Board Select

[PixnBits]

The auto-board select from port is good, but maybe it should be the advanced method. I'd imagine most people getting started with Arduino will know their board's model name more than they'll know the serial ports on their compy.

Here's a thought: instead of selecting the port (retain that in an advanced view), by default we have the user select their board and list the ports that are detected to have that board type attached.

We probably need the vendor and product IDs for all/most/common boards before moving to this enhancement, though.

[joshmarinacci]

Well, the advantage of selecting the port first is that you have far fewer of them than boards. However, we should really just include the name of the board in the port list. Then you choose your port and thats it. And if there is only one port then we pre-select that and be done with it.

[PixnBits]

I have quite a few ports even w/o any boards attached :S

Maybe mine is a fringe case. shrug Though a user will have no less ports than boards plugged into their computer.
I do like the single select menu w/both the name of the board and port; also the auto-select (or, in my case, the only detected to be an Arduino (COM13 when attached)).

[PixnBits]

Either way, selecting a port isn't as important as the tasks you've outlined. We can push this off, sorry to distract.
(importance level, no point in automatically selecting a port when the user can't do anything with it :P)

[joshmarinacci]

What if the serial port drop down said :

• com4: unknown,
• com7: leonardo,
• com5: 3DPrinter,
• com11: unknow

then you would know which one was the leonardo. It's information we could add as available without affection functionality.