Arduino Board Basics

It is brilliant to design the most complex projects in the world; however, it is much greater to be creative and simple with saving money, time, and effort. Innovations are never meant to be complex than creative, and that’s why the integrated circuits have done. In this article, we will have a quick look to a great hardware and software system that made the world easier and better.

Having many components is not practical anymore, people don’t have much time, money, space, and effort to exert on connecting many components to do a certain function. Thus, the integrated circuits were developed to achieve the same targets but with a relatively small device having all the needed components within it. Nowadays, an awesome component can handle all these things by coding, which means that you can adjust the function you need to carry on only with connecting this device to your computer, it’s the Arduino Uno. There’re many types of Arduino boards, which are:

· Arduino Uno (R3)

· Arduino Uno (R2)

. Lilypad Arduino

. Red Board

. Arduino Mega (R3)

. Arduino Leonardo

We will talk about only one type, which is the Arduino Uno (R3).

As known,

Arduino board is an open-source platform used to create electronics projects. It consists of a microcontroller and a part of the software or Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that can be connected to computers for writing & uploading computer codes to the physical board, by which it can do the functions required. The platform of an Arduino has become very famous with designers or students just studying electronics, and for an excellent cause. The Uno (R3) version (which is shown in figure 1) is a great option for your initial Arduino. It has 14-digital input and output pins, where 6-pins can be used as PWM (pulse width modulation outputs), 6-analog inputs, a reset button, a power jack, a USB connection and more. It includes everything required to hold up the microcontroller; simply attach it to a PC with the help of a USB cable and give the supply to get started with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery. It also has some features like:

Features

Processor: 16Mhz ATmega328

Memory: 2KB SRAM, 32KB flash

Digital inputs and outputs: 14

Analogue inputs and outputs: 6 input & 0 outputs.

These shields (shown in figure 2) are important to connect a number of

Arduino boards with providing additional abilities and features like wireless communication, access to the internet, in additional to controlling motors and LCD screens. There are many types of shielding depending on the function or capabilities like:

· Wireless Shields

· The GSM Shield

· The Ethernet Shield

· The Proto Shields

Arduino as mentioned above, is a hardware operated with a software, however it has a great feature that it

doesn’t need to get a separate part of hardware to integrate new codes, you can just connect it to the computer using the USB and write the code you want. Its programming language is not hard too, it can be using the basics of C++. Its very useful for beginners, yet flexible for advances designers. With Arduino you can give many conditions and orders like when you open the door, the lights turn on, or when you close the window the AC starts. What if you can do all in one!? Yes, with Arduino you can write a code that when you close the door the lights turn on with widows closed and AC running. Isn’t it awesome?!

Hence, you can develop your smart home with some Arduino techniques. That makes Arduino perfect for robotics designs, that means you can control the robot using Arduino codes or hardware like phones or remote controls, but there’s better option that you can control Arduino using your mind! (as shown in figure (3). Imagine how it can be fantastic to control a car or a drone using your mind!

Well, as I mentioned, Arduino is very simple,

but to get to the fantastic abilities of Arduino, you have to go through the simplest features first. The first thing you have to do is the=o understand the Arduino board to maintain the Arduino circuit. Hence, you need to get familiar with the Arduino coding and orders. You can use the link https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage to increase your knowledge and star you Arduino tutorials. You can also use the website Tinker Cad: https://www.tinkercad.com/ to try building your own Arduino circuits. In this article I’m going to show you a simple Arduino circuit for designing traffic light using visual Arduino circuit by Tinker Cad and a schematic by KICAD.

Required components and schematic circuit:

1- Arduino Uno (R3) board.

2- Breadboard.

3- 3 LEDs.

4- 3 Resistors.

5- The schematic drawing using KICAD in figure (4).

-Taking the values of the resistors to be 1k ohm each for example.

As observed from figure (4) that the resistors are connected in the 2nd, 7th, and 12th pins respectively starting from R1. Each resistor is connected to a LED respectively starting from the green LED. And then connected to the ground.

In figure (5) With the same components the circuit will be connected by

the same steps:

1- Connecting the Arduino’s ground to the ground in the beard board.

2- Connecting the pins to the resistors.

3- Each resistor is then connected to the anode terminal of the LEDs.

4- Each cathode terminal od the LEDs is connected to the ground too, to have a closed loop.

A) In Tinker Cad there’s a simple coding method by adding blocks, each

block expresses what you need to happen.

- For this case, we need each LED to turn on and off for just 1 sec, and all goes in a loop that starting from the green to yellow to red, each one will turn on for 1 sec, then the next goes one and so on,

- So, in figure (6) the blocks are added to carry on the function of traffic lights.

From observation, know we know that we have to clarify which pin we are using, in addition to the function needed, whether we want it to be (HIGH = ON) or (LOW = OFF), and then the control block of waiting between the two orders of HIGH and LOW and the duration of this waiting.

B) Another method, which is commonly used in designing, is writing the actual cod as you can see in figure (7).

From observation, you can get that the void setup requires to clarify which pins are going to work.

- The loop is the job required, where (digitalwrite) is the term used to know whether the job is HIGH or LOW.

- Delay means the waiting block.

Simply, we will start the simulation in Tinker Cad to observe how the circuit works once we connect the Arduino.

- In figure (8), the green light is on for 1 sec.

- In figure (9), the yellow light is on for 1 sec.

- In figure (10), the red light is on for 1 sec.

- Then the loop repeats itself.

- Note that you can control the intensity by changing the resistors’ values

We agreed before that intelligence is not about

getting things complicated, however you can innovate complicated and non-complicated innovation as long as you’re using the proper technology to save time, money, and effort. Technology is always there to help to be more creative and develop new technologies, so try as hard as you can to get the best benefit of the technology and environment surrounding.

Prepared by:
Ahmad Ehab

References are mentioned in the attached file.