LittleBits Arduino doesn't work on Linux

Question

I recently received a LittleBits Arduino Coding Kit and thought the Arduino IDE would immediately recognize it.

I noticed that when I choose the "Arduino Leonardo" on the Tools -> Board as the instruction video said to do, the Tools -> Serial Port menu is grayed out.

I have already added myself to the "dialout" and "uucp" groups, ran the "arduino" program as root, ran a whole bunch of commands dealing with permissions, restarted the computer, plugged it into all the ports, reinstalled the drivers, and tried everything else I came across. For some reason, I can't figure out how to get this to work.

I use Xubuntu on an i686 architecture by the way, if that even matters.

Answer 1

I think you don't have permissions to read/write the serial port device. Even running Arduino application as root, it's running on a Java JVM, and calls other programs to compile sketches and burn the board... it's hard to figure out what's happening in the background. Also, is not a good idea to run programs as roout unless necessary.

Try this. First list your serial port devices.

ls -l /dev/tty*

There's should be one called /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyACM0 or something like that (not /dev/ttySx). That one is your Arduino. Add read/write permissions for every user to that device file.

sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB0

Use the device you have. Now run the Arduino IDE, if the issue is with permissions, then it's done. Unfortunately, you'll have to do this every time you unplug the board or reboot the system.