. Libraries
import AVR

// 1. Setup
typealias IntegerLiteralType = Pin
// Do your setup here

// 2. Main Loop
while(true) {
    // Insert code to be run in main loop here.
}

Looking at this more closely we see there are three main sections:

0. Libraries

You need to import the AVR library. AVR is the type of microcontrollers used in the Arduino UNO board. You can find our more about these here.

1. Setup

Here you'll define variables and helper functions. You have to be careful with types and type inference in Swift For Arduino because of the limitations of working with microcontrollers as opposed to a regular program in Swift.

In particular the standard library runtime is not available. This means many of the main features of Swift on platforms you are used to (Linux, server side swift, macOS, tvOS, iOS, watchOS) are not available, but many would probably not be suited to a small, highly resource constrained embedded device like Arduino Uno.

Also keep in mind that the Arduino UNO has only 2 kB of memory, so please consider this when writing your programs.

For more information on what available or not and some things to look out for, select the help from the menu → Help/Swift For Arduino Help. Also check the AVRPlayground for a complete view of the API.

2. Main Loop

This is where you write the code that will run continuously on the Arduino. As it can run hundreds of times a second, it is usually a good idea to put in some delays in there.

For an example of a program, go on to the first example: Blink