Crazy about Arduino: Your End-to-End Workshop - Level 1

Welcome !

"Crazy about Arduino: Your End-to-End Workshop " is a new training program aiming to boost the innovation around the emerging opportunities coming with the wave of Internet Of Things, while using the Arduino development platform. 

The training program is divided to several courseslevels, where each course is aiming to teach group of subjects  related to Arduino in a fun and easy way. It is recommended to follow the program in the suggest sequence.

This course is Level 1 in the "Crazy about Arduino" program.

Arduino is an amazing easy to use development platform that bridge the physical world with the digital world. 

In this chapter we will learn WHAT is Arduino and WHAT we can do with it ?

What kind of applications we can build with Arduino ? well, there are really endless applications we can build with Arduino.

Believe it or not, it is really limited by our imagination.... creative people around the world are creating innovative projects with Arduino. 

We will need some specific free software tools and of course some small amount of hardware components.

Before starting we need some specific software tools and some small amount of hardware components.

So what do you say, are you ready to start ?!

In this section we will start to explore the Arduino features, functionalities and building blocks.

Reviewing the Arduino Uno R3 board:

• Microcontroller
• Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector
• External power
• Reset button
• Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs), labeled L, RX, TX, and ON
• Power connections 
• Analog input
• Digital input and output 

There are many types of Arduino boards available in the market, each with its own design, size and features that can be used to support different applications. 

Each Arduino board has set of functionalities and based on some project’s requirements more options may be needed. In that case two main expansion options are available: Shields or Modules.

The developing platform for Arduino is called Arduino IDE and it is including: code editor, simple mechanism to verify and load programs, monitor the serial port, manage libraries and more. The software we create is called “Sketch” and the language syntax is similar to C & C++.

Video demonstration of the Arduino Uno board, including an high level overview. 

In the previous two chapters we saw the Arduino IDE software tool and the Arduino Uno board. Now it is time to combine between them, meaning write some simple sketch, upload it to the board and see some result !

Writing an Ardunio software requires a little bit background in programming, if you already have it than it is going to be like piece of cake for you... and if you don’t.....don’t worry we will do it in step by step. 

"Sketching in code" is all about trying things, letting our creative mind to flow, put less focus in that stage on making our code a perfect piece of art....  and more important build a step-by-step framework around your project.

"Big things have small beginnings"....

Every sketch we will write or use is usually based on the following basic structure: variables declaration, setup function, loop function and custom functions. 

In almost all programs, we will probably need to store values, do some calculation, try to access specific pins numbers in Arduino and more. For that we can declare storage location that are called variables.

While declaring a variable, we need to define the variable data type. The Arduino programming language support different very useful data types such as: Boolean, Byte, Char, Integer and more. 

Some of the names that we may chose may not be the most readable names...., which is why many programmers have adopted certain naming guidelines or conventions. 

The location of a variable declaration in a sketch actually determines where that variable can be used, or what is known as the variable scope. We have two types of variable scope: global variable and local variable. 

setup() is the first function the Arduino program reads, and it runs only once. The second function, loop(), makes it possible for our sketch to run continuously, and it will begins just after the last statement in the setup() function has finished executing.

In programming it is common practice is to divide big tasks to smaller tasks using functions. A function is a block of code that performs a specific task  that is repeating in program. Now instead of writing the same code all over again we can just call the function name... isn't that great ;-) ?

An operator is a symbol that tells the compiler to perform specific mathematical or logical functions:

• Arithmetic Operators
• Relational Operators
• Logical Operators
• Bitwise Operators
• Assignment Operators
• Misc Operators

Control statements enable us to specify the flow of our program. Using them we can make decisions in specific locations, or to perform tasks repeatedly or to jump from one section of code to another one. 

There are two kinds of statements available in Arduino for controlling program flow: 

• Conditional statements
• Iterative statements 

if-else statement decides whether to execute another statement or decides which of two statements to execute.

If (You are Crazy about Arduino == TRUE) {

 keepLearning(nextChapter);

}

The switch statement is more complicated version of the if statement as it can execute one or more blocks of code, depending on a range of conditions.

For loop is an iterative statement that allows to repeatedly execute lines of code in a loop a specified number of times.

The while statement or while loop, is used to continuously execute a statement so long as specific condition remains true.

One of the greatest thing in Arduino development environment is that it provide us an easy access to a very large amount of off-the-shelf ready to use functions that are grouped to libraries. 

Why to re-invent the wheel ? we better invest in developing the next generation autonomous car.....

Comments are used to document what’s going on in a program for anyone reading the code and should be used any time we wish to explain what a program or a specific function is supposed to do.

Learning by doing is probably the best way to really understand something while enjoying the process and the outcome of the final project. 

In the next sections we are going to build our first Arduino project. The project is divided to several steps enabling us to learn each main subject by itself.  

It will be great! if you will build it also in parallel to the course. 

In order to build a circuit, we have to connect circuit components together and a great tool for this purpose is the solderless breadboard. A breadboard is a simple prototyping plastic base board that easily allows us to wire up simple circuits without having to solder together parts to a custom printed circuit board. 

Short introduction to what we are planning to build in Step one.

"Think before you do something" :-)

Before running into building the hardware and writing our software, let's review the main building blocks that are needed in this specific step. 

LEDs are one of the most-used components in many projects and as you probably know, LED stands for light-emitting diode. Like all diodes components, LEDs allow current to flow in only one direction.

LEDs are polarized components, meaning we need to carefully connect them in the right direction!

Reading digital inputs will help us to interact our Arduino with the external environment in real-time. In our case we are going to use very simple digital sensors that are called push buttons.

To read the status of a button, we first need to define a specific digital I/O pin as an input and use digitalRead(pin) function, where pin is the digital pin number to read. 

One thing that is important to add to this circuit is something that is called pull up or pull down resistors. 

The main usage of pull down resistor is to set the default state of the input pin to 0v. 10kΩ is a fairly common pull down resistor value.

Let's review the circuit design for this step using the Fritzing tool. Don't forget that you can download the files templates from the relevant chapter.

Let's review the hardware setup relevant to this step and the behavior of the system. 

The Sketch is the software code that we uploaded into the Arduino board. Let's understand the logic and program flow we used in this step.  

Don't forget that you can download the sketch files from this chapter !

When working with buttons, we cannot just look for the value of the switch to changed from low to high as we need to handle a problem that is called switch bouncing.

Buttons are mechanical devices that operate much more slower than our Arduino system. In other words, when we push a button down, the signal we will read does not just go from low to high, it bounces up and down between those two states for a few milliseconds before it settles.  

The Sketch is the software code that we uploaded into the Arduino board. Let's understand the logic and program flow we used in this step.  

Don't forget that you can download the sketch files from this chapter !

Let's review the hardware setup relevant to this step and the behavior of the system. 

Short introduction to what we are planning to build in Step two.

"Think before you do something" :-)

Before running into building the hardware and writing our software, let's review the main building blocks that are needed in this specific step.

In addition to fixed resistors there are also variable resistors or resistors that their resistance can be adjusted by physical rotation. One common type of variable resistor is the potentiometer. The potentiometer has three pin connections: one in the center pin and one on each side. When someone is turning the shaft of a variable resistor, it increases the resistance between one side and the center and decreases the resistance between the center and the opposite side.

Let's review the circuit design for this step using the Fritzing tool. Don't forget that you can download the files templates from the relevant chapter.

Reading analog inputs will help us to better interact our Arduino with the external environment around us, As many sensors are providing analog output when measuring some property, like distance, temperature, speed, light brightness and much more.  

Serial communication is used by two digital devices to talk to each other and in our case the USB connection is the serial communication protocol. We already used it to upload our source code to the Arduino board. 

Now, we can use the Serial Monitor included in the Arduino programming environment to actually “see” the values that the Arduino is reading from such external sensors.

While using the build-in delay function, “speed” will be measured in milliseconds and the relation is opposite, more delay is less speed. In that case some range normalization or mapping will be needed. 

The Sketch is the software code that we uploaded into the Arduino board. Let's understand the logic and program flow we used in this step.  

Don't forget that you can download the sketch files from this chapter !

Let's review the hardware setup relevant to this step and the behavior of the system. 

For setting the LED brightness level we need to output a voltage between 0v and 5v.  We can’t do it directly in Arduino but the good news is that we can “get very close”.... 

PWM (pulse-width modulation) can be used to create the illusion of an LED being ON at different levels of brightness by turning the LED ON and OFF very rapidly, at around 500 cycles per second. 

Before using the AnalogWrite() function we need to do some value mapping.

The Sketch is the software code that we uploaded into the Arduino board. Let's understand the logic and program flow we used in this step.  

Don't forget that you can download the sketch files from this chapter !

Let's review the hardware setup relevant to this step and the behavior of the system. 

Short introduction to what we are planning to build in Step three.

"Think before you do something" :-)

Before running into building the hardware and writing our software, let's review the main building blocks that are needed in this specific step.

In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time and its reference point. A PIR sensor is a converter that measure a physical quantity (infrared radiation )and convert it into signal (ON/OFF).

Let's review the circuit design for this step using the Fritzing tool. Don't forget that you can download the files templates from the relevant chapter.

The Sketch is the software code that we uploaded into the Arduino board. Let's understand the logic and program flow we used in this step.  

Don't forget that you can download the sketch files from this chapter !

Let's review the hardware setup relevant to this step and the behavior of the system.