I checked through all the files to make sure everything was named properly, and eventually found this file called library. Somehow, the IDE had linked SoftwareSerial with SoftwareSerialNoPortD, and couldn’t find SoftwareSerial anymore. When I tried to automatically import SoftwareSerial, this is what showed up in my sketch: A forum post taught me that if you open up the Arduino IDE and go to Sketch->IncludeLibrary… the IDE will automatically generate the import statement:
![arduino software serial library download arduino software serial library download](https://b3van8qm1o7ou9d3b48qdhsg-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-16-at-12.31.15-PM.png)
I thought that might be messing things up.
![arduino software serial library download arduino software serial library download](https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/c/f/7/c/a/525d982f757b7fd67b8b4567.jpg)
Finally, I remembered that for another project I had edited SoftwareSerial so that it didn’t use any pins on PortD, and included that in my libraries as SoftwareSerialNoPortD. Nothing worked: and the fact that downloading a completely new version of the IDE didn’t solve the issue meant that it was some issue with the way my Arduino/libraries folder was set up.
![arduino software serial library download arduino software serial library download](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Indvi.jpg)
But SoftwareSerial is included with the Arduino IDE: It’s a built-in library. So, if you’re getting this error with a non-standard Arduino library (like the Neopixel library, or something you’ve downloaded from the Internet), this error makes perfect sense.
#Arduino software serial library download how to#
Usually, when you’re adding a new library, you need to follow specific instructions about how to install that library in the Arduino IDE. I’ve been working with Arduino a lot lately, and ran into an extremely bizarre error: