Development boards / Microcontrollers - part 1 - Arduino

About...

Arduino is very friendly embedded platform to start with electronics and programming. Provided IDE contains a lot of example programs so even people without knowledge about programming can step in very fast in this world.

It is very helpful for fast prototyping simple solutions even in bigger projects because it is almost ready to go without any harder configuration of perhipherals.

What is Arduino exactly?

URL: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-an-arduino/all

On this page We can find a details and informations about Arduino company, Arduino development board, expansions(shields), program examples.

Arduino UNO R3 - Source: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-an-arduino/all

    

Dev board parts - Source: https://learn.adafruit.com/assets/33494

 

Most boards uses ATMEL AVR microcontroller.

 

Microcontroller ATMEL AVR

 URL: https://www.mouser.pl/pdfDocs/ATmega48A-PA-88A-PA-168A-PA-328-P-DS-DS40002061B.pdf

 

It is data sheet for ATMEL AVR 328 MCU. Here is everything about build, schematics, specifications, possibilities, low level instructions and more about this microcontroller.

Most popular boards...

It is a lot variants of development boards. 

 

The most popular:

• Arduino UNO
• Arduino MEGA
• Arduino NANO
• Arduino DUE
  

URL: https://maker.pro/arduino/tutorial/a-comparison-of-popular-arduino-boards

 This page tells about: A Comparison of Popular Arduino Boards

It could be helpful to choose specific board to project and reduce uneccessary costs.

Programming

Arduino uses its own programming language which is stripped down version of C++.

Example code of blinking LED(Blink):

Blink

Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.

Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the UNO, MEGA and ZERO

it is attached to digital pin 13, on MKR1000 on pin 6. LED_BUILTIN is set to

the correct LED pin independent of which board is used.

If you want to know what pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino model, check

the Technical Specs of your board at https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products

This example code is in the public domain.

modified 8 May 2014

by Scott Fitzgerald

modified 2 Sep 2016

by Arturo Guadalupi

modified 8 Sep 2016

by Colby Newman

*/

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board

void setup() {

// initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.

pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);

}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever

void loop() {

digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)

delay(1000); // wait for a second

digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW

delay(1000); // wait for a second

}

/*

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

 This is reference for Arduino programming language. It contains informations about functions, variables and structures.

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

This is page with helpful libraries which We can use in our projects and save a lot of time. 

My favorite board

 My best Arduino development board is Arduino MEGA 2560.  It is very powerful board with ATMEL ATMEGA 2560 MCU. 

This development board has 54 Input/Output lines (15 provide PWM output), 256 KB of which 8 KB used by bootloader.

Arduino MEGA 2560 Rev3 - Source: https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mega-2560-rev3

 

 

URL: https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mega-2560-rev3

 

More informations about board. 

Why I like it?

 This board has a lot of I/O, more memory than UNO, few hardware communication outputs,

more PWM outputs than UNO. It can be helpful in bigger projects to fit everything in one device.

 

 Example projects

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox-9eOc3bQU

Video about 15 Great Arduino Projects for beginners