The Arduino board is a small microcontroller board, which is a small circuit (the board) that contains a whole computer on a small chip (the microcontroller). The Arduino team has implemented the small trainer kit for student or beginner putting their first step in embedded systems. It’s a lot cheaper and very useful to build interesting devices. Every embedded development kit has its own microcontroller, similarly when you look at the Arduino board: you’ll see a black chip with 28 “legs”—that chip is the ATmega168, the heart of your board. They have placed on this board all the components that are required for this microcontroller to work properly and to communicate with your computer. There are many versions of this board; the one we’ll use throughout this book is the Arduino Duemilanove, which is the simplest one to use and the best one for learning on.
Arduino Duemilanove board
Here is an explanation of what every element of the board does:
14 Digital IO pins (pins 0–13):- These can be inputs or outputs, which is specified by the sketch you create in the IDE.
6 Analogue In pins (pins 0–5):- These dedicated analogue input pins take analogue values (i.e., voltage readings from a sensor) and convert them into a number between 0 and 1023.
6 Analogue Out pins (pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11):- These are actually six of the digital pins that can be reprogrammed for analogue output using the sketch you create in the IDE.
The board can be powered from your computer’s USB port, most USB chargers, or an AC adapter (9 volts recommended, 2.1mm barrel tip, center positive). If there is no power supply plugged into the power socket, the power will come from the USB board, but as soon as you plug a power supply, the board will automatically use it.
Hence, it is good for one who is starting their projects in embedded systems and finding trainer kit that can be learnt easily by self-study. A beginner can brush up his or her skills on these full functional microcontroller kit available in different ranges and provides flexible and easy-to-use of hardware and software that can build up interest of a learner in embedded systems.
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