Developing the Industrial Internet of Things

Course 2

Product Teardown

Arduino UNO

by

Haitam Aouad Idrissi

November 7, 2020
Introduction and Problem Solved by the Device

Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino
boards are able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message - and turn it
into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. You can tell your
board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the
Arduino programming language (based on Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on
Processing.
Over the years Arduino has been the brain of thousands of projects, from everyday objects to complex
scientific instruments. A worldwide community of makers - students, hobbyists, artists, programmers, and
professionals - has gathered around this open-source platform, their contributions have added up to an
incredible amount of accessible knowledge that can be of great help to novices and experts alike.
Arduino was born at the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute as an easy tool for fast prototyping, aimed at
students without a background in electronics and programming. As soon as it reached a wider community,
the Arduino board started changing to adapt to new needs and challenges, differentiating its offer from
simple 8-bit boards to products for IoT applications, wearable, 3D printing, and embedded environments.
All Arduino boards are completely open-source, empowering users to build them independently and
eventually adapt them to their particular needs. The software, too, is open-source, and it is growing
through the contributions of users worldwide.

Device Market and Application Area

Arduino Based Home Automation System

The project is designed by using Arduino uno board for the development of home automation system with
Bluetooth which is remotely controlled and operated by an Android OS smart phone. Houses are becoming
smarter and well developed by using such kind of advanced technologies. Modern houses are gradually
increasing the way of design by shifting to centralized control system with remote controlled
switches instead of conventional switches.

Arduino Based Home Automation

In order to achieve this, a Bluetooth module is interfaced to the Arduino Uno board at the receiver end
while on the transmitter end, a Graphical User Interface application on the cell phone sends ON/OFF
commands to the receiver where loads are connected. By touching the identified location on the Graphical
User Interface, lamps are used as loads in this project can be turned ON/OFF remotely by using this
technology. The loads are operated by using Arduino Uno board through thyristors using triacs and OPTO-
Isolators.

Arduino based Auto Intensity Control of Street Lights

As the intensity is cannot be controlled by using High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps power saving is not
possible in street lights with these lamps as the density on roads is decreasing from peak hours of nights to
early morning.

Arduino Based Auto Intensity Control

Thus, this system overcomes this problem by controlling the intensity of LED lights on street by gradually
reducing intensity by controlling the voltage applied to these lamps. This system uses arduino board
to produce PWM pulses and it is programmed in such a way that it decreases the voltage applied to these
lamps gradually till late nights and completely shutdowns at morning.

Thus, Arduino development board can sense the environment by receiving input from different sensors and
affects its surroundings by controlling motors, lights and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board
is programmed using the Arduino programming language. Thanks for your attention to this article and
clarify doubts about Arduino projects by commenting below.

Block Diagram

[1]

[2]
Technical Details

The Arduino Uno board is a microcontroller based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins
in which 6 can be used as PWM outputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, an ICSP header, a USB
connection, 6 analog inputs, a power jack and a reset button. This contains all the required support needed
for microcontroller. In order to get started, they are simply connected to a computer with a USB cable or
with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery. Arduino Uno Board varies from all other boards and they will not
use the FTDI USB-to-serial driver chip in them. It is featured by the Atmega16U2 (Atmega8U2 up to
version R2) programmed as a USB-to-serial converter.
It is an easy USB interface. This allows interface with USB as this is like a serial device.
The chip on the board plugs straight into your USB port and supports on your computer as a virtual serial
port. The benefit of this setup is that serial communication is an extremely easy protocol which is time-
tested and USB makes connection with modern computers and makes it comfortable.
It is easy-to-find the microcontroller brain which is the ATmega328 chip. It has more number of hardware
features like timers, external and internal interrupts, PWM pins and multiple sleep modes.
It is an open source design and there is an advantage of being open source is that it has a large community
of people using and troubleshooting it. This makes it easy to help in debugging projects.
It is a 16 MHz clock which is fast enough for most applications and does not speeds up the
microcontroller.
It is very convenient to manage power inside it and it had a feature of built-in voltage regulation. This can
also be powered directly off a USB port without any external power. You can connect an external power
source of upto 12v and this regulates it to both 5v and 3.3v.
13 digital pins and 6 analog pins. This sort of pins allows you to connect hardware to your Arduino Uno
board externally. These pins are used as a key for extending the computing capability of the Arduino Uno
into the real world. Simply plug your electronic devices and sensors into the sockets that correspond to
each of these pins and you are good to go.
This has an ICSP connector for bypassing the USB port and interfacing the Arduino directly as a serial
device. This port is necessary to re-bootload your chip if it corrupts and can no longer used to your
computer.
It has a 32 KB of flash memory for storing your code.
An on-board LED is attached to digital pin 13 to make fast the debugging of code and to make the debug
process easy.
Finally, it has a button to reset the program on the chip.

Microcontroller ATmega328
Operating Voltage 5V
Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12V
Input Voltage (limits) 6-20V
Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins 6
DC Current per I/O Pin 40 Ma
DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 Ma
Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega328) of which 0.5 KB used by bootloader
SRAM 2 KB (ATmega328)
EEPROM 1 KB (ATmega328)
Clock Speed 16 MHz

Security Concerns/Risks

This probably goes without saying, but avoid using power sources with significant "oomph", or have
some mechanism that limit the current/power that is hard to get around. Certainly less than 12V is good,
and preferably limit to 1A or less.
Along with 1, batteries are trouble (namely Lithium based batteries). They generally can provide a lot of
current when shorted, and in the case of Lithium-based batteries (Li-ion, Li-Po), can catch fire if abused.
Polarized capacitors are trouble (electrolytics/tantalum). When reverse biased, they don't behave like
capacitors, but usually like a short. With enough current, the capacitor will heat up. In the case of
electrolytics the electrolyte will evaporate, and the cap will burst. I believe tantalum ones will catch fire.
Note that there are bipolar (non-polar) electrolytic capacitors. These are perfectly fine to use.
Do encourage good circuit practices from the start. These include (but are not limited to):
a. Turning off/disconnecting all power sources before modifying a circuit
b. Keep circuits relatively well organized (you may want to provide layouts for the students to build).
This will not only reduce errors, but hopefully will make debugging easier, and decreases the likelihood
of anything dangerous happening.
c. Double checking (or triple checking) never hurts. You'd be surprised (or maybe not so surprised) how
often students ask why their circuit isn't working just to find an obvious problem because it was "too
simple" for them to check.
Concluding Comments

Arduino is a pretty safe device, and can be used in a large variety of domains, but is primarily used for
teaching and educational purposes for developing embedded systems, and provides a great hardware
support, with plug in modules and sensors, and with his powerful integrated Hardwar

[1] : https://cboard.cprogramming.com/attachments/c-
programming/11399d1327708338-small-engine-ecu-efi-moped-using-audrino-uno-
wiring-schematic-png
[2] : https://fos.cmb.ac.lk/esl/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/arduino_unoR3_drawing_1000x703.jpg