Intro to Arduino, Electrical Engineering, & Coding: Lesson 0

01010111 01100101 01101100 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101

00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100
01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000
01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001001 01100100 01100101
01100001 00100000 01010011 01100011 01101000 01101111 01101111
01101100 00100001 00100000 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000
01100110 01101001 01100111 01110101 01110010 01100101 01100100
00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100
00100001

(Can you figure this out what this means?? Keep reading to the end to crack the code!)

Important tips to remember for coding:

1. You're learning a NEW LANGUAGE and a NEW WAY OF THINKING. If

you don’t get it right away… Congratulations, you’re normal! It took
me 3 years of coding to feel comfortable with coding. Give yourself
time!
2. Google, Google, Google! Google (and youtube!) has all the answers.
3. Capitalization and Spelling are important!
4. Errors, mistakes, bugs happen to everyone! Debugging is the main
part of coding. All coders make mistakes, the good ones don’t give
up!
Getting Started:
Download the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment - A place to write and run
your code, which will download to your computer like an application) from here. Make sure you
download the right application for your Operating System (Windows for window

What is an Arduino?

Its this.
Check out this video to learn more!

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.

What does a Microcontroller do?

● It has built in "I/O" (input/output) capabilities. So it can read and write digital and
analog values/states, and connect directly to the "real world". A microcontroller,
unlike a microprocessor can connect directly to switches, buttons, LCD displays,
LEDS, relays and serial ports.

● Microcontrollers are generally used for low to medium complexity, specific tasks
in equipment. This contrasts with the powerful, number crunching
microprocessors used in PCs which handle a variety of software applications.
 ● Microcontrollers are often used in portable devices which run on batteries, e.g.
digital cameras. So they are often low powered with a small current consumption
(unlike the heat sinked, fan cooled microprocessor in a desktop computer)

● The program in a microcontroller is usually stored in EPROM or EEPROM. This

is a type of non volatile (program doesn't disappear when the device is turned off)
memory which can be continuously wiped and rewritten.

What is a Breadboard?

Metal strips with a plastic covering on top with holes in it to keep wires in place and attached to
metal. There are two long strips on either side, with many numbered shorter strips in the center
of the board. The long strips are usually used for power and/or Ground (GND).
What is coding?

Coding is basically the computer language used to develop apps, websites, and
software. Without it, we’d have none of the most popular technology we’ve come to rely
on such as Facebook, our smartphones, the browser we choose to view our favorite
blogs, or even the blogs themselves. It all runs on code.

How does Coding Work?

To put it very simply, the code is what tells your computer what to do. To go a bit deeper,
computers don’t understand words. They only understand the concepts of on and off.
The capabilities of a computer are
guided by on and off switches, or
transistors. Binary code represents these
on and off transistors as the digits 1 and
0. An infinite number of combinations of
these codes make your computer work.
In order to make binary code
manageable, computer programming
languages were formed. These languages each serve different purposes, but they all
allow programmers to translate important commands into binary code.

Each computer application needs a properly written code to know what to do. Most
software has thousands to billions of lines of coded text and numbers. The code gives
computers a step-by-step guide on how to function. Computers speed through reading
the code to execute every online and offline task. In today’s digital world, everything
from mobile phones to smart TVs and cars run using coded software. For example, the
code might tell the computer to input an image and make it spin. Creating flawless code
is essential to avoid 404 error pop-ups and software crashes. Debugging code is always
the final step to reveal and fix coding issues.

What is a Coding Language?

While all computers and hardware use coding language that eventually deals with on and off (or
1’s and 0’s), There are many different sets of commands or languages that you can use to
interact with software. There are many different types of coding languages (C, C++, Java,
Arduino, Python, Block Coding, etc.) which have their own unique flavors, but the main similarity
between all of them is that they relay instructions to the computer hardware and tell the
computer what to do.

How does Binary Code Work?

One of the original codes of computer language was the Ascii code. Each Letter of the alphabet,
each character, has a specific code. “A” for example, is 65, which in the binary counting system,
is 01000001.
The way you count binary is different from the way you're used to doing math, which is using the
base 10 (or decimal) system of addition.

To learn more and review about binary, see this crash course video.
Use this link to convert binary, all those 0’s and 1’s, into English.