Skip to main content

About Arduino

As you might be aware that its the greenlab vision to make sure that students are well taught and versed in the arduino microcontroller programming system and that's why your instructors must have made you aware of what the Arduino microcontroller is all about. For more understanding of the subject matter, read the following article on Arduino.


What is Arduino?

Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino boards are able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message - and turn it into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the Arduino programming language (based onWiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on Processing.
Over the years Arduino has been the brain of thousands of projects, from everyday objects to complex scientific instruments. A worldwide community of makers - students, hobbyists, artists, programmers, and professionals - has gathered around this open-source platform, their contributions have added up to an incredible amount of accessible knowledge that can be of great help to novices and experts alike.
Arduino was born at the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute as an easy tool for fast prototyping, aimed at students without a background in electronics and programming. As soon as it reached a wider community, the Arduino board started changing to adapt to new needs and challenges, differentiating its offer from simple 8-bit boards to products for IoT applications, wearable, 3D printing, and embedded environments. All Arduino boards are completely open-source, empowering users to build them independently and eventually adapt them to their particular needs. Thesoftware, too, is open-source, and it is growing through the contributions of users worldwide.

Why Arduino?

Thanks to its simple and accessible user experience, Arduino has been used in thousands of different projects and applications. The Arduino software is easy-to-use for beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Teachers and students use it to build low cost scientific instruments, to prove chemistry and physics principles, or to get started with programming and robotics. Designers and architects build interactive prototypes, musicians and artists use it for installations and to experiment with new musical instruments. Makers, of course, use it to build many of the projects exhibited at the Maker Faire, for example. Arduino is a key tool to learn new things. Anyone - children, hobbyists, artists, programmers - can start tinkering just following the step by step instructions of a kit, or sharing ideas online with other members of the Arduino community.
There are many other microcontrollers and microcontroller platforms available for physical computing. Parallax Basic Stamp, Netmedia's BX-24, Phidgets, MIT's Handyboard, and many others offer similar functionality. All of these tools take the messy details of microcontroller programming and wrap it up in an easy-to-use package. Arduino also simplifies the process of working with microcontrollers, but it offers some advantage for teachers, students, and interested amateurs over other systems:
  • Inexpensive - Arduino boards are relatively inexpensive compared to other microcontroller platforms. The least expensive version of the Arduino module can be assembled by hand, and even the pre-assembled Arduino modules cost less than $50
  • Cross-platform - The Arduino Software (IDE) runs on Windows, Macintosh OSX, and Linux operating systems. Most microcontroller systems are limited to Windows.
  • Simple, clear programming environment - The Arduino Software (IDE) is easy-to-use for beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users to take advantage of as well. For teachers, it's conveniently based on the Processing programming environment, so students learning to program in that environment will be familiar with how the Arduino IDE works.
  • Open source and extensible software - The Arduino software is published as open source tools, available for extension by experienced programmers. The language can be expanded through C++ libraries, and people wanting to understand the technical details can make the leap from Arduino to the AVR C programming language on which it's based. Similarly, you can add AVR-C code directly into your Arduino programs if you want to.
  • Open source and extensible hardware - The plans of the Arduino boards are published under a Creative Commons license, so experienced circuit designers can make their own version of the module, extending it and improving it. Even relatively inexperienced users can build the breadboard version of the module in order to understand how it works and save money.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meet this Computer Prodigy

London:  Setting an unprecedented record, a seven-year-old British boy of Pakistani origin has become the world's youngest computer programmer. Muhammad Hamza Shahzad, resident of Handsworth area in Birmingham has been trained by his father Asim, who works with an American IT firm.   "I want to be Bill Gates," he told 'Birmingham Mail' this week. This is not the first time when Hamza has set a world record, he had become the world's youngest Microsoft Office Professional (MOP) last year at the age of six. In an exam, where candidates needed 700 points to get the coveted certificate, Hamza has scored 757, a Microsoft spokesperson said, adding he is now proficient in Software Development Fundamentals. "He can easily create Web App and manages to develop his own basic shopping cart app," he said. "He has got his hands dirty in Windows desktop App, console App, windows services, Web services and finds it really fun to develop simp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learn More about Your Basic Electronics

The Most Common Basic Electronic Components These are the most common components Resistors Capacitors LEDs Transistors Inductors Integrated Circuits I didn’t understand the  resistor  in the beginning. It didn’t seem to do anything! It was just there, consuming power. But with time, I learned that the resistor is actually extremely useful. You’ll see resistors everywhere. And as the name suggests, they  resist  the current. But you are probably wondering: What do I use it for? You use the resistor to control the voltages and the currents in your circuit. By  using Ohm’s law . Let’s say you have a 9V battery and you want to turn on a  Light-Emitting Diode (LED) . If you connect the battery directly to the LED, LOTS of current will flow through the LED! Much more that the LED can handle. So the LED will become very hot and burn out after a short amount of time. But – if you put a resistor in series with the LED, you can...
Post a Comment
Read more

Next Generation Transport System

team from MIT  took top honors Saturday at a competition at Texas A&M University to design the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation concept dreamed up by Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Beating out a field of more than 100 other teams from around the world, the group of MIT graduate students won the best overall design award for a vehicle, or pod, that will ride inside the Hyperloop, a system of tubes connecting major cities — or what Musk calls “a fifth mode of transportation.” They will now move on to build a small-scale prototype of their design and test it this summer on a track being built next to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. “MIT has been involved in so many technological breakthroughs in the past century,” says team captain Philippe Kirschen, a master’s student in aeronautics and astronautics. “It just makes sense we would help advance what might be the future of transportation.” In 2013, Musk declared war on conventional inter-city...
1 comment
Read more