Arduino For Beginners

What is Arduino?

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Microcontroller

Arduino is a microcontroller on a circuit board which makes it easy to receive inputs and drive outputs.
A microcontroller is a integrated computer on a chip.

Inputs

Some examples of inputs would be a temperature sensor, a motion sensor, a distance sensor, a switch and so forth.

Outputs

Some examples of outputs would be a light, a screen, a motor and so forth.

Programming Arduino
For the example I’m showing you’ll only need the Arduino UNO R3 board itself and the required USB cable to transfer the program from your computer to the board.

On the board left of the Arduino logo there’s an LED, short for Light Emitting Diode, a small light, with the letter L next to it.

We’re going to switch it on and off and then look in to making it blink on and off for 2 seconds at a time.

When you first plug your USB cable in to your Arduino and your computer, you may notice that this LED is blinking. Not to worry! It’s the default program stored on the chip. We’re going to override this.

The USB cable powers the device. Arduinos can run standalone by using a power supply in the bottom left of the board. Once you’re done programming and don’t require it to be constantly connected to your machine you can opt to power it separately. This is entirely dependant on the use case and circumstances you want to use the device in.

Download Arduino Software

You’ll need to download the Arduino Software package for your operating system from the Arduino download page.

The interface that your going to download looks like this :

This is where you type the code you want to compile and send to the Arduino board.

To get started with the programmation, you can see the exampls available on the software.