UNIT II

ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER FOR EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 14

Arduino embedded platform
• Arduino is an open-source electronics platform that consists of both
hardware and software components:
✓ The Arduino hardware consists of a microcontroller board with various input and
output pins, which can be used to connect sensors, actuators, and other electronic
components. These boards come in different variations, offering different
capabilities.
✓ The Arduino software, also known as the Integrated Development Environment
(IDE), is a user-friendly interface that allows you to write, compile, and upload code
to the Arduino board. The programming language used is a simplified version of
C/C++, making it accessible for beginners.
• Because Arduino is an open-source electronics platform,
o the plans for the circuits are available online for free to anyone who wants to use
and create their own board based on the schematics, and
o whose software codes are freely available for anyone to view, use, and modify from
its original design.

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 15

Arduino embedded platform (contd.)
• It was created to make it easy for people, especially those without a
background in electronics or programming, to create interactive
projects and prototypes.
• Arduino is different from other platforms in the market because of
the following features:
✓ It is a multiplatform environment; it can run on Windows, Macintosh
(MacOS), and Linux.
✓ It is based on a processing programming IDE, which is an easy-to-use
development environment used by artists and designers.
✓ People can program it via a USB cable, not a serial port. This feature is useful,
because many modern computers do not have serial ports.
Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 16
Arduino embedded platform (contd.)
✓ The hardware is cheap.
✓ There is an active community of users, so there are many people who can
assist you.
✓ The Arduino project can be developed in an educational environment, and is
therefore, great for newcomers to get things working quickly.

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 17

Arduino architecture

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 18

Arduino architecture (contd.)
• The heart of an Arduino board is microcontroller, typically 8-bit or 32-bit
microcontroller. Arduino boards commonly use ATmega8, ATmega168,
ATmega328, ATmega1280, or ATmega2560 microcontrollers.
• Arduino microcontrollers often use a Harvard architecture, where the
program code and data have separate memory spaces.
• Arduino has three different types of memory.
✓ Flash memory : Non-volatile memory used for storing application and program code.
✓ SRAM: Volatile memory used for temporary data storage during program execution.
✓ EEPROM: Non-volatile memory used for storing data that needs to be retained even
when the board is powered off.

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 19

Arduino architecture (contd.)
• Basic working of CPU:
✓ The data is uploaded in serial via the port from the computer’s Arduino IDE. Then
the instructions are sent to instruction register and it decodes the instructions on the
same clock pulse.
✓ On the next clock pulse the next set of instructions are loaded in instruction register.
• Status and control is used to control the flow of execution of commands by
checking other blocks inside the CPU at regular intervals.
• In general purpose registers, the registers are of 8-bit. Also there are three
16-bit registers.
✓ 8-bit registers are used to store data for normal calculations and results.
✓ 16-bit registers are used to store data for timer/counter.

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 20

Arduino architecture (contd.)
• ALU ( Arithmetic and Logical Unit) operates in direct connection with all the
32 general purpose working registers. The ALU operations are divided into
3 main categories: arithmetic, logical and bit-function.
• I/O pins on the Arduino allow users to connect sensors, actuators and
other modules.
• SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) is a synchronous serial data protocol used
by microcontrollers for communicating with one or more peripherals
devices quickly over short distances. It can also be used for communication
between two microcontrollers.
• The Arduino microcontroller has a Watchdog Timer that helps the system
recover from scenarios when the system hangs or freezes due to errors in
the code or due to conditions that may arise due to hardware issues.
Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 21
Arduino architecture (contd.)
• Arduino analog comparator is used to compare the input voltages at
the positive pin and the negative pin. The output of the comparator is
set when the voltage reading at the positive pin is higher than the
voltage reading at the negative pin. This output can then be used to
trigger an interrupt.
• Interrupt unit checks whether there is an interrupt for the execution.
When a certain signal is detected, an Interrupt interrupts whatever
the processor is doing, and executes some code designed to react to
whatever external stimulus is being fed to the Arduino.

Swarnalatha G.L, Assistant Professor, CSE dept, SSIT 22