@reporter500,
I have not tried the Carloop with the Arduino IDE. The Arduino IDE should work if you are using a RedbearDuo. The Arduino IDE in theory is not going to work for a Photon or Electron; I did not test this but it is my understanding.
I recommend using one of the Particle tools, either ParticleBuild (on the cloud) or ParticleDev (installed on your computer). There is a Carloop library written for the Particle environment and it makes your development work so much easier; that is what sets Carloop apart from other similar automotive tools.
You could port the particle Carloop library over to Arduino, and that will be a big project in itself.