I've spent way too many late nights staring at cryptic compiler errors in the Arduino IDE. You know the ones—where the error message might as well be in Klingon, and you're left binary-searching through your code trying to figure out what went wrong.
One night, after spending an hour debugging what turned out to be a missing semicolon, I thought: "There has to be a better way."
That's how Embedr started.
The Problem Nobody Talks About
The Arduino ecosystem is incredible. It's democratized hardware development in ways that seemed impossible a decade ago. But the tooling? It hasn't kept up.
The default IDE feels like it was designed in a different era (because it was). Sure, there are alternatives—PlatformIO, Arduino CLI, VS Code extensions—but they all have their own learning curves and quirks. And none of them really help you write better code.
Meanwhile, software developers have been enjoying AI-powered code assistance, intelligent autocomplete, and instant error detection. Hardware developers? We're still manually looking up pin configurations and library documentation.
What We're Building
Embedr is my attempt to bring modern development tools to the hardware world. It's an IDE built specifically for Arduino and ESP development, with AI assistance baked in from day one.
Here's what that actually means:
You describe what you want, and the AI helps you build it. Need to read a temperature sensor and send data over WiFi? Just ask. The AI understands your board, your project structure, and the libraries you're using.
Errors get caught before you compile. The AI spots potential issues as you type—wrong pin numbers, missing library includes, logic errors that would cause runtime problems.
Documentation comes to you. Instead of alt-tabbing to browser windows, you get contextual help right in the editor. Working with a new sensor? Drop the datasheet PDF into Embedr, and the AI can reference it when helping you write code.
The Journey So Far
I released the first version of Embedr a few months ago. It was rough—lots of bugs, missing features, and edge cases I hadn't considered. But people started using it anyway, and their feedback has been invaluable.
The most common request? "Make the AI understand my specific hardware setup." So we built the datasheet import feature—you can now give Embedr documentation for any component, and it becomes part of the AI's knowledge base for your project.
The second most common request? "Can you support obscure board I've never heard of?" This one's harder, but we're getting there. The beauty of building on top of Arduino CLI is that we get broad board support for free.
What's Coming
I'm writing this from a coffee shop, surrounded by half-finished project plans and too many sticky notes. Here's what's on deck:
Better debugging. Right now, when something goes wrong, you're still on your own. I want Embedr to be able to help you trace through your code, understand why that LED isn't blinking, or why your sensor readings are garbage.
Collaborative features. Hardware projects are often team efforts. We're working on ways to share code, configurations, and AI context between team members.
A proper community. The Embedr Discord is small but active. We want to build it into a place where hardware developers can share projects, ask questions, and learn from each other.
Why I'm Sharing This
I'm not a big company. Embedr doesn't have a marketing department or a PR team. What it has is me, a small group of early users, and a genuine desire to make hardware development better.
This blog is going to be where I share what we're building, why we're building it, and the lessons we learn along the way. Expect technical deep-dives, project tutorials, and probably some rants about the state of embedded development.
If you're building something with Arduino or ESP, I'd love to hear from you. What's frustrating? What's working? What do you wish existed?
Drop your thoughts on our feedback page or join the Discord. Let's figure this out together.
Want to try Embedr? Download it here—it's free.