Wokwi.com Arduino Simulator Introduction

17 September, 2020

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Have you ever wanted to simulate an Arduino? Either for convenience or to ensure the project works before implementing it or even buying the components, a simulator is an extremely welcome (and useful) tool, especially if it’s just right there, in your browser. With that said, Wokwi.com’s Arduino Playground is here to help you!

Arduino Playgroud is a free Arduino simulation tool in the browser, where you can write your own sketches in it and use it with other components, such as LED’s, buttons, displays (from seven segments to OLED’s), potentiometers, among others. It also allows you to monitor the I2C and serial peripherals. You are not very limited in terms of them, as there is already a rich set of components, with new additions coming all the time, where you can also request your favorite ones to be added. Aside from writing your own sketches, both the libraries and components come with multiple examples, so you’re not lost there. Besides the technical components themselves, you can also try some games and example projects, such as the traffic light, the Simon game, and my least beloved, the spaceship game. Try it, you will know why.

Left to right: NeoPixel matrix, keypad, servo and the spaceship game, all available in the Arduino Playground

Jokes aside, you can modify the code, tinker with all the simulated components and experiment with the libraries that you intend to use, to then see the results almost immediately in your browser without any hardware or even extra software. This is specially useful if you want to speed up the development of your project, by ensuring it works even before your components have arrived.

The interface is clean, providing you with your virtual components and the Arduino sketch side by side, which can also format your code and upload it to a real Arduino (in Beta). Since the website is mobile-friendly, you can even code on the road, always a nice touch. Unfortunately, you are unable to share or save your tinkered projects or bookmark/save them online for future use, but will soon be added to the already feature-packed playground. From an electronics simulator perspective, it would be nice to have current and voltage measurements. More features will be added soon, as this ongoing project seeks actively for the feedback of the Arduino community.

Performace-wise, the sketches run seamlessly without any issues. The Arduino simulator runs over the emulated AVR8js core implemented in Javascript, meaning that every instruction is executed, not just simulated, making it a blazing fast experience. The emulator is downloadable via the NPM package manager, which means that you are free to try it out in your own Javascript projects.