摘要：The Arduino Platform is increasingly being used as a central component in introductory programming courses of the curricula in middle, high school and even higher education. Given this scenario it is pertinent to understand how the cost-effectiveness, reliability and accessibility of this central component can be improved. We propose the use of an Arduino simulator to improve usability, cost, and class efficiency, allowing for improved and even new forms of use and course benefits. This paper presents and describes an Arduino simulator that we developed for education purposes, and a case study of its use in embedded programming courses from two high-schools. We compared its use against the usual use of real hardware platform analyzing usability, student workload and time efficiency. Our results, that we present and discuss, suggest that there are no apparent drawbacks in using the simulator, and some metrics such as basic exercise-solving efficiency and global effort showed an improvement.
