Complete Exploring the Arduino Platform and Arduino UNO R3 Board

In this section we will start to explore the arduino features, functionalities and building blocks. There are many types of arduino boards available in the market each with its own design that can used to different applications, still in our case, we will focus on the most popular one, that is called arduino uno board. If you wonder, "arduino" is originally coming from italy so "uno" is one this is an entry level board that most people are using to learn and explore the arduino options. Now let’s zoom on what are the main building blocks in that commonly used board.

Complete Explanation Of Arduino Uno R3 Board

What we are learning right now is the arduino uno r3 board, at the lower middle is the brain of the board - the microcontroller. It is a tiny computer that contains the processor to execute instructions that is similar to the cpu. That you are using in your desktop or mobile applications/devices. Now it includes small amount of memory on left side is the universal serial bus (usb) connector. This help us to connect the board to our own desktop computer providing 3 main useful properties.

The first one is to supply power to the board the second is to upload our program to the arduino as at the end we need to tell the arduino board what do to and the last thing is to send and receive data from our computer, something that is very useful when debugging and looking for errors on some software, now next to the usb there is another socket that Is called external power. This socket allows us to power the arduino from an external power source.

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Instead of using the usb cable as power source the supply could be from an ac-to-dc adaptor like many appliances that we use in our homes or from some battery also next to the usb socket we have the "reset" button. That is used to reset the program on the arduino or stops it completely when we held that down for a long time. The board has four light-emitting diodes (leds), labeled l, rx, tx, and on

In general, a led is a component that produce light when electrical current flows through it. We will use it allot in our projects and it is used everywhere we go right now in almost endless applications. So, on the right side the led labeled "on", indicates in green color when the board has power. The leds labeled tx and rx light up when data is being transmitted or received between the arduino and some attached device via the serial port. For example, if i will try to upload a program into the arduino board then, in a very short time you will see the tx and rx are lighting on and off

The last one, is called the "l" led is for us, meaning we can turn that led on and off using the software commands and it is also connected to the digital i/o 13 that we will see very soon. So this is great output option on top of the board for testing our programs and to see if things are working

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Just below the microcontroller there are two rows of small sockets. The first row offers us power connections meaning external components that we going to connect to the arduino board can get power from that pins something we will use all the time. So we can use the power pins to distribute power to inputs and outputs wherever it’s needed in our circuit

In addition, if you look on this raw on the right side, there is a pin that is called vin, which stands for voltage in, meaning it can be used to supply the arduino board. External power, instead of using the power socket

Gnd marks the ground pins, which are essential to complete circuit. Now there is also a third ground just next to the pin 13, all of those ground pins are linked and sharing the same ground. Now, in addition we can use the 5v or 3.3v to supply the needed voltage level to power other components also in the same row we have the ability to use an external reset button instead of utilizing the red reset button what we see on the left side that is coming already as part of the board.

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The second row offer 6 analog inputs a0 to a5 that are used to measure electrical signals that vary in voltage, like analog sensors an analog value is taken from a range of values, in our case, the range is between 0 to 5v. Along the top of the board there are two more rows of sockets or pins whatever you call it. Numbered 0 to 13, this is the digital input/output (i/o) that are used to send and receive digital signals.

The meaning of digital is that they have two states: on and off, in our case the meaning that the value can be 0v or 5v so they can either detect whether or not an electrical signal is present on that pin or generate as output a signal using a command in our software.

In addition, digital pins 0 and 1 are also known as the serial port, which is used to send and receive data to other devices. Ok, don't worry if you don't understand everything right now as it is just high level overview. Now what about analog output ? Ok, so you don't see any pins being used for analog output. But we have some solution for that. And this is where you see some specific pins with the mark of tilda (~) next to it. There is some solution for imitating analog output something that is called pwm.

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Pwm - pulse width modulation which is a technique that we can use to create something like analog output and it being used in all kind of applications, we are going to present it as part of our project, the pins that are marked with this tilda(~) are pins 3,5, 6,9,10 and 11 so only for them we can use this pwm technique.