Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Getting Started with Arduino IV”.
Good afternoon everybody everybody having a good maker faire all right. Let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew turnover, I’m with make, and I i want to kick this off getting started to arduino. Let me get this tree bite by show of hands who considers themselves and arduino expert good, because you’d be bored, do you think, do you consider yourself and our dwie, no beginner or newbie, raise your hands? That’S it alright come on. This is the right place for those people and then how about maybe intermediate enough to be dangerous. Yeah me too, alright. So if you know more than me, don’t embarrass me up here, alright, so what’s an arduino, what is it good for so an Arduino is basically a little computer on a board. It’S a microcontroller or microprocessor on a board. It has inputs and then you run a program and then it has outputs. That’S the most basic explanation: what can you do with it? Just about anything you want to so people use them too. Hakol toys do cool electronic projects. I think an excellent use for an Arduino is to learn to program if you’re not already a programmer. What could be more fun than instead of just sort of writing a generic program to create a project that has a programming aspect to it and bring your project to life so a great way to learn programming.
So here are a few examples. The mochi couch Guardian can be sitting on a couch and looking for having a sensor to sense when someone comes close, that’s an input, there’s a program running, that’s watching for that input on the sensor and then, of course, if it seems somebody it’s going to do The scary thing right: well, what it’s doing is it’s running, an output that runs and closes and start to motor and that’s an output. So we had an input, the sensor, the programming and the output right, or how about the secret knock gumball machine? Okay.
So, instead of putting a coin in, you have to knock in a certain pattern and it’s listening. So it’s listening for the vibration or the sound. That’S an input program is sitting there waiting for it.
That’S your program and then the output is maybe fires a little solenoid to shoot your gumball out. Ok, so again, input program, output, another example, son logger: you can have a little light, sensitive resistor in there that’s a sensor, so it goes to your input. Alright, your program we’re looking for it, you could be logging the data. The output could be a like: an sdram data storage card, maybe you’re tracking the the level of the Sun over the course of the day. Ok, so let me just talk about a little bit. More about inputs for one second, there are digital inputs.
Digital is like 10 on off light dark right. So if you were, if you had a son lager – and it was a digital input, all you know is there’s light. There’S no light and Arduino is also have analog inputs that can tell you more of like a range of numbers. So how light is it ok, so you’re going to hear analog and digital right? That’S on the input side now the digital inputs can also be used as digital outputs, the same pins, but there’s really no such thing as an analog output.
However, there’s kind of a cheap for that on the digital output pins you can, instead of leaving it on all the time or off all the time you can pulse it now. Each pulse is the full voltage output that the pin goes to like 5 volts. Let’S say, but by putting it in pulses, it’s on maybe only fifty percent of the time or twenty-five percent of the time, and you can use this to appear to be like less voltage. So, for example, if you’re running an LED and you pulse it, then it looks to be less than full bright, in fact like if you see LEDs around that are like getting dimmer and brighter and dimmer and brighter they’re, probably using what’s called pulse width modulation on One of the digital output pins of a microcontroller, whether it’s an Arduino or something else – okay, so that’s analog and digital.
Okay. Where can you learn about our? Do we know a great place to learn about. Arduino is Arduino zone website. Arduino CC they’ve got references to all their commands.
They’Ve got examples tutorials and i often go back there myself and refer back to it. There are also some great books and there’s other websites in the maker shed here we have getting started with arduino there’s a getting started kit. If you need to buy your first or do we know and there’s also i like to learn I like to make robots.
That’S what I love to do so you can get a book about making Arduino robots, which is a really good, really good book. But there are lots of examples out there. Just you know, search form there out there.
So let’s talk about the boards, there are a lot of choices and I don’t want to make this too confusing. So here are like some for the basic boards that you might choose the uno. If you just kind of like wan na learn Arduino, that’s a good place to start. Okay. Most of these boards run at 16 megahertz. That’S the clock, speed of the processor not too important to know, but the IO, the input/output, how many pins you have that’s kind of important.
The uno has 14 digital input/output pins, six of which can do PWM that pulse width, modulation or lying to you about how much voltage they’re putting out, and they have six analog inputs, the analog inputs, our only input. Ok, ok, the if you need more for your project. If your project has a lot of.
I owe a lot of things you want to monitor, set as sensors or a lot of outputs. Then the mega is a good choice. It’S a different slightly fast! Well, it’s the same speed processor, but it’s a process that can handle a lot more pins and memory so and it has 54 digital i/o, pins, 15 of which can be PWM and has 16 analog input.
So the basic idea is hey. If you want to have a lot of i/o the mega good choice, the Leonardo is a different processor. It also runs in 16 megahertz. It has 20 digital i/o 7 can do PWM 12 analog input. It has some built-in USB capability. So that might be a reason to go towards that board.
It will not you’ll hear you’re gon na hear a term called shields. A shield is an expansion board that pops right on top of your Arduino, to provide new functions? There are some shields that use at the protocol called spi that the leonardo is not compatible with. So just be aware of that, if you’re going down that route, all of those three boards use five volts, they interface at 5, volts. Ok, the do way is different.
It runs at it’s about the size of the mega in terms of i/o 54. Digital input, outputs 12 PWM 12 analog, but it runs it 3.3 volts. This is important. Some sensors run at 3.3 volts, but if you choose to do it, then you’re going to be dealing with a 3.3 voltage for your for your pins. If you plug something that runs at 5 volts into it as an input, you might burn out your pin. You could burn out potentially the whole board so, but you might want that board if you know that the sensor is, let’s say, you’re using our 3.3 volt sensors. So that’s the reason to go to that board. Ok, there’s a few new men, the family, relatively new, the Arduino robot. It’S got like two boards on it, I think. There’S actually two Arduino is built on. It’S got motor drivers and sensors and stuff built right on the board, comes as a kit with wheels and everything – and you know it’s all in one package and then the unit is new to it – was announced in May at maker faire barrier and it’s available.
I understand for sale in the US for the first time here at maker faire at the shed the cool thing about the unit is it brings in Wi-Fi capability which a lot of people have an interest in also it has sort of another little process around there. That was running Linux version of UNIX if you’re not familiar, and some people want to be able to have that capability. There’S a whole bridge module that lets the Arduino speak talk to the UNIX speak so again, I’m just going to touch on it.
So you’re aware, if that’s an interest, look up more information. Okay! Now there are just a few other boards that you might be interested in. It’S the Explorer, the Arduino Ethernet, the lilypad, the micro, the Nano, the MIDI, the pro the pro mini and the Pheo.
Everybody got that No okay, that’s all right! There’S a lot of boards and you might choose them for a specific reason, like the explora. Has some built-in sensors like little buttons right on it? Let’S say you wanted to make a little game controller or something it’s got some buttons built out on it right. So it’s a nice little thing for that kind of project.
The lily pad is really cool. It’S a look a little round, one in the middle. It’S like about this big, it’s great for making like a badge or wearable or something you’re so into clothing or a teddy bear.
You can actually it’s not like holes. You can actually sew it in so that’s kind of made just for that that sort of project. If your project, if you know you want to interface your project with ethernet, the Arduino Ethernet, is a choice.
If you had a new, no or one of the other boards, you could also pop an Ethernet shield right on top and get that ethernet capability, I’m not going to go through all the differences of like the micro, the Nano and all those they run. It some different voltages, they’re small compact, they’re good for embedded projects. The only one I mentioned specifically is the Pheo which has a wireless protocol known as xB. You don’t need to know what that is, but if you do know that what that is – and you want to play in that world, the Pheo is a nice choice for that. All of these, the product information for all of these and all the specs are on Arduino website.
Just click on products and you’ll see all these boards. Okay, let me just take you in detail through voodoo know, there’s a reset button along the top there’s a header pins. Those are called header pins.
That’S where those those digital i/o pins I talked about are in the sort of the bottom corner there in the middle ish that that long chip is the brain. That’S the processor along the bottom row of headers. Those are power pins, as well as the analog input, pins and then along the side is USB power. You also when you interface to your computer, to program it you also plug in there, and that is usually when you’re like working with it. You might power it from your computer, while you’re working on it and then later on, you might want to have it somewhere. I run off batteries or like a wall, wart a powers, you know power plug and then you can plug it into the DC power jack.
Okay, the shield’s we’ve talked a little about there’s fields for lots of things: motor drivers, servo drivers, LED drivers, all kinds of cool stuff or like this one’s like a prototyping board, you can make your own circuit lots of choices. If you have a project you want to do and you think it might need a shield search for it. They’Re open source people can make your own their own shield. So maybe someone’s done your shield already or maybe you want to look up the specs and make your own okay. What you need to get started is a computer. That’S where the programming happens.
You need a cable and you need to eat the actual Arduino, the software. It’S free it’s available for download on Arduino website. It looks like that and you there’s example: programs in there you load the program or write it. You compile it and then you basically download it into your little Arduino and then it runs. There’S a basic program that comes with the environment called blink. If you’re no programming – and you know what hello world is – that’s like when you first learn the program, people learn the hello world program. Blink is like the hello world of Arduino right. If you, if you first learn the cool thing, is you you get this? You? Don’T know how to program you never use the Arduino, you load, the you load, the blink program and the little onboard LED starts blinking you’re like I did it, but then you look at the program you’re like well. Okay, how do I make the LED flash faster or slower? How do I make it use pwm and make it pulse instead of flash or how do i add a sensor and have the LED respond to my sensor a button now you know a mic right. So now there’s input your program and the output forget the LED run.
A motor renascer run a servo run whatever those are all your outputs, okay, I kind of talked through this. You know this is what it looks like. Here’S, a we’re loading an example sketch.
That’S the blink, that’s the blank one. It’S simple, I always forget to say the programming language itself, don’t get too scared. It’Sit’S see like if you know c programming. If you don’t c programming, there’s a lot of examples of tutorial. So don’t worry too much. There’S some scary-looking squirrely brackets: it’s not that hard really but uh a lot. There are also these libraries right and the libraries might do something like control of server or a motor, and it’s the code can be hidden from you and simplified.
You have to worry about it, but if you are a programmer and you want to learn about it, you can open up the library look at it, modify it write your own whatever, so it kind of hides some of the keys scary stuff. If you don’t want to see it, but it doesn’t keep you from it. If you want to dive right in that’s the actual, my whole presentation do we have time for questions check of time hang on. I think we have time for questions yeah.
Oh boy, um. He asked how much money like a new, no cost. I don’t actually know, I think it’s like 30 40 bucks, but I’m not sure they’re selling them over at the maker shed. That can tell you for sure.
I’M sorry, I don’t know anyone else. Yes, oh that’s a great question. The next presentation is going to be on the Raspberry Pi, so you’ll hear all about it in just a second anybody else. All right. Thank you all very much. .