Installing an Arduino Library

Contributors: Nate, .Brent.

What's a Library?

Arduino libraries take a complex task and boil it down to simple to use functions. Arduino users have written lots of exciting add-ons for Arduino. For example, capacitive sensing takes difficult timing and pulsing of digital pins. We can write the code from scratch, or we can stand on the shoulders of great people who are smarter than we are.

Capacitive touch sensing is a very popular interface. The CapacitiveSensor library takes care of everything so that we don’t have to write code like this:

language:c
*sOut &= ~sBit;        // set Send Pin Register low
*rReg &= ~rBit;        // set receivePin to input
*rOut &= ~rBit;        // set receivePin Register low to make sure pullups are off
*rReg |= rBit;         // set pin to OUTPUT - pin is now LOW AND OUTPUT
*rReg &= ~rBit;        // set pin to INPUT 
*sOut |= sBit;         // set send Pin High
interrupts();         // enable interrupts

while ( !(*rIn & rBit)  && (total < CS_Timeout_Millis) ) {
    total++;
}

if (total > CS_Timeout_Millis) 
    return -2;         //  total variable over timeout

// set receive pin HIGH briefly to charge up fully
noInterrupts();         // disable interrupts
*rOut  |= rBit;        // set receive pin HIGH - turns on pullup 
*rReg |= rBit;         // set pin to OUTPUT - pin is now HIGH AND OUTPUT
*rReg &= ~rBit;        // set pin to INPUT 
*rOut  &= ~rBit;       // turn off pullup
*sOut &= ~sBit;        // set send Pin LOW
interrupts();         // re-enable interrupts

while ( (*rIn & rBit) && (total < CS_Timeout_Millis) ) { 
    total++;
}

if (total >= CS_Timeout_Millis)
    return -2;     // total variable over timeout
else
    return 1;

All that code can be replaced with a much easier to use and understand statement such as:

language:c
senseReading = myCapPad.capacitiveSensor(30);

The myCapPad.capacitiveSensor() takes care of all the heavy lifting and the senseReading variable contains the value sensed from our capacitive pad. Libraries make complex tasks easier so that we can focus on larger projects.

There are thousands of libraries out there! And luckily it’s pretty easy to install them. This tutorial will show you how to install a library in Arduino v1.0.5 but should apply for many past, present, and future versions of Arduino.

Suggested Reading

Make sure you have a good understanding of the following concepts before getting any further into this tutorial.

The Arduino website also has great instructions on installing libraries if you need more information for using the Arduino IDE's library manager, importing a *.zip library, and manual installation.