Arduino

Introduction
Arduino is an open-source platform used for building electronics projects. It
consists of a microcontroller and a piece of software i.e. Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) that runs on your computer. This code is
used to write and upload computer code to the microcontroller.
The Arduino board is a microcontroller board, which is a small circuit that
contains a whole computer on a small chip. There are different versions of
the Arduino board: they are different in components, aim and size, etc. Some
common Arduino boards which are being use now a days are: Arduino
Diecimila, Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega and lot more.
It can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other
actuators. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a
variety of sensors. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using
the Arduino programming language and the Arduino development
environment. Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate
with software on running on a computer .

Why Arduino: It is very flexible to be customized and extended and it is an opensource project, software/hardware which is extremely accessible.
It offers a variety of digital and analog inputs, SPI and serial interface
and digital and PWM outputs

 It is easy to use, communicates using standard serial protocol, that

connects to computer via USB and runs in standalone mode and as
interface connected to PC.

Aurdino IDE:One of the most important component of the Arduino platform is the Arduino
IDE. This contains all the software which will run a computer in order to
program and communicate with an Arduino board.
There is an editor in Arduino IDE which we can use to write Arduino programs
/sketches in a simple programming .
The program we wrote is converted to C language and then compiled using
avr-gcc. This process produce binary code wich the microcontroller on the
Arduino board will be able to understand and execute.

Arduino Types
Arduino Uno (R3)

14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs)

6 analog inputs
a USB connection
a reset button
a power jack

It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect

it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or
battery to get started.

What's on the board?

There are many varieties of Arduino boards that can be used for different
purposes. Some boards look a bit different from the one below, but most
Arduinos have the majority of these components in common:

Power (USB / Barrel Jack)

Arduino board needs a way to be connected to a power source. The Arduino
UNO can be powered from a USB cable coming from your computer or a wall
power supply In the picture above the USB connection and the barrel jack
are labeled (1) and (2) respectively.
This USB connection can also be used to upload code into the
microcontroller.
Do NOT use a power supply greater than 20 Volts ,for most aurdinos the
recommended voltage is between 6 and 12 Volts.
Pins (5V, 3.3V, GND, Analog, Digital, PWM, AREF)
The pins on Arduino are the places where we connect wires to construct a
circuit. They usually have black plastic headers through which we can plug a
wire right into the board. The Arduino has several different kinds of pins.
Each of pin is labeled on the board and each pin is used for different
functions.
Ground: There are several ground pins on the Arduino, any of which can be
used to ground your circuit. These pins are labeled (3) in the above figure.

5V (4) & 3.3V (5): As you might guess, the 5V pin supplies 5 volts of power,
and the 3.3V pin supplies 3.3 volts of power. Most of the simple components
used with the Arduino run happily off of 5 or 3.3 volts.
Analog Pins: The labels (A0 through A5 on the UNO) are Analog In pins.
These pins can read the signal from an analog sensor and convert it into a
digital value. These pins are labeled (6) in the above figure.

Digital Pins: On the board other than analog pins we have the digital pins (0
through 13). These pins can be used for both digital input and digital output.
These pins are labeled (7) in the above figure.

Pulse Width Modulation: Next to some of the digital pins, some pins are
with tilde (~) sign. These pins include 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11 on the UNO.
These pins act as normal digital pins, but can also be used for something
called Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM).These pins as being able to simulate
analog output. These pins are labeled (8) in the above figure.

Analogue Reference: This pin is used when we want to set an external

reference voltage (between 0 and 5 Volts) as the upper limit for the analog
input pins. These pins are labeled (9) in the above figure.

Reset Button: There is a reset button in Arduino. Labeled (10) in the above
figure. By pushing it, connect the both reset pin and ground pin and restart
the code which we had loaded on the Arduino. If we want to test our code
multiple times and if our code doesnt repeat itself this can be very useful.

Power LED Indicator: There is a LED on the board labeled as ON

and (11). When we powered our Arduino, this LED lightens up. If this LED
does not glow, there is something wrong. We have to re-check our circuit.
TX RX LEDs: TX is short form of transmit, RX is short form of receive. These
pins are responsible for the serial communication. In our Arduino, TX and RX
appear two times. Once at the digital pins (0 and 1), and second time next at

the TX and RX indicator LEDs labeled as (12) in the above diagram.

Whenever we are receiving or sending data through our Arduino these LEDs
gives us visual indications. For example these LEDs will glow when we are
loading a new program onto the Microcontroller.
Main IC: There is a black IC with all the metal legs labeled as (13) in the
above figure. This IC act as the brain of Arduino. This IC on the Arduino is
little bit different from board type. Before loading a new program from the
IDE, this is important to know the IC type. This information is written on the
top side of the IC.
Voltage Regulator: The voltage regulator controls the amount of voltage
that is let into the Arduino board. It acts like a gatekeeper; as it will remove
an extra voltage that might harms the board. It has its own limits; do not
power up the Arduino greater than 20 volts. The voltage regulator is labeled
as (14) in the above diagram.

Technical Specifications
Microcontroller

ATmega328

Operating Voltage

5V

Input Voltage (recommended)

Input Voltage (limits)

7-12V
6-20V

Digital I/O
PWM output)
Analog Input Pins

Pins 14 (of which 6 provide

6

DC Current per I/O Pin

40 mA

DC Current for 3.3V Pin

50 mA

Flash Memory
by boot loader

32 KB of which 0.5KB used

SRAM

2 KB

EEPROM

1 KB

Clock Speed

16 MHz

Features

Processor

Arduino Uno

Arduino Due

Arduino

Arduino

Mega

Leonardo

16Mhz

84MHz

16MHz

16MHz

ATmega328

AT91SAM3X8 ATmega2560 ATmega32u4

E

Memory

Digital I/O

2KB SRAM,

96KB SRAM,

8KB SRAM,

2.5KB SRAM,

32KB flash

512KB flash

256KB flash

32KB flash

14

54

54

20

12 input, 2

16 input, 0

12 input, 0

output

output

output

Analogue I/O 6 input, 0

output

2. The Arduino Due

The Arduino Due is the second iteration of the classic Arduino and offers
more features for advanced users. The Due's processor is faster, has more
memory, and more I/O ports. It does not support many shields. Because of

the faster CPU, the Arduino Due runs on a lower voltage: 3.3V over the
Uno's 5V. This means it cannot always support the same devices.

3. The Arduino Mega

The Arduino Mega comes in two types, the Mega 2560 and the MEGA ADK.
The ADK is similar to the 2560; however, it also has a programmable USB
host chip installed. It uses the same 5V power supply as the Uno, so many
of the Arduino shields are also compatible with the Mega; however,
because of the placement of some of the pins, not all of them are usable.

4. The Arduino Leonardo

The Leonardo is not a common board, but has similar features to the Uno,
including the 5V power supply and the processing power. It is a good board
for those who need more input and output ports than the Arduino Uno, but
do not need the horsepower or size of the Due. It uses a micro-USB
adapter instead of the Uno's full-size USB port.

Arduino Nano / Nano Lite

The last breadboard mountable Arduino is the Arduino Nano. This
microcontroller distinguishes itself from the others by having the USB to
serial chip and connector onboard. The Nano has 8 analog pins and 14 digital
pins. There are the ISCP headers to re-flash the ATMega chip. There is also
the Arduino Nano Lite which does not include the downward facing pin
headers.

Microcontroller Atmel ATmega328, Operating Voltage (logic level) 5 V, Input

Voltage (recommended) 7-12 V, Input Voltage (limits) 6-20 V, Digital I/O Pins
14 (of which 6 provide PWM output), Analog Input Pins 8, DC Current per I/O
Pin 40 mA, Flash Memory 32 KB (2KB used by boot loader), SRAM 2 KB,
EEPROM 1 KB

Features
Some of the key features of the Arduino include:

An open source design. The advantage of it being open source is that it

has a large community of people using and troubleshooting it. This makes
it easy to find someone to help you debug your projects.

An easy USB interface . The chip on the board plugs straight into your
USB port and registers on your computer as a virtual serial port. This
allows you to interface with it as through it were a serial device. The
benefit of this setup is that serial communication is an extremely easy
(and time-tested) protocol, and USB makes connecting it to modern
computers really convenient.

Very convenient power management and built-in voltage regulation.

You can connect an external power source of up to 12v and it will regulate
it to both 5v and 3.3v. It also can be powered directly off of a USB port

without any external power.

An easy-to-find, and dirt cheap, microcontroller "brain." The

ATmega328 chip retails for about $2.88 on Digikey. It has countless
number of nice hardware features like timers, PWM pins, external and
internal interrupts, and multiple sleep modes. Check out the
official datasheet for more details.

A 16mhz clock. This makes it not the speediest microcontroller around,

but fast enough for most applications.

32 KB of flash memory for storing your code.

13 digital pins and 6 analog pins. These pins allow you to connect
external hardware to your Arduino. These pins are key for extending the
computing capability of the Arduino into the real world. Simply plug your
devices and sensors into the sockets that correspond to each of these
pins and you are good to go.

An on-board LED attached to digital pin 13 for fast an easy debugging

of code.

And last, but not least, a button to reset the program on the chip.

The Arduino Shields

Arduino Shields are boards that connect to a number of different Arduino

models. They extend the abilities of the basic board by adding features
such as wireless network access, cell access, or the ability to prototype
circuits.

Wireless Shields

The wireless-enabled shields for the Arduino come in two types. One,
the Wi-Fi Shield, allows the board to access the Internet through an 802.11
b/g-supported network and has a built-in micro-SD card slot to host files
accessible through the Internet or the network. The Wireless SD Shield has
an XBee module and enables communications between the Arduino and
other XBee-supported devices, including the Wireless Proto Shield.

The GSM Shield

The GSM Shield has a slot for a cell phone SIM card. This allows users to
create an alert system where they would receive a text or phone call from
the Arduino. The shield could also allow performing functions when it
received a call or a text from the user.

The Ethernet Shield

The Ethernet Shield is much like the Wi-Fi Shield but supports connections
to the network through Ethernet or network cables instead. It also features
an SD slot to host files on the network or the Internet.

The Proto Shields

These shields allow users to practice or "breadboard" their designs without
needing to solder anything. There is the Wireless Proto Shield and the Proto
Shield available. The Wireless Proto Shield uses the XBee chip to
communicate with other devices, while the Proto Shield connects directly
to the Arduino board. They support through-hole integrated circuits as well
as surface mount integrated circuits.