What is Arduino? | what is Arduino microcontroller?

How was Arduino created? What is an Arduino for? What are the advantages? How do I start programming? In this tutorial, we will present a summary of what Arduino is and how you can use it in your projects. In this article, I will discuss what is Arduino in detail Arduino microcontroller. Let's begin the topic.

What is Arduino

The Arduino was created in 2005 by a group of 5 researchers: Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino and David Mellis . The aim was to design a device that was both inexpensive, functional, and easy to program, thus being accessible to students and amateur designers. In addition, the concept of free hardware was adopted, which means that anyone can assemble, modify, improve and customize the Arduino, starting from the same basic hardware.

What is the Arduino microcontroller?

Thus, a plate composed of an emo Atmel microcontroller, input/output circuits and which can be easily connected to a computer and programmed via the IDE ( Integrated Development Environment, or Integrated Development Environment ) using a language-basedon C / C ++, without the need for extra equipment in addition to a USB cable.

What is Arduino

Once programmed, the microcontroller can be used independently, that is, you can put it to control a robot, a trash can, a fan, the lights in your house, the temperature of the air conditioner, you can use it as a measuring device or any other project that comes to mind.

In the video below you will find out what Arduino is and what it is for . Check out!

What you can do with the Arduino

The list of possibilities is practically endless. You can automate your home, your car, your office, create a new toy, new equipment, or improve an existing one. Everything will depend on your creativity.

For this, the Arduino has a huge amount of sensors and components that you can use in your projects. Much of the material used is available in modules, which are small plates that contain sensors and other auxiliary components such as resistors, capacitors, and LEDs.

What is Arduino

There are also so-called Shields, which are boards that you plug into the Arduino to expand its functionality. The image below shows an Arduino Ethernet Shield embedded in the Arduino Mega 2560. While allowing access to a network or even the internet, it keeps the other pins available for use, so you can, for example, use the pins to receive temperature and humidity data of an environment, and consult this data from anywhere on the planet:

What is Arduino

To give you an the idea of the creative possibilities with Arduino take a look at these two projects (click on the images for more details). The first is a shoe that ties itself ...

What is Arduino

... the other is from a robot that climbs trees ...

What is Arduino

Arduino Board Models

The type of card you are going to use depends a lot on the project to be developed and the number of ports needed. The options range from the most common, such as the Arduino Uno and its 14 digital and 6 analog ports, passing through boards with greater processing power, such as the Arduino Mega , with ATmega2560 microcontroller and 54 digital ports, and the Arduino Due , based on a processor 32-bit ARM and 512 Kbytes of memory:

What is Arduino

Here on the blog we have a specific article addressing the mainboards available on the market, where you can check the specifications, details and characteristics of each board.

Structure of an Arduino program

Writing a program in Arduino is very simple. All you need is to connect it to the computer using a USB cable and use a programming environment called IDE, where you type the program, do the tests to find any errors and transfer the program to the device.

In the image below we have the IDE with a loaded program. On the official Arduino website you can download the IDE for free:

What is Arduino

Once the program is done, just transfer it to the Arduino and it will start to work.

You don't need to be an expert in C language to program it. In addition to the large number of examples you find here on the blog, you can start a program using the basic Arduino structure, which is composed of two parts, or two blocks:

setup () - It is in this part of the program that you configure the initial options of your program: the initial values of a variable, whether a port will be used as an input or output, messages for the user, etc.

loop () - This part of the program repeats a command structure continuously or until a "stop" command is sent to Arduino.

Let's see exactly how it works, taking into account the program below, which turns on and off the LED embedded in the board at 1-second intervals:

//Programa : Pisca Led Arduino

//Autor : FILIPEFLOP

void setup()

{

//Define a porta do led como saida

pinMode(13, OUTPUT);

}

void loop()

{

//Acende o led

digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

//Aguarda o intervalo especificado

delay(1000);

//Apaga o led

digitalWrite(13, LOW);

//Aguarda o intervalo especificado

delay(1000);

}

The first thing we do at the beginning of the program is to make a small note about the name of the program, its function and who created it:

Start a line with double slashes (//) and anything after that line will be treated as a comment. One of the best programming practices is to document your code using comment lines. With them, you can insert observations about how a certain part of the program works or what that AbsXPT variable you created means. This will be useful not only for you if you need to change the code after a while, but also for others who will use your program.

After the comments come from the SETUP structure. It is here that we define that pin 13 of the Arduino will be used as an output.

Finally, we have the LOOP , which contains the instructions for turning the led on and off, and also the interval between these actions:

The code line containing digitalWrite (13, HIGH) places port 13 at a high level ( HIGH, or 1), turning on the LED embedded in the board. The delay (1000) command specifies the interval, in milliseconds, at which the program is stopped before advancing to the next line.

The digitalWrite command (13, LOW), turns off the led, placing the door at a low level ( LOW, or 0), and then a new program stop occurs, and the process is then restarted.

Getting started with Arduino

As we saw above, you don't need any additional components to start programming an Arduino. A computer, a card, and the IDE are enough to carry out the programming and send the program to the card.

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Conclusion

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