Arduino is a great platform to get people start learning programming and designing circuits. But inevitably beginners might do something wrong and damage components. Also for students budget is always a problem when it comes to buying new electronic parts, and you have no idea if it’s going to work until you spend money on it! Arduino Simulator provides a solution to these problems, no damage done to your components, no money spend on hardware, faster circuit prototyping and no mess with cabling at all! :-) Some Simulators even allow line to line debugging, so you know exactly which line goes wrong.

There are many available Arduino Simulators, exist in free or paid versions, based on Linux, Windows, Mac OS. I will list them here and provide information on the price and supported OS. If you have come across any good ones I missed here please comment and let me know.

Simulator for Arduino is an application aimed at electronics experts and beginners looking to master their skills at creating various contraptions, without actually having to purchase the hardware.
Simulator for Arduino Pro Version is currently used in many countries over six continents. The download consists of a zip file containing a setup.exe file which installs an exe file, help files, images and examples. It is designed for the Arduino Uno, Mega and most other common Arduino boards and does the following.

Simulator for Arduino is the most full featured Arduino Simulator available at the present time (watch the video below). Embrio is a real-time visual development tool for Arduino programming. Similar choice › Simulator for arduino version 0.99.

Although it’s useful to have an Arduino Simulator, it’s important that you fully test your circuit on the physical hardware as well. Because there are situations where the physical world cannot be fully, perfectly simulated by the software.

Arduino Simulator Online

I have to say, a lot of these Arduino Simulator authors need to be more creative with the names! most of them are called “Arduino Simulator”! and I have to differentiate them by the platform! (only joking :-) , it’s great that you guys created these awesome apps for everyone! – only if it’s free and open source)

1. Open Source Arduino Simulator

Free? Yes Speed download for mac download.

OS: Windows

Link: https://github.com/Paulware/ArduinoDebugger/

For tutorial videos, someone is kind enough to post them all in one page.

2. Arduino Simulator on iPhone / iPad

Free? No

OS: iOS

Link: http://schogini.in/app-websites/arduino-simulator/

I have not tested it but from the videos, it looks quite rich in terms of components and well documented. But you obviously can’t use this tool if you don’t have an iPhone. However they only scored 2 in the app store review, so read reviews before you spend money.

3. ArduinoSim

Free? Yes!

OS: Windows, Linux

Arduino Simulator For Windows 10

Link: http://arduinosim.sourceforge.net/

4. Simduino

Free? Yes!

OS: Windows

Link: http://code.google.com/p/simuino/downloads/list

5. Arduino Simulator on PC

Free? No

OS: Windows, Linux

Link: http://www.virtronics.com.au/Simulator-for-Arduino.html

There is a hardware options menu that lets you select the type of Arduino you want to use – Due, Leonardo, Mega or Nano. You can also use an LCD display. However you cannot add custom hardware and shield. So you are pretty limited in terms of choice of components.

6. Emulare

Free? Yes!

OS: Windows and Linux Cm340 programming software.

Link: http://emulare.sourceforge.net/download.php

This seems to have the longest development period of all the simulators I have seen (since early 2010). A good feature of it is allowing users to simulate multiple Arduino’s at the same time.

[mrburnette] on this thread made a very good point about paid arduino simulator.

At this point, I do not personally think that most Arduino users will benefit from non-free tools. And professional developers are likely using professional tools for AVR and programming outside the confines if Wiring. There is a tremendous benefit for the new programmer-maker to THINK their way through issues without throwing money and new toolsets toward the problem.

I am referring to running hardware-independent components of your code on PC, such as a class that handles some data in your arduino, and calculate, export strings or make decisions with the data. This could be as easy as interpreting serial data and assign values to variables or making actions. In my case, I have a schedule class that handles schedule items. An instance of a schedule could have a few items such as MTWHh 2pm-2:50pm, feed college students with hard science. I would want to use this class to generate output that can be rendered into a menu on an LCD. Testing this code involves uploading, finding problems, going back and uploading.. There is no debugger on arduino IDE so in case there's a problem, I'm down to serial.println() :(

What I have been exploring today was to compile and run this class, which is hardware independent, on Dev C++ for windows. I have got some success to run this class and use printf (oh yeah!) to output to console to see if the class generates the right menu. And I'm using a debugger. It's nice.

Paul Ware Arduino Simulator

I even mocked up PROGMEM related typedefs, functions, etc to run PROGMEM definitions and functions (not fully tested) on PC.

With the windows console_buffer_status_info stuff I found on the net, I'm thinking about making a LiquidCrystal class to output directly to the console. This will be very nice for everyone interested in developing user interface with an LCD. The input can be taken from keyboard with a modified version of my phi_interfaces, treating the keyboard as a serial keypad. Then my entire phi_prompt Text based user interface library can be run and debugged on PC.

Virtual Arduino Simulator For Pc

Is this something anyone is interested in? I read the last 10 pages and all I found, remotely related to this thread, were arduino simulators. This is not a simulator, rather a 'trans-planter' of some sort instead.

I had to hack up an Arduino.h and fake a bunch of strXXX_P functions for PROGMEM access.

Maybe next step is to mock up serial and LiquidCrystal and then I can directly port my phi_interfaces library to use PC keyboard as input buttons. Now I am really starting to appreciate my own work a bit more than cursing bugs all day, since I can debug with a real debugger instead of chasing my own tail in the arduino memory. With the windows protection, I even caught a few array out of bound stuff that I didn't catch in arduino IDE, since there's no segment protection in arduino SRAM :)