Week Eight

WHAT IS ARDUINO?

First, Arduino is a microcontroller. A microcontroller is the computer that allows your project to “think,” or at least to process inputs and outputs. Inputs are things like sensors (light sensors, thermometers, gyros, etc.), and human-interface elements (buttons, switches, knobs). Outputs are any electrical elements that you want to be able to control, such as lights, displays, motors and servos. A microprocessor has all the basic parts of a computer (processor, memory, input/output pins) on a single chip, and runs software that you load onto it from your computer, allowing it to manipulate the outputs based on data it receives from the inputs.

Next, Arduino is a single board. This means that everything you need for basic Arduino usage comes soldered to one little circuit board. The board houses the microcontroller, and provides convenient access to the microcontroller’s input and output pins. A single-board microcontroller is different than a single-board computer, like the Raspberry Pi, in that it doesn’t have the flexible, general purpose interfaces that allow a human to interact with it, such as video output, and the microcontroller’s hardware isn’t powerful enough to run a full-blown operating system.

Moving on, Arduino is open source. As open source hardware, the schematics for Arduino are available to anyone for free, so if you wanted you could buy the electronic components and a circuit board, and build your own Arduino. Many people build and sell third-party Arduino hardware.

SPECIFICATIONS

Microcontroller	ATmega328
Operating Voltage	5V
Input Voltage (recommended)	7-12V
Input Voltage (limits)	6-20V
Digital I/O	14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins	6
DC Current per I/O Pin	40 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin	50 mA
Flash Memory	32 KB of which 0.5 KB used by bootloader
SRAM	2 KB
EEPROM	1 KB
Clock Speed	16 MHz

The board Arduino specificatons