Thursday, February 13, 2014
This is the starting point of the Arduino tutorial series. So this is an introduction to Arduino boards. Arduino is a open source hardware project. So Arduino board is a simple development board for micro controller development projects. But there are advanced Arduino boards available in the market such as PCduino, Arduino DUE. According to the purpose of use choose a board. There are several options available. There are several sizes, prices, performances available.
This is the official ARDUINO logo.
These are the example boards. You can google for arduino boards.
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| Arduino MEGA |
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| Arduino UNO |
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| Arduino pro mini |
Yes! Now you know what is an arduino board. So I am going to tell you how to use it. Then we want a IDE to develop source code. Here you go to download the latest software. After install the software start the IDE. It looks like
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| Arduino IDE in Ubuntu, Same in Windows |
There are lots of example available under File>>Examples. Then you needs to install drivers for Arduino boards. It is placed at Drivers directory in the root Arduino directory. Then connect an Arduino board to the PC using a USB cable. Just a simple thing to do, use 'right' symbol to compile the code and 'arrow' to upload. You've done. It is the way you needs to go.
Then I am going to say about the different boards in above images. Arduino DUE is the biggest one of the family and it has 54 digital I/Os (including analog outs) and 16 Analog inputes 12 Analog Outputs(PWM). And Arduino UNO and pro mini has 14 digital I/Os with 6 PWMs and 6 Analog inputs. All the analog inputs can use as digital outputs. According to the usage, select a correct board. No problem if you have enough money to buy two or three. All will work under 8MHz or 16MHz and 5v or 3.3v.
This is the introduction and next time I will explain a simple code.
