Simulator for Arduino update
And so here we are, almost at the end of the year again. Well the plan was to hit 10k users, and while the number of free downloads has gone well past that with ~5,840 downloads last month alone of the Setupf.zip file, the number or Pro licences as of today (13-Dec) is 1207 with maybe 10-20 renewals and 10-20 double purchases.
Recently, some may have noticed that the free version has a new unlock code with the number of users being shown on the Simulator for Arduino page which is now a php not a html page. This is a first step to having a lock code, so that each version is locked, and the main reason is to prevent the Pro Version form being copied.
In February, we moved to a new server since the 2GB limit was not enough bandwidth, and now we regularly get 3-4 GB per day. On the downside, the new forum which was setup in April was swamped with spam mainly from China. For some reason, China still gets 4 times more hits than the US which is next in line. We suspect the China syndrome is mainly due to spam. The forum reached over 10k users until we cleared out all the spammers, leaving only 500 or so real users most of which are still probably spammers.
Today, we are moving to another new server which is why the forum is down. After 24 hours the forum should start working again.
With the Simulator, there are many plans, including moving to FireMonkey to have a MAC and iOS version. Also, adding a colour shield, a LED shield and improving some features of the Simulator such as the pointers and subroutrines. We still cannot believe there is no other Arduino Simulator or development tool which is a serious competitor. There are some interesting tools such as Visual Micro and Minibloq but these never seem to go anywhere. There are regular requests for Arduino tools - see the latest Arduino Emulator on the Adafruit forum