Arduino : A basic micro-controller for electronics project
- Jagdish Choudhary
- Jan 4, 2017
- 2 min read
Before you go to control the world around you let's have a quick overview of arduino that is very basic micro-controller for every electronics project.
Arduino is a computer hardware and software company that manufactures and design various kind of microprocessor and controller boards. These arduino boards are very useful in building devices that can sense and control objects in real physical world. Here is one of the arduino boards.
Arduino offers an IDE (Arduino software) for writing programs and uploading to your board. Here are the steps that you can follow to get the IDE (Arduino software).
Install the desktop IDE
Select the link according to you operating system
You can also create and use portable version of Arduino IDE. Here is the guide how to make it portable
Different types of Arduino boards
Follow to image link and get all the specifications about the board with applications.
The Arduino/Genuino UNO board is the best and very basic board to start you electronic project.
This micro-controller board is based on ATmega328P.
Arduino Leaonardo
Micro-controller based on ATmega32u4 (Datasheet)
Arduino Mega 2560
If you are thinking to make more complex project then I'll prefer Mega 2560 board which gives you more room with 54 digital I/O and 16 analog input pins. This is based on ATmega2560. You can find the datasheet here
There are also some expired boards, so make sure you don't buy them. Here is the list of expired boards :
Arduino UNO (USB connected not new one)
Arduino Duemilanove
Arduino Diecimila
ARDUINO NG REV. C
ARDUINO NG 240
ARDUINO EXTREME v2
ARDUINO EXTREME
ARDUINO USB v2.0
ARDUINO USB
ARDUINO BT
ARDUINO SERIAL v2.0
ARDUINO SERIAL
SEVERINO (S3V3)
ARDUINO MEGA (Retired one)
ARDUINO LILYPAD 03/04
ARDUINO LILLYPAD 02
ARDUINO LILYPAD 01
ARDUINO LILLYPAD 00
ARDUINO NANO 3.0
ARDUINO NANO 2.X
ARDUINO MINI 04
ARDUINO MINI 03
ARDUINO STAMP 02
You can find the list of all the retired boards here.
Programming Language used in Arduino
The programming language used for arduino is C or C++ but Arduino IDE is written in Java.
Every arduino program mainly consist of two functions:
setup() : This function initialize all the inputs, variables, output pin modes and other libraries needed for the sketch. It is called every time when you power on or reset.
loop() : After setup() function is called, this function called repeatedly by the program and it controls the board output until it is powered-off or reset.
There are also books available in the market on arduino for getting started.
Here are some of them
Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
Arduino Cookbook by Michael Margolis
Exploring Arduino : Tools and Techniques for Engineering wizardry by Jeremy Blum
First Program : LED Blink
This program is built-in program in arduino IDE. So you can find this program in File > Examples > Basics > Blink.
So by default the 13th pin is used as an output pin (You can put LED if you want to try).
The program firstly setup the output pin and then starts loop. For 1000 ms (microseconds) the output (13th pin) will be at HIGH and after 1000 ms it will get LOW.
You can download the program file from here
Here is the video
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