What are the Advantages of Arduino

What is Arduino?

Arduino is a development board based on AVR microcontrollers, an electronic platform that is completely open-source. It is hard to find a person linked to engineering disciplines but haven't heard the name Arduino. If you want to build a project that can receive input, process data, and generate output then a processor is required. Arduino works as the brain of a project that can store a set of instructions and execute it to accomplish the desired function.

What Makes Arduino Popular than Others of its kind?

Arduino has become popular because of its simplicity and the services offered by the Arduino Inc. First of all, Arduino is easy to program. The code is meaningful and literally, anyone from technical background can easily understand it. The programming language used in Arduino programming is basically C++ but Arduino Inc. modified it and they named it, "Arduino Programming Language". The required software for programming known as the "Arduino IDE" is free to download from the Arduino website. Secondly, the code burning setup for Arduino is great. If you have worked with AVR/PIC microcontroller, you know how much pain it to setup the programming and burning environment. 

You need to setup the IDEs, Makefile, Burner then install the USBAsp driver. Write code, compile it, then go to the burner application to upload it to the microcontroller. For debugging you have to go through a complex procedure. But in the case of Arduino,  everything can be done with the simple IDE, nothing else is required. Thirdly, the enhanced serial communication utility. You can check what is going on inside the processor by printing the events into the serial monitor. Library for every module and sensors, easy navigation of the processor pins, tutorials, and solution blogs offered by Arduino Inc., etc.

How Many Types of Arduino Boards are Out there?

There almost every kind of Arduino boards are available in the market that could possibly be required in an engineering project. For example, if your project requirement is it needs to be very small in size then the Arduino Mini and Nano could be used. For a project that uses multiple serial communication devices, Arduino Mega is there with 54 digital I/O pins and 14 special pins that can be used as PWM. If you need a powerful processor with higher working frequency then ARM processor-based Arduino boards are also available. Arduino boards can be categorized as Entry Level, Enhanced Features, and IoT boards.

Arduino Boards with ATmega 328p Processor:

Boards -- Arduino UNO, Nano, Mini, and Micro

Digital Pins -- 13

Analog Pins -- 6

Working PWM Pins -- D3, D5, D6, D9 

Primary Processor -- ATmega 328p

Communication Processor -- ATmega 16

Communication Protocols -- UART( D0 and D1 ), I2C( A4, A5 ), SPI

Arduino Boards with ATmega 2560 Processor:

Boards -- Arduino Mega

Digital Pins -- 54

Analog Pins -- 16

Working PWM Pins -- 14

Primary Processor -- ATmega 2560

Communication Processor -- ATmega 16

Communication Protocols -- 3 UART( D14 - D19 ), I2C( D20, D21 ), SPI

Arduino Boards with ARM Cortex-M3 Processor:

Boards -- Arduino DUE

Digital Pins -- 54

Analog Pins -- 12

Working PWM Pins -- 12( D2 - D13 )

Primary Processor -- ARM Cortex-M3

Communication Processor -- ATmega 16

Communication Protocols -- UART( D0 and D1 ), I2C( A4, A5 ), SPI

Arduino Boards with ATmega32u4 Processor:

Boards -- Arduino Leonardo

Digital Pins -- 14

Analog Pins -- 6

Working PWM Pins -- 7

Primary Processor -- ATmega32u4

Communication Processor -- ATmega 16

Communication Protocols -- UART( D0 and D1 ), I2C( A4, A5 ), SPI

Technical Details of Arduino?

The Arduino has three ways of powering it. You can power it from the computer using the USB cable. The voltage rating is 5v. The other way is using the black rounded pin using a power adapter. The Arduino has a builtin voltage regulator that is connected to the power adapter. So you can use 12v - 5v to power that port. The third way is the Vin Pin. The same rule is applied here as the adapter port. 

The Arduino pins are able to provide 5v when written high and 0v when written Low. It has an Analog to Digital Converter or shortly ADC that can read analog signals. Some of the digital pins can be used to control the width of the pulse used in motor speed control. These pins are called PWM pins or Special Pins.

It has a communication processor mostly ATmega16 that help the primary processor to communicate to the computer.

How to Program an Arduino?

Programming an Arduino is so easy than you think. If you want to blink an LED, the following code is an example. An Arduino program consists of two segments. The setup() function, where we write the code that needs to run only once, and the loop() function is the place where we put lines of code that run forever. The pinMode() function is used to declare if we want to use a pin as input or output. Inside the loop function, first, we will turn the LED on and keep it on for 1 second then turn it off for another second which will cause the led to blink with a delay of 1 second. 

The digitalWrite() function is used to make changes in a pin. The first parameter of the function is the number of pin that we want to make changes. The second parameter of the function is the state of the pin. It only has two states. We can turn it on or off. 'High' for turning it on and 'Low' for turning it off.

The delay() function is used to keep the processor halt for the time included in milliseconds inside the parenthesis. The next step is uploading the program to the Arduino. Inside the tools section, first, we need to set the 'Board' variable, and Port. 

Hit 'ctrl + u' in your keyboard that will compile the code and upload it to Arduino. It shouldn't take more than a minute.