Arduino

WHAT IS ARDUINO?

“Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software” as described from the Arduino Website.

Up until now, I still have no idea what it is all about even though I wastched it grom in the early 2000’s. I think its original intention is to get students to learn about programming as affordable as possible. You can download a lot of programs (called sketches) and their libraries online to study and modify them as well. In a very short time, you will be able to use the Arduino as a data logger, a device for playing pre-recorded sounds, graphical interface and more. However, I am still not familiar with them and so, the following are from my outdated opinions.

THE WHOLE BOARD

You will need to use the whole board in your projects. This could be a problem if your model kit (and its base) does not have the necessary space for it. You CAN make the whole Arduino run off in a single Atmel chip but you will need to invest in more resources and not just a USB cable. Anyway, here is how bootloading is done from the Arduino Website.

This is the Arduino UNO I had I downloaded the sketch to try out the LCD Graphics touchscreen.
After that, I kept it in a KIV Box for so I can take a closer look. That was many, many years ago…
The heart of this Arduino UNO is the Atmel’s ATMega328 chip. The rest of the components are its support for I/O.
In theory, I can find a normal Atmel chip, install a bootloader and so on. That is, as soon as I know how.
This is the Digispark Blue Black ATTiny85 which I got from a Chinese market around 2019. It’s very small yet, it has 6 I/O pins, and from there, you can have 3 PWMs or 4 ADCs, But after the 6K bootloader, your working memory is limited to 2K. Lastly, it has I2C and SPI support too. All in one USB shaped flash drive. Makes me really want to start going to Arduino too.

IT IS NOT FREE

This is something new to me but from the following article by Ms. Elecia White, it was an eye opener especially if your intention is commercial. It is great for learning, prototyping and all, but not so as a final product.

<-MPLab IDE
Tools of the Trade
PISCEAN WORKS