ARDUINO BASICS
Arduino Board
“Strong Friend” Created in Ivrea, Italy
in 2005 by Massimo Banzi & David Cuartielles
Open Source Hardware
Processor
Coding is accessible & transferrable (C++, Processing,
java)
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Arduino…
is the go-to gear for artists,
hobbyists, students, and anyone with
a gadgetry dream.
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PWR IN USB
(to Computer)
RESET
SCL\SDA
(I2C Bus)
POWER
5V / 3.3V / GND
Digital I\O
PWM(3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11)
Analog
INPUTS
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PWR IN USB
(to Computer)
RESET
SCL\SDA
(I2C Bus)
POWER
5V / 3.3V / GND
Digital I\O
PWM(3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11)
Analog
INPUTS
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Go ahead and plug your board in!
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Arduino Shields
PCB Built Shield Inserted Shield
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Arduino Shields
Micro SD MP3 Trigger LCD
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Components
Name Image Type Function Notes
Push Button Digital Input Switch - Closes Polarized, needs
or opens circuit resistor
Trim Analog Input Variable resistor Also called a
Trimpot.
potentiometer
Photoresistor Analog Input Light Dependent Resistance varies
Resistor (LDR) with light.
Relay Digital Output Switch driven by Used to control
a small signal larger voltages
Temp Sensor Analog Input Temp Dependent
Resistor
Flex Sensor Analog Input Variable resistor
Soft Trimpot Analog Input Variable resistor Careful of shorts
RGB LED Dig & Analog 16,777,216 Ooh... So pretty.
Output different colors
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Components
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Components
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SIK Components
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Electricity \ Electronics Basic
Concept Review
• Ohms Law
• Voltage
• Current
• Resistance
• Using a Multi-meter
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Ohm’s Law
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Electrical Properties
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Current Flow Analogy
High Current Low Current
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Voltage Analogy
Water
Tower
Water
Tower
V
V
More Energy == Higher Voltage Less Energy == Lower Voltage
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Resistance Analogy
Water Water
Tower Tower
Big Pipe == Lower Resistance Small Pipe == Higher Resistance
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Continuity – Is it a Circuit?
The word “circuit” is derived from the circle.
An Electrical Circuit must have a continuous
LOOP from Power (Vcc) to Ground (GND).
Continuity is important to make portions of
circuits are connect. Continuity is the simplest
and possibly the most important setting on
your multi-meter. Sometimes we call this
“ringing out” a circuit.
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Measuring Electricity – Voltage
Voltage is a measure of potential
electrical energy. A voltage is also
called a potential difference – it is
measured between two points in a
circuit – across a device.
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Measuring Electricity -- Current
Current is the measure of the rate of charge
flow. For Electrical Engineers – we consider
this to be the movement of electrons.
In order to measure this – you must break the
circuit or insert the meter in-line (series).
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Measuring Electricity -- Resistance
Resistance is the measure of how much
opposition to current flow is in a circuit.
Components should be removed entirely from
the circuit to measure resistance. Note the
settings on the multi-meter. Make sure that
you are set for the appropriate range.
Resistance
settings
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Prototyping Circuits
Solderless Breadboard
One of the most useful tools in an
engineer’s or Maker’s toolkit. The most
important things:
• A breadboard is easier than soldering
• A lot of those little holes are connected, which ones?
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What’s a Breadboard?
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Solderless Breadboard
Each row (horiz.) of 5
holes are connected.
Vertical columns –
called power bus are
connected vertically
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Using the Breadboard to built a
simple circuit
Use the breadboard
to wire up a single
LED with a 330
Ohm Resistor
(Orange-Orange-
Brown).
Note: the longer leg on the
LED is the positive leg and
the shorter leg is the
negative
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Fritzing View of Breadboard Circuit
What happens
when you break
the circuit?
What if you
wanted to add
more than one
LED?
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Adding control – let’s use the
Arduino
and start programming!!!
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Concepts: INPUT vs. OUTPUT
Referenced from the perspective of the microcontroller (electrical
board).
Inputs is a signal / Output is any signal
information going into the exiting the board.
board.
Almost all systems that use physical computing will have
some form of output
What are some examples of Outputs?
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Concepts: INPUT vs. OUTPUT
Referenced from the perspective of the microcontroller (electrical
board).
Inputs is a signal / Output is any signal
information going into the exiting the board.
board.
Examples: Buttons Switches, Examples: LEDs, DC motor,
Light Sensors, Flex Sensors, servo motor, a piezo buzzer,
Humidity Sensors, relay, an RGB LED
Temperature Sensors…
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Concepts: Analog vs. Digital
Microcontrollers are digital devices – ON or
OFF. Also called – discrete.
Analog signals are anything that can be a
full range of values. What are some
examples? More on this later…
5V 5V
0V 0V
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Open up Arduino
Hints:
For PC Users For Mac Users
1.Let the installer copy 1. Move the Arduino
and move the files to executable to the
the appropriate dock for ease of
locations, or access.
2.Create a folder under 2. Resist the
C:\Program Files (x86) temptation to run
called Arduino. Move these from your
the entire Arduino desktop.
program folder here.
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Arduino
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Two required functions /
methods / routines:
void setup()
{
// runs once
}
void loop()
{
// repeats
error & status messages }
Settings: Tools Serial Port
Your computer
communicates to the
Arduino microcontroller
via a serial port
through a USB-Serial
adapter.
Check to make sure that
the drivers are properly
installed.
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Settings: Tools Board
Next, double-check that the proper board is selected
under the ToolsBoard menu.
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Arduino & Arduino Compatible Boards
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BIG 6 CONCEPTS
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Let’s get to coding…
Project #1 – Blink
“Hello World” of Physical Computing
Psuedo-code – how should this work?
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Comments, Comments, Comments
Comments are for you – the programmer and your
friends…or anyone else human that might read your
code.
// this is for single line comments
// it’s good to put a description at the top and
before anything ‘tricky’
/* this is for multi-line comments
Like this…
And this….
*/
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comments
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Three commands to know…
pinMode(pin, INPUT/OUTPUT);
ex: pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(pin, HIGH/LOW);
ex: digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
delay(time_ms);
ex: delay(2500); // delay of 2.5 sec.
// NOTE: -> commands are CASE-sensitive
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Project #1: Wiring Diagram
Move the green
wire from the
power bus to pin
13 (or any other
Digital I/O pin on
the Arduino
board.
Image created in Fritzing
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A few simple challenges
Let’s make LED#13 blink!
Challenge 1a – blink with a 200 ms second
interval.
Challenge 1b – blink to mimic a heartbeat
Challenge 1c – find the fastest blink that
the human eye can still detect…
1 ms delay? 2 ms delay? 3 ms delay???
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Try adding other LEDs
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Programming Concepts: Variables
Variable Scope
Global
---
Function-
level
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Programming Concepts: Variable
Types
Variable Types:
8 bits 16 bits 32 bits
byte int long
char unsigned int unsigned long
float
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Fading in and Fading Out
(Analog or Digital?)
A few pins on the Arduino allow for us
to modify the output to mimic an
analog signal.
This is done by a technique called:
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
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Concepts: Analog vs. Digital
To create an analog signal, the microcontroller
uses a technique called PWM. By varying the duty
cycle, we can mimic an “average” analog voltage.
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
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Project #2 – Fading
Introducing a new command…
analogWrite(pin, val);
pin – refers to the OUTPUT
pin (limited to pins 3, 5, 6, 9,
10, 11.) – denoted by a ~
symbol
val – 8 bit value (0 – 255).
0 => 0V | 255 => 5V
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Move one of your LED pins over to
Pin 9
In Arduino, open up:
File Examples 01.Basics Fade
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Fade - Code Review
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Fade - Code Review
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Project# 2 -- Fading
Challenge 2a – Change the rate of the
fading in and out. There are at least
two different ways to do this – can
you figure them out?
Challenge 2b – Use 2 (or more) LEDs
– so that one fades in as the other
one fades out.
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R G B
Color Mixing
Tri-color LED
This is a standard – Common
Cathode LED
This means the negative
side of the LED is all tied to
Ground.
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Project 3 – RGB LED
Note: The
longest leg of
the RGB LED is
the Common
Cathode. This
goes to GND.
Use pins 5, 6, &
9
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How many unique colors can you
create?
Use Colorpicker.com or
experiment on your
own.
Pick out a few colors
that you want to try
re-creating for a lamp
or lighting display...
Play around with this
with the
analogWrite()
command.
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RGB LED Color Mixing
int redPin = 5;
int greenPin = 6;
int bluePin = 9;
void setup()
{
pinMode(redPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(greenPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(bluePin, OUTPUT);
}
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RGB LED Color Mixing
void loop()
{
analogWrite(redPin, 255);
analogWrite (greenPin, 255);
analogWrite (bluePin, 255);
}
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Project: Mood Lamp / Light Sculpture
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Driving Motors or other High Current
Loads
NPN Transistor (Common Emitter “Amplifier” Circuit)
to Digital
Pin 9
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Input
Input is any signal entering an electrical system
.
•Both digital and analog sensors are forms of
input
•Input can also take many other forms:
Keyboards, a mouse, infrared sensors, biometric
sensors, or just plain voltage from a circuit
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Project #4 – Digital Input
In Arduino, open up:
File Examples 02.Digital
Button
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Digital Sensors (a.k.a. Switches)
Pull-up Resistor (circuit)
to Digital Pin 2
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Digital Sensors (a.k.a. Switches)
Add an indicator LED to Pin 13
This is just like our
1st circuit!
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Digital Input
• Connect digital input to your Arduino using Pins # 0 –
13 (Although pins # 0 & 1 are also used for
programming)
• Digital Input needs a pinMode command:
pinMode (pinNumber, INPUT);
Make sure to use ALL CAPS for INPUT
• To get a digital reading:
int buttonState = digitalRead (pinNumber);
• Digital Input values are only HIGH (On) or LOW (Off)
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Digital Sensors
• Digital sensors are more straight forward than
Analog
• No matter what the sensor there are only two
settings: On and Off
• Signal is always either HIGH (On) or LOW (Off)
• Voltage signal for HIGH will be a little less than 5V
on your Uno
• Voltage signal for LOW will be 0V on most systems
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http://opensourcehardwarejunkies.com/tutorial-03-digitalread-and-
serial-port-communication/
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Programming: Conditional
Statements
if()
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Programming: Conditional
Statements
if()
void loop()
{
int buttonState = digitalRead(5);
if(buttonState == LOW)
{ // do something DIG
INPUT
}
else
{ // do something else
}
}
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Boolean Operators
<Boolean> Description
( ) == ( ) is equal?
( ) != ( ) is not equal?
( ) > ( ) greater than
( ) >= ( ) greater than or equal
( ) < ( ) less than
( ) <= ( ) less than or equal
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Analog Sensors
3 Pin Potentiometer = var. resistor
(circuit)
a.k.a. Voltage Divider Circuit
wiper
fixed
ends 1.0 V 1.0 V
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analogRead()
Arduino uses a 10-bit A/D Converter:
• this means that you get input values
from 0 to 1023
• 0V0
• 5 V 1023
Ex:
int sensorValue = analogRead(A0);
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Using Serial Communication
Method used to transfer data between two
devices.
Data passes between the computer and Arduino
through the USB cable. Data is transmitted as
zeros (‘0’) and ones (‘1’) sequentially.
Arduino dedicates Digital I/O pin # 0 to
receiving and Digital I/O pin #1 to
transmit.
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Serial Monitor & analogRead()
Initializes the Serial
Communication
9600 baud data rate
prints data to serial bus
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Serial Monitor & analogRead()
Opens up a
Serial Terminal
Window
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Analog Sensors
2 Pin Analog Sensors = var. resistor
Take two sensors --
Use the Serial Monitor
and find the range of
input values you get
for each sensor.
MaxAnalogRead = _________
MinAnalogRead = _________
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Analog Sensors
Examples:
Sensors Variables
Mic soundVolume
Photoresistor lightLevel
Potentiometer dialPosition
Temp Sensor temperature
Flex Sensor bend
Accelerometer tilt/acceleration
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Additional Serial Communication
Sending a Message
void loop ( )
{
Serial.print(“Hands on “) ;
Serial.print(“Learning ”) ;
Serial.println(“is Fun!!!”) ;
}
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Serial Communication:
Serial Debugging
void loop()
{
int xVar = 10;
Serial.print ( “Variable xVar is “ ) ;
Serial.println ( xVar ) ;
}
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Serial Communication:
Serial Troubleshooting
void loop ( )
{
Serial.print (“Digital pin 9: “);
Serial.println (digitalRead(9));
}
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