Arduino Hardware and Software

Arduino - Hardware

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform, intended to be used by engineers and hobbyists. The boards are very low cost and the development software platform is free.

There is an extensive range of Arduino compatible boards available from numerous manufacturers, available in both kit form and preassembled. This gives a very wide choice based on price, size and performance. Most of the board designs are open source, allowing the circuitry to be incorperated in your own designs.

Shown below are a number of boards available:

Arduino Uno

ATmega328 Microcontroller

16MHz

14 Digital Input/Output Lines

6 Analog Inputs

USB

expansion boards available

2.7" x 2.1" (68mm x 53mm)

Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU

84MHz

54 digital input/output pins

12 analog inputs, 2 analog outputs

USB, 4 hardware UARTs

expansion boards available

4" x 2.1" (101mm x 53mm)

Arduino Due

Teensy4

ARM Cortex-M7

600MHz

40 digital input/output pins

14 analog inputs, 2 ADCs

USB, very compact size

easily mounted on a breadboard

1.4" x 0.7" (35mm x 18m)

Most Arduino boards contain a USB interface which is used for programming. Once programmed the USB port can be used to simulate a serial port when connected to a PC, on some boards the USB can also be used to simulate a keyboard/mouse/joystick. Expansion boards are readily available for adding Ethernet, GSM and Wi-Fi.

Arduino - Software

One of the main advantages of Arduino based boards is the freely available Arduino Software package. Here you create a Sketch, code written in a language very similar to standard C/C++. The Arduino software package converts the Sketch to standard C/C++, adds required #include or definition statements, and then performs the compilation using a standard C/C++ compiler. The user can switch between the various Arduino boards available with little or no change required to the Sketch.

The Arduino Software is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Shown below is an example of the development environment running on a Mac:

The Sketch language includes a number of commands/libraries intended to make development of microcontroller code easier. There are also a very large number of third party libraries available to expand the Sketch language, including EEPROM, Ethernet, GSM, Liquid Crystal displays, SD Card reading/writing, servo control, SPI, stepper motor control and Wi-Fi.

Links

Below is a list of web sites which contain further information on the Arduino platform:

Arduino

Main Arduino Site

PJRC

Sellers of the Teensy range of microcontroller boards

The Arduino brand, Arduino logo, and design of the Arduino boards are copyright of Arduino SA.

APG Consultancy LTD