Getting Started with Arduino, Chapter 3 The Arduino Platform

The Arduino platform consists of both the hardware (board) and software (IDE).  Working on hardware used to mean building circuits from scratch.  With microprocessors, this functionality has now moved to the software.

The Arduino Hardware

The most popular board (at the time of this writing) is the Arduino Uno.  There are other boards, and these will be discussed in a later chapter.  The hardware consists of a small circuit and microcontroller.  The board also has 2 rows of strips at the top and the bottom, with these strips you can connect:
  • sensors: senses things in the real world and converts them to digital signals.  
  • actuators: converts digital signals into real world action.  
The rows correspond to the following items:
  • 14 Digital I/O pins: used to read from sensors and control actuators
  • 6 Analog In pins: reads voltage from analogue sensors
  • 6 Analog Out pins: provides analogue output
Arduino can be powered from usb ports, usb chargers, or AC adapters.

The Software Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

The IDE used a modified Processor Language to control the Arduino board.  The IDE converts this to C which is then converted into assembly for the microprocessor to ultimately run.
The programming cycle consists of 4 steps:
  1. Plug board into computer
  2. Write sketch
  3. Upload sketch to board
  4. Board runs sketch

Installing Arduino on Your computer

I'm not going to summarize these instructions.  They were relatively easy and straightforward to follow.  I was a little disappointed that the Linux installation instructions were left off, but they are on the website.

Links:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Go Programming Blueprints, Chapter 2, Adding User Accounts

A universal truth in programming is that there are relatively few unique unsolved problems.  What tasked with a new problem, always see what other solutions exist and how we can solve our new one.  In this instance, we are going to use open source solutions to auth against existing services. Handlers all the way down Everything we write will be http handlers.  This allows us to encapsulate objects as far down the chain as needed.  Making pretty social sign in page We get a quick lesson on bootstrap, and why and how to use it.  There are two methods to showing our bootst rap.  We can leave it hosted on a CDN or add it to our assets folder.  Endpoints with Dynamic Paths Go doesn't support the most robust path selections (/path/options), such as ruby on rails or Django python.  As with everything Go, there are open source packages we can use to help with this functionality.  We will use string.split to break our argument paths in the re...
Read more

Successful Big Game Hunting Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Short Course on Bear Hunting As with all the short course chapters, this is a quick chapter on hunting different types of bears.  Mr. Gilchrist has several tips on the different types of bears, and tips on how to distinguish between them.  In at least one western state, there is a test on how to visually tell the difference between a grizzly bear and a black bear. Of course he as tips on how to prepare a bear hide for for taxidermy, and how to score a bear as a trophy.  He also has several tips on how to tell if a bear is a trophy. Favorite Quote: "Bears often react violently to a superficial hit.  He may fall as though mortally wounded, when only hit in the paw"
Read more