Arduino

About Arduino

Arduino is giant open-source hardware and software

ecosystem. The Company offers variety of software and hardware
tools and platforms, arduino offers its own language for
developing and programming the board very conveniently only
through a USB.

Arduino is a popular tool choice among engineers and developer

for product development as well as one of the most successful
tools for STEM/STEAM education. Hundreds of thousands of
designers, engineers, students, developers and makers around
the world are using Arduino to innovate in music, games, toys,
smart homes, farming, autonomous vehicles, and more along
with thousands of DIY enthusiasts who find new use cases for the
board continuously.

Arduino was Originally started just as a research project by

Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino,
and David Mellis at the Interaction Design Institute of Ivrea in
Italy in the early 2000s, a language for learning how to code
within the context of the visual arts developed by Casey Reas and
Ben Fry as well as a thesis project by Hernando Barragan about
the Wiring board.

The first Arduino board was manufactured in 2005 to help design

engineering students who had no previous experience in
electronics or microcontroller programming to create working
prototypes connecting the physical world to the digital world.
Since then arduino continuously increased their market share to
the point it has become the most popular electronics prototyping
tool used by engineers and even giant corporations due to its low
cost.
Arduino is the first mainstream Open Source Hardware project
and was set up to build a community that could help share the
use of the tool and take advantage from the offerings from
hundreds of people who helped debug the code, build projects,
make tutorials, supports other users on the forums and build
thousands of groups around the world.

Since the start of Arduinos foundation, numerous new

development boards and software libraries have been presented,
expanding and increasing the variety of possibilities accessible to
the public community.

Currently, around a decade later, Arduino continues to deliver

open source hardware and software to bring creators ideas to life.

The plainness and ease of use of the project has directed

students, creators and engineers of micro controller based
electronics projects and was a motivation in the creation of the
DIY (Do It Yourself) Movement. Arduino has become the number
one go to option for electronics makers, mainly for developing
solutions for the IoT marketplace, which has been estimated to
reach a $6 trillion milestone market by the end of 2021.

Arduinos architecture

Arduinos have a number of different chips and interfaces

composed on a single circuit board. The organization has changed
over time, some models on the other hand contain other parts on
top. But on a plain board, these parts are usually come in one
integrated board:

▪ A number of pins, which are used to link with various

modules one might wish to incorporate with the Arduino.
These pins can be one of two variations:

● Digital pins, which can read and write an individual notion,

on or off. Most Arduinos have 14 digital I/O pins.
 ● Analog pins, which can read an array of values, and are
suitable for a more accurate control. Most Arduinos have six
of these analog pins.

These pins are organized in a precise arrangement, so that if you

buy an add-on board designed to fit into them, typically called a
“shield,” it should suit into most Arduino-compatible devices
effortlessly.

▪ A power connector, that delivers power to both the device

itself, and provides a low voltage that can power connected
components like LEDs and different sensors, provided their
power requirements are reasonably low. The power
connector can connect to either an AC adapter or even a
small battery.

▪ A microcontroller, the main chip, which enables the

developer to program the Arduino in order for it to be
capable to execute commands and make decisions based on
various inputs either from a command or a signal retrieved
from a sensor. The exact chip differs depending on what the
type of the Arduino, but they are mostly Atmel controllers,
usually a ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328, ATmega1280,
or ATmega2560. The dissimilarities between these chips are
subtle, but the major difference a beginner will notice is the
different amounts of onboard memory.

▪ A serial connector, which on most newer boards is

implemented through a standard USB port. This connector
allows you to communicate to the board from your
computer, as well as load new programs onto the device.
Often times Arduinos can also be powered through the USB
port, removing the need for a separate power connection.

▪ A variety of other small components, like an oscillator

and/or a voltage regulator, which provide important
capabilities to the board, although you typically don’t
interact with these directly; just know that they are there.