Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Getting Started with Arduino II”.
So this is getting started with arduino, who would say there are pretty much a beginner or total novice to Arduino. Okay, you are all in the right place and who would say that? Maybe you know a little bit about our. Do. We know enough to be dangerous. Intermediate, that’s me so, okay, so let us get started, what is Arduino and what is it good for so an Arduino is just a little computer, it’s a little microcontroller a computer on a board and it’s got inputs and outputs and a processor in the middle right. So you can do take inputs. You can run a little program to do something with that, and then you can have outputs. What can you use this, for you can prototype some cool, interesting new circuit? You can you can hack some old toy or some fun cool project and I think importantly, you can learn right. So you could learn programming by starting up a programmer, a programming environment and learning, or you could make a cool project that has a programming aspect and then there’s you know, learning programming with a purpose so, for example, something just example: projects just to give some ideas.
This this project senses when somebody comes near and has a like a heat sensor to know or some sort of visual sensor to know what somebody’s near right that goes into an input all right, then they have a program looking for that input and then it’s going To respond by making the scary monkey thing do that right, so input program, output or the secret knock gumball machine, there’s actually one of these over at the maker, the maker tent. You know you have a secret knock and only to the right secret code will make the make the gumball show. How does it work right? It’S listening for your vibrations of a knock at your input. Once again, it’s looking for that in the program and the output fires a solenoid, a little electrical solenoid to spit out a gumball or, for example, a son lager right. So you can. You can put this out measuring, measuring sunlight and an important aspect here. I’Ll explain! Analog and digital okay so think for a moment about a digital input. Digital means one or zero on or off right, so it can tell if there is sunlight or enough light or there is not enough light and it’ll give you either an honor up run off analog can give you a range, it’s kind of dark.
It’S getting brighter its brighter its brighter its fulbright right, so that when I, when I talk about an analog value, you’re going to get a range versus a one or a zero okay, where can you go to learn or do we know? I would say that one of the best places to go is online and you can go to Arduino zone website. Arduino CC, they’ve got a reference, they’ve got examples, relag and i refer back to it. Often myself. Okay, there are many other good online sites with people and examples.
If you want to do it our do it with an Arduino. Someone’S, probably got an example there and you can learn from it, but also there are some good books there’s getting started with arduino. There is you, if you like robots, i happen to love robots. Making an arduino controlled robot is a great book by Michael Margolis and there’s an adrenal getting started kid as well. Again, you can find these over at the maker shed if you’re interested okay, let me introduce you to the Arduino family.
These are some of the main boards that you might get to choose from now. There are quite a few boards to choose from. So what I’ll tell you is if you just want to learn, Arduino and get started, the uno is a great choice, that’s sort of your basic board and I talked a little bit about inputs and outputs. So one of the main things that make you choose one of these over another might be how many inputs and outputs I have so. The uno has 14 digital on or off inputs. Those same inputs can be used as outputs. Only some of them can be used on something else in a second.
It also has analog inputs. Okay, only input now it’s kind of lying to say that you can have an analog output, but what you do is they do something called pulse: width, modulation, okay, instead of being on all the time it’s on in little digital pulses of and what you can use. This, for is, let’s say, an LED or some sort of light. You want it to be not full on a little dimmer. You don’t actually lower the voltage that that circuit receives. What you do. Is you pulse it on and off very fast? And so, if you have this much time and it’s got pulses and it’s on for fifty percent of the time, then that’s fifty percent PWM and the light is dim seventy-five percent. It will be brighter one hundred percent.
It will be full bright, that’s how PWM works, so the uno board has six pto of those fourteen digital outputs inputs. Six of those can be PWM and it runs at five volts the mega. If you need a lot, if you have a project that needs a lot of inputs and outputs, the mega across diagonally down that has 54 digital inputs and outputs, 15 of which can be PWM, and it has 16 analog input, so you can get. You know light sensors or sound sensors or anything that might be a range of values.
So that is a great board. If you need to do a lot of that input and output work, it’s also it’s the same. Speed st., you know different processor, but the same speed, the other two on there, the Leonardo and the do the do way. Let me take them at one at a time there are different processors.
The details aren’t that important at this level, but the Leonardo. What is important is it’s got a built-in USB capability, which it could be again a right project for you if it’s for your project, also there’s a concept of shields which I’ll explain in a minute a shield is like an expansion board. You’Ll hear that word shield. Quite a bit in the Arduino world, it just means a board that fits right on top and interfaces with the Arduino, so some shields that use technology called SBI and again I’m not going to get into it, won’t work on the Leonardo that will work on the Uno, so again you probably not a worry, but if you know that your project needs that look into it before you buy the other one that doing that runs most of those those other three boards run at 5 volts.
Okay, an input signal is 5 volts. Outputs 5 volts. The doing is 3.3 volts. Some sensors work at 34 3.3 volts. If you are using the do way, and you are feeding it – a 5 volt signal, you may damage your board or it that pin.
So that is what you need to be aware of with the do way. Ok, I’m going to talk about some other family members, real, quick, the Arduino robot is fairly new. It’S a whole robot kit with the built-in sensors and board right on it and on the other side is the youn.
This is also was new announced in May at maker faire des area and available for sale for the first time in the u.s. here at maker faire at the shed. So this joins not only the the world and linux unix as well as Wi-Fi capability.
So it’s a cool board. A lot of people wanted to kind of be able to do Wi-Fi natively and have some linux capability natively the bridge that they’re putting a lot of work into. Does that for you, i’m not going to go into great deal of detail, but just to be aware that that’s it! If that’s something you need to play with that’s a Wi-Fi capability, you may want to look into the union. Okay. Now there are just a couple more boards to talk about the Explorer, the arduino ethernet, the lilypad, the micro, the Nano, the mini, the pro, the pro mini and the co.
Everybody got that, no, you don’t alright, just very briefly, and I’m again, if you just want to learn the Arduino by the you know or one of those four boards, and you know you’re fine, that’s great way to learn. If you have a might have a specific reason to choose one of these, the little purple round, one, the lily pad – is great for wearables or badges, because you can actually sew it right to things. That’S small! It’S round it’s got a nice small form factor, so it was designed with that in mind. The explora in the corner that sort of oval-shaped one that is just like the Leonardo, except it’s got built-in sensors for interaction.
So you know you can actually have like little little key pads on their to press with. So again you know, maybe you want to make a little game controller or something it might be a good place to start right. You might choose it for that specific specific purpose. If you want to work with ethernet the main uno, you can get a nice, an Ethernet shield and stick it on. But if you know that’s where you want to start, you can get the ethernet, the arduino ethernet and you have it built in on the same board, the other ones i’m not going to go into detail on the mic. Many they have different voltages, different things built in different capabilities, smaller form factors, there’s all different reasons why I don’t have time to explain each one. Nor do I remember each one, but they’re all are on documented on our drina’s website. If you go to products and you can find out all you need to know about those, I will point out the Pheo, which is on the bottom corner there that has wireless protocol called xB.
If you don’t know what that is, it’s just a wireless protocol for communication. So again, if your project involves that, that’s the reason to go that way: okay, really, quick! Here’S, the basic Arduino Uno board! You have your reset button on the top. Are those digital i/o pins? I referred to the longship there, that’s the brain on the bottom or analog those analog pins, as well as power pins. Where you can skip power, if you’re sending it to another board or to a circuit, you can tap right into the power rail there and then USB power, as well as how you program the board, as well as a DC power jack.
You can power it like from your computer a lot of times when you’re working on it. You power it that way, and then you can run it off batteries or a wall. Jack later on, I told you about shields right, there’s all kinds of shields for all kinds of things: people make them it’s open source.
They can design a shield. This one you see here, you can prototype on it’s just you know a bear board. You can get one with a breadboard, so you can read, board populate it and do whatever you want just slots on. It just means an expansion board. What you need, you need a computer, you need a cable and you need your your Arduino there’s.
It’S got its own little programming environment. It’S like a sea like programming structure. If you’re new to programming it’s it’s actually not that hard and there’s a lot of help and examples out there for you.
If you’re already familiar with programming – and you know NEC like language you’ll – find it very comfortable, what Arduino has done is they’ve hidden some of the thing inside libraries and if you don’t care to delve into that, but you want to know how to you want to Control a robotic servo or a motor they’ve already people have written the libraries they’ve done that work for you and you don’t have to worry about it. If you do want to worry about it, it’s all open source. You can dig in and write your own library. You can modify a library, so you can kind of dive in at the level experience you want, install the software. Oh the hell, oh well, if you’re a programmer, you know what hello world is.
It’S like. The first program you ever write is hello world. The blink program is the Arduino equivalent you download it, and the LED on board will blink then from there change the blink rate, use pwm and make it fade brighter and dimmer. This is where you learn to program loading. A sketch is very easy. There are examples. You choose the board that you’re using you choose the USB port that you’re connected to you load up your program, compile it and push it out your board resets, and then it runs. That’S it.
Do I have time for questions. I got one minute if anybody has any questions. One question from a young gentleman right there speak out. You can download it for free off of our dinners website. Any other questions, real quick nope up one more say one more time. Sorry, it’s like very, very very see like I think.
That’S all we have time for. Thank you all very much and have a great maker faire. .