Asana Learning Lunch: Arduino 08/01/2012

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Learning Lunch: Arduino

Overview of Arduino

• interaction with physical world
• microcontroller board
• development environment
• open-source!

Comparison vs other microcontroller platforms

• Inexpensive (relatively)
• Cross-Platform: Many other microcontroller systems are Windows only
• Open-source software and hardware

Arduino Uno

• ATmega328 running at 16MHz
• 14 digital IO pins (of which 6 have PWM output)
• 6 analog IO pins (10-bit Analog-to-Digital converter)
• USB connection
• power jack
• reset button
• 32KB of Flash Memory (0.5KB used by bootloader)
• 2KB of SRAM
• 1KB of EEPROM

Basic API:

• pinMode
• digitalWrite (any of the digital pins)
• analogWrite (from one of the PWM pins)
• analogRead (from pins A0-A5)
• delay (in milliseconds)

Examples

Blink: https://gist.github.com/3229696

Fade: https://gist.github.com/3229698

Potentiometer Input: https://gist.github.com/3229691

Shift Register: https://gist.github.com/3229681

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut

Easy Starter Project Ideas:

• Use a potentiometer to control a servo
• Use a potentiometer to control a piezo element
• Use a light sensitive resistor to control a multi-color LED
• Get a motor running with a transistor, controlled by a flex potentiometer!

Important Concepts

• Analog vs. Digital
  • Analog: A continuous function
  • Digital: Approximation of a continuous function with discrete values (resolution) at discrete time intervals (sampling frequency)
• Ohm's Law
  • Voltage = Current * Resistance
• Voltage Dividers (just to understand potentiometers)
• Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
  • Achieve analog communication over a digital channel
  • Switching rapidly between low and high
  • Duty Cycle: Proportion of time that signal is high

Resources

Software Download: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Arduino Reference: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage

Arduino Tutorials: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage

Arduino Playground Resources: http://arduino.cc/playground/Main/Resources

Inspiration

8x8x8 LED Cube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcX41pokZY

IDEO Arduino: http://labs.ideo.com/category/arduino/

Arduino Blog: http://arduino.cc/blog/

40 Projects: http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

Laser Harp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLVXmsbVwUs&feature=player_embedded

Other

LittleBits: http://littlebits.cc/