Mpide

Mpide is an open-source portable Windows application that allows you to explore embedded applications. It offers support for several libraries to import into projects, such as DSPI, Matrix, OneWire, Servo, SoftSPI, EEPROM, Stepper, and Wire.

Portability advantages

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can drop the program files to a custom location on the hard disk and just click the executable to run. There is also the possibility to save Mpide to a USB flash drive to be able to directly launch it on any computer with minimum effort and no previous installers.
Another important aspect worth mentioning is that, unlike most installers, it does not modify Windows registry settings or create extra files on the disk without your consent, thus leaving no traces behind after its removal.

Simple and attractive GUI

The interface consists of a normal window with a simple and elegant look that lets you quickly start a new project from scratch or open files to explore their code. Several examples are provided to help you get started, and syntax highlighting is supported.

Handy editing features and other useful tools

Writing code is as easy as writing text in a regular word processor. What's more, you can add comments, increase or decrease the indent, copy text as HTML, use a search function to locate something in particular, verify and compile the project, add external files, as well as import any of the available libraries.
It is possible to automatically format text and find out issues (e.g. too many right curly braces), archive the sketch by saving it as a read-only file, fix encoding issues and reload information, find serial ports, burn a bootloader, and more.

Evaluation and conclusion

No error dialogs were shown in our tests, and the program did not hang or crash. It had minimal impact on computer performance, since it needed a low CPU and RAM to work properly. All in all, Mpide comes loaded with an interesting set of features and configurable parameters for exploring embedded apps.