Hobby electronics enthusiasts will be happy to learn of the arrival of an Arduino IDE for Android, which includes support for uploading sketches to the popular microcontroller development boards. ArduinoDroid hit Google Play a few days ago, and I gave it a whirl as soon as I had the chance.

The APK is small and installs quickly, with the bulk of the package being downloaded when you first open the app. This second download contains the SDK, which takes up about 100 MB on your SD card when all is said and done. From there, you'll be greeted with the main window where your sketch will be displayed. But if you're not good at starting from line one, don't fret. The code examples and support libraries you're accustomed to finding in the desktop IDE are available through the file menu of the app. One thing I'm really happy that Anton Smirnov included is syntax highlighting in the editor. You may not be interested in writing a huge sketch on your phone, but if you know you have a bug and will have some time to kill, you can load up the code and slog through it line by line later.

To load the code onto your Arduino board, you'll need an Android device that support USB On-The-Go (OTG). At this point, I'm a little confused by which boards are supported as there is conflicting information. The introduction page of Anton's website mentions that so far it only programs FTDI-based boards, but the app has configuration settings that include the whole family right up to the Leonardo.

This screenshot shows that the free app is ad- supported with the option to pay for ad removal. Once the ad space is combined with an open keyboard, there's almost no room to see the code area on a 7" tablet in landscape orientation. But I figure if you're doing any serious code work on it you might as well be using an external keyboard anyway. To get started, visit the ArduinoDroid Google Play listing.