Everything You Wanted to Know About ARDUINO and Were Afraid to Ask

You might be familiar with some cool projects in electronics and

heard this term "ARDUINO" and might be wondering what is ARDUINO,

so,

here is an overview of ARDUINO MICRO-CONTROLLER BOARD'S

Arduino is an Italy based software and hardware ecosystem,

which was found by 5 students as a part of their project at interactive design institute.

This company designs and sells micro controller based board along with an Integrated Development Environment (ide ) which is a multi-platform free-ware, designed by ARDUINO.

These boards and software are open source; means all the designs are available for commercial use. That means you can make your own prototype board based on arduino and sell it.

this company makes all its designs and schematics available for public on their website www.arduino.cc

for example, schematic of arduino uno uploaded in this instructable.

(Make sure you read all the necessary policies on https://www.arduino.cc/en/main/policy before commercial use)

There are lots of official versions of ARDUINO,

for Example

1. Most Popular and versatile Arduino UNO

2. Arduino NANO which is basically a smaller version of UNO.

3. Arduino MEGA

4. LILYPAD

etc.

Here, we will discuss about ARDUINO UNO in brief, Since UNO is beginners Friendly and quite easy board to get started with.

Arduino UNO is a Microcontroller Based Prototyping board, which has 32Kb Of memory and 2Kb of ram, based on ATMEL’s ATmega328p which runs at 16 MHz of Clock Speed.

Arduino UNO has

6 Digital IO pins

Digital IO pins are used to read or write Digital DATA, i.e.

binary 0 (0v) or binary 1 (5v)

This can be easily done by program.

example program in picture

and also file attached

refer to Syntax at

https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/

6 Analog Inputs

These pins can read an analog voltage from 0 V to 5 V.

then it is converted into digital data ranging from 0 bit (0) to 10 bit (1023)

Example in Picture and File Uploaded

6 PWM pins

(which are generally marked with a tilde [~] symbol)

Pulse width IO pins lets control the intensity of led or speed of motor

example to control intensity of led attached.

8 Power pins

Here we have 2 ground pins, a 3.3v pin, 5v pin, which can be used to either power external components or arduino itself by giving 5v to it.

Female DC input Port

This is used to power UNO using an adapter or a battery.

Female USB Type B port

This is another way to power UNO board

and this is the path for you to upload the program to ATmega328p.

warning

each Arduino IO port is capable of delivering

20 Milli Amps of current. Don’t exceed this limit by using high current motors or it will burn the arduino.

IDE( Integrated Development Environment)

which is basically a software environment that allows you to program your arduino according to requirement.

You can refer syntax at www.arduino.cc/refence/en

Now,

To download the ide,

go to https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Follow the installation procedure and once installed,

1. Plug in the arduino UNO using female USB type b port.

2. Once you open your ide for the first time, you should

see a blank program or work space.

3. Click on tools from top menu, go to board, and now select the appropriate board which in this case is arduino genuine/UNO.

4. Click on tools from top menu, go to port, and now select the port to which your arduino is connected.

For an example,we will BLINK the LED on pin 13 (which is inbuilt LED on UNO board)

here, we have two main sections of code, i.e. void setup and void loop

In void setup, you would set your input output pins and define variables.

In VOID LOOP, you would describe your functions to IO pins, or build logics like conditional statements, etc.

For our blink program, I will simply mention pin mode in setup and output state in loop to blink along with a delay.

blink code in attachments

5.Once you get this, save your code,

6.Then click on verify which looks like a check button,

7.Then press upload if successfully verified.

Now you see this LED on pin 13 blinking, which means that the board is working properly

Now, we have successfully uploaded our first code, time to step up.

arduino, we can also use shields on our arduino, which are basically the extension to IO ports and carry a few integrated components like

LCD

7 segment display

sensors

etc.

There are lots of extensions available like

Bluetooth module

Wi-Fi shield

Display shields

Etc

Here is a little demonstration of a countdown timer on a multipurpose shield.

code attached in file

multisheild library by

https://github.com/DireCat/MFShield

There are lots of examples and possibly you

guys may have already seen a lot on the internet as the arduino community is creative and vast.

still, here are a few examples you guys will enjoy.

video representation in the end section,

1. NANO
2. Arduino 101
3. Arduino UNO
4. pro mini
5. Mega
6. lilypad