Hands on Arduino

What is Arduino?

Arduino is basically an open-source electronic platform/board and the software along that is used to program it. Arduino makes electronic devices more efficient to use. It's like customising usual devices as per our choice. Doing so by programming the Arduino board and attaching it to the device. You can buy Arduino from here.  

What does it look like?

If you are buying it, you should know what is it that you are going to get. 

Arduino Board

This is an Arduino Board. Let's study!

Digital

Pin 0 & 1 : TX and RX are used to transmit and receive data. 

Pin 2 to 12 : These are Digital pins. 2 &3 acts as interrupt handler. 4 to 12 are output pins.  

Pin 13 : Pin 13 has an LED attached to it. When pin value is HIGH, LED is on else, it is off.

Pin GND : Ground pin

Pin AREF : Analog Reference Pin

Analog in

These pins are input pins. They support analog to digital conversion function. Because, the current supplied is analog but computer needs digit.

POWER

There 2 power and 2 Ground pins here. (Orange and yellow colored) 

Other Pins

X1 : Pink colored X1 is for external power supply

USB : To attach other devices via USB cable.

S1 : Blue colored S1 is Reset button.

How can you code Arduino?

Now you know all the pins and their functions. But to make them work requires some code. You might be thinking how do you code it and using what. To program your Arduino Board you need Desktop IDE or online Editor. 

Arduino Desktop IDE is available for Linux, Windows and MAC. You can download it from this page.

Once you are done with this, we can write, code compile it and send to the board for execution. We will see a simple Arduino Program in the next post, soon!

Next Post (Writing First program on Arduino)->