Intro to Arduino

Zero to Prototyping
in a Flash!

Material designed by Linz Craig, Nick Poole, Prashanta Aryal,

Theo Simpson, Tai Johnson, and Eli Santistevan
 Overview of Class

Getting Started:
Installation, Applications and Materials
Electrical:
Components, Ohm's Law, Input and Output, Analog and Digital
-----------------------------
Programming:
Split into groups depending on experience
Serial Communication Basics:
Troubleshooting and Debugging
Virtual Prototyping:
Schematics and PCB Layout in Fritzing

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 Arduino Board
“Strong Friend” Created in Ivrea, Italy
in 2005 by Massimo Banzi & David Cuartielles
Open Source Hardware
Processor
Coding is accessible & transferrable  (C++, Processing, java)

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 Arduino…

is the go-to gear for artists, hobbyists,

students, and anyone with a gadgetry
dream.

rose out of another formidable challenge:

how to teach students to create
electronics, fast.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/the-making-of-arduino
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 Getting Started

• SW Installation: Arduino (v.1.0+)

Fritzing
SIK Guide Code
Drivers (FTDI)

• Materials: SIK Guide

Analog I/O, Digital I/O, Serial,
& Fritzing handouts
Arduino CheatSheet

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 PWR IN USB
(to Computer)

RESET

SCL\SDA
(I2C Bus)

POWER
5V / 3.3V / GND
Digital I\O
PWM(3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11)

Analog
INPUTS

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 PWR IN USB
(to Computer)

RESET

SCL\SDA
(I2C Bus)

POWER
5V / 3.3V / GND
Digital I\O
PWM(3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11)

Analog
INPUTS

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Go ahead and plug your board in!

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 Arduino Shields

PCB Built Shield Inserted Shield

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 Arduino Shields

Micro SD MP3 Trigger LCD

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 SIK Components
Name Image Type Function Notes
Push Button Digital Input Switch - Closes Polarized, needs
or opens circuit resistor
Trim Analog Input Variable resistor Also called a
Trimpot.
potentiometer
Photoresistor Analog Input Light Dependent Resistance varies
Resistor (LDR) with light.
Relay Digital Output Switch driven by Used to control
a small signal larger voltages
Temp Sensor Analog Input Temp Dependent
Resistor
Flex Sensor Analog Input Variable resistor

Soft Trimpot Analog Input Variable resistor Careful of shorts

RGB LED Dig & Analog 16,777,216 Ooh... So pretty.

Output different colors

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 SIK Components

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 SIK Components

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 SIK Components

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 Electricity \ Electronics Basic Concept
Review

• Ohms Law
• Voltage
• Current
• Resistance
• Using a Multi-meter

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 Ohm’s Law

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 Electrical Properties

Voltage Current Resistance

V I R
• Defined as • The rate of
the amount charge flow
of potential in a circuit.
energy in a • Units: Amperes
circuit. (A)
• Units: Volts (V)

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 Current Flow Analogy

High Current Low Current

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 Voltage Analogy

Water
Tower
Water
Tower

V
V

More Energy == Higher Voltage Less Energy == Lower Voltage

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 Resistance Analogy

Water Water
Tower Tower

Big Pipe == Lower Resistance Small Pipe == Higher Resistance

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 Continuity – Is it a Circuit?

The word “circuit” is derived from the circle. An

Electrical Circuit must have a continuous LOOP from
Power (Vcc) to Ground (GND).

Continuity is important to make portions of circuits are

connect. Continuity is the simplest and possibly the
most important setting on your multi-meter.
Sometimes we call this “ringing out” a circuit.

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 Measuring Electricity – Voltage

Voltage is a measure of potential electrical

energy. A voltage is also called a potential
difference – it is measured between two
points in a circuit – across a device.

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 Measuring Electricity -- Current

Current is the measure of the rate of charge flow. For

Electrical Engineers – we consider this to be the
movement of electrons.
In order to measure this – you must break the circuit or
insert the meter in-line (series).

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 Measuring Electricity -- Resistance

Resistance is the measure of how much opposition to

current flow is in a circuit.
Components should be removed entirely from the circuit
to measure resistance. Note the settings on the multi-
meter. Make sure that you are set for the appropriate
range.
Resistance
settings

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 Prototyping Circuits
Solderless Breadboard
One of the most useful tools in an engineer or
Maker’s toolkit. The three most important
things:
• A breadboard is easier than soldering
• A lot of those little holes are connected, which ones?
• Sometimes breadboards break

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 What’s a Breadboard?

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 Solderless Breadboard

Each row (horiz.) of 5

holes are connected.

Vertical columns –
called power bus are
connected vertically

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Using the Breadboard to built a simple
circuit

Use the breadboard to

wire up a single LED
with a 330 Ohm
Resistor (Orange-
Orange-Brown).

Note: the longer leg on the

LED is the positive leg and
the shorter leg is the
negative

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Fritzing View of Breadboard Circuit

What happens
when you break
the circuit?
What if you
wanted to add
more than one
LED?

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Adding control – let’s use the Arduino
and start programming!!!

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 Concepts: INPUT vs. OUTPUT

Referenced from the perspective of the microcontroller (electrical board).

Inputs is a signal / information Output is any signal exiting the

going into the board. board.

Almost all systems that use physical computing will have

some form of output

What are some examples of Outputs?

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 Concepts: INPUT vs. OUTPUT

Referenced from the perspective of the microcontroller (electrical board).

Inputs is a signal / information Output is any signal exiting the

going into the board. board.

Examples: Buttons Switches, Examples: LEDs, DC motor,

Light Sensors, Flex Sensors, servo motor, a piezo buzzer,
Humidity Sensors, Temperature relay, an RGB LED
Sensors…

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 Concepts: Analog vs. Digital
Microcontrollers are digital devices – ON or OFF.
Also called – discrete.

analog signals are anything that can be a full

range of values. What are some examples? More
on this later…

5V 5V

0V 0V

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 Open up Arduino

Hints:
For PC Users  For Mac Users 
1.Let the installer copy 1. Move the Arduino
and move the files to the executable to the dock
appropriate locations, or for ease of access.
2.Create a folder under 2. Resist the temptation
C:\Program Files (x86) to run these from your
called Arduino. Move the desktop.
entire Arduino program
folder here.

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 Arduino
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Two required functions /

methods / routines:

void setup()
{
// runs once
}

void loop()
{
// repeats
error & status messages }
Settings: Tools  Serial Port

Your computer
communicates to the Arduino
microcontroller via a serial
port  through a USB-Serial
adapter.

Check to make sure that the

drivers are properly installed.

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 Settings: Tools  Board

Next, double-check that the proper board is selected under the

ToolsBoard menu.

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 Arduino & Arduino Compatible Boards

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 digitalWrite()
BIG 6 CONCEPTS
analogWrite()

digitalRead()

if() statements / Boolean

analogRead()

Serial communication

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 Let’s get to coding…

Project #1 – Blink
“Hello World” of Physical Computing

Psuedo-code – how should this work?

Turn
Turn Rinse &
Wait LED Wait
LED ON Repeat
OFF

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 Comments, Comments, Comments

Comments are for you – the programmer and your

friends…or anyone else human that might read your
code.

// this is for single line comments

// it’s good to put a description at the
top and before anything ‘tricky’
/* this is for multi-line comments
Like this…
And this….
*/
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 comments

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 Three commands to know…

pinMode(pin, INPUT/OUTPUT);
ex: pinMode(13, OUTPUT);

digitalWrite(pin, HIGH/LOW);
ex: digitalWrite(13, HIGH);

delay(time_ms);
ex: delay(2500); // delay of 2.5 sec.

// NOTE: -> commands are CASE-sensitive

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 Project #1: Wiring Diagram

Move the green

wire from the
power bus to pin
13 (or any other
Digital I/O pin on
the Arduino board.

Image created in Fritzing

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 A few simple challenges
Let’s make LED#13 blink!

Challenge 1a – blink with a 200 ms second

interval.

Challenge 1b – blink to mimic a heartbeat

Challenge 1c – find the fastest blink that the

human eye can still detect…
1 ms delay? 2 ms delay? 3 ms delay???

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 Try adding other LEDs

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Programming Concepts: Variables

Variable Scope

Global
---
Function-level

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Programming Concepts: Variable Types

Variable Types:

8 bits 16 bits 32 bits

byte int long

char unsigned int unsigned long
float

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 Fading in and Fading Out
(Analog or Digital?)

A few pins on the Arduino allow for us to

modify the output to mimic an analog
signal.

This is done by a technique called:

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)

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 Concepts: Analog vs. Digital

To create an analog signal, the microcontroller

uses a technique called PWM. By varying the duty
cycle, we can mimic an “average” analog voltage.

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)

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 Project #2 – Fading
Introducing a new command…

analogWrite(pin, val);

pin – refers to the OUTPUT pin

(limited to pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11.)
– denoted by a ~ symbol

val – 8 bit value (0 – 255).

0 => 0V | 255 => 5V

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Move one of your LED pins over to Pin 9

In Arduino, open up:

File  Examples  01.Basics  Fade

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 Fade - Code Review

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 Fade - Code Review

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 Project# 2 -- Fading

Challenge 2a – Change the rate of the

fading in and out. There are at least two
different ways to do this – can you figure
them out?

Challenge 2b – Use 2 (or more) LEDs – so

that one fades in as the other one fades
out.

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R G B
Color Mixing
Tri-color LED

In the SIK, this is a standard –

Common Cathode LED

This means the negative side of

the LED is all tied to Ground.

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 Project 3 – RGB LED

Note: The longest

leg of the RGB
LED is the
Common
Cathode. This
goes to GND.

Use pins 5, 6, & 9

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How many unique colors can you create?

Use Colorpicker.com or
experiment on your
own.
Pick out a few colors that
you want to try re-
creating for a lamp or
lighting display...
Play around with this with
the analogWrite()
command.
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 RGB LED Color Mixing

int redPin = 5;
int greenPin = 6;
int bluePin = 9;

void setup()
{
pinMode(redPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(greenPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(bluePin, OUTPUT);
}

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 RGB LED Color Mixing

void loop()
{
analogWrite(redPin, 255);
analogWrite (greenPin, 255);
analogWrite (bluePin, 255);
}

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Project: Mood Lamp / Light Sculpture

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Napkin
Schematics

Emphasize the
engineering design
process with
students. We like to
skirt the line
between formal and
informal with a tool
called Napkin
Schematics.

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Napkin
Schematics

Emphasize the
engineering design
process with
students. We like to
skirt the line
between formal and
informal with a tool
called Napkin
Schematics.

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 Driving Motors or other High Current
Loads

NPN Transistor (Common Emitter “Amplifier” Circuit)

to Digital
Pin 9

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 Input

Input is any signal entering an electrical system.

• Both digital and analog sensors are forms of input
• Input can also take many other forms: Keyboards, a
mouse, infrared sensors, biometric sensors, or just
plain voltage from a circuit

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 Project #4 – Digital Input

In Arduino, open up:

File  Examples  02.Digital  Button

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Digital Sensors (a.k.a. Switches)
Pull-up Resistor (circuit)

to Digital Pin 2

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 Digital Sensors (a.k.a. Switches)
Add an indicator LED to Pin 13
This is just like our
1st circuit!

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 Digital Input

• Connect digital input to your Arduino using Pins # 0 – 13

(Although pins # 0 & 1 are also used for programming)

• Digital Input needs a pinMode command:

pinMode (pinNumber, INPUT);
Make sure to use ALL CAPS for INPUT

• To get a digital reading:

int buttonState = digitalRead (pinNumber);

• Digital Input values are only HIGH (On) or LOW (Off)

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 Digital Sensors

• Digital sensors are more straight forward than Analog

• No matter what the sensor there are only two

settings: On and Off

• Signal is always either HIGH (On) or LOW (Off)

• Voltage signal for HIGH will be a little less than 5V on

your Uno

• Voltage signal for LOW will be 0V on most systems

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http://opensourcehardwarejunkies.com/tutorial-03-digitalread-and-
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Programming: Conditional Statements
if()

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 Programming: Conditional Statements
if()

void loop()
{
int buttonState = digitalRead(5);
if(buttonState == LOW)
{ // do something DIG
INPUT
}
else
{ // do something else
}
}
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 Boolean Operators

<Boolean> Description
( ) == ( ) is equal?
( ) != ( ) is not equal?
( ) > ( ) greater than
( ) >= ( ) greater than or equal
( ) < ( ) less than
( ) <= ( ) less than or equal

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 Trimpot (Potentiometer)
Variable Resistor

fixed
end

wiper

fixed
end

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 Analog Sensors
3 Pin Potentiometer = var. resistor (circuit)
a.k.a. Voltage Divider Circuit

wiper

fixed
ends 1.0 V 1.0 V

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 Ohms Law… (just the basics)
Actually, this is the “voltage divider”

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 analogRead()

Arduino uses a 10-bit A/D Converter:

• this means that you get input values from
0 to 1023
• 0V0
• 5 V  1023
Ex:
int sensorValue = analogRead(A0);

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 Using Serial Communication

Method used to transfer data between two devices.

Data passes between the computer and Arduino

through the USB cable. Data is transmitted as zeros
(‘0’) and ones (‘1’) sequentially.

Arduino dedicates Digital I/O pin # 0 to

receiving and Digital I/O pin #1 to transmit.

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Serial Monitor & analogRead()

Initializes the Serial

Communication

9600 baud data rate

prints data to serial bus
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Serial Monitor & analogRead()

Opens up a
Serial Terminal
Window

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 Analog Sensors
2 Pin Analog Sensors = var. resistor

Take two sensors -- Use

the Serial Monitor and find
the range of input values
you get for each sensor.

MaxAnalogRead = _________

MinAnalogRead = _________

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 Analog Sensors

Examples:
Sensors Variables
Mic soundVolume
Photoresistor lightLevel
Potentiometer dialPosition
Temp Sensor temperature
Flex Sensor bend
Accelerometer tilt/acceleration

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 Additional Serial Communication
Sending a Message

void loop ( )
{
Serial.print(“Hands on “) ;
Serial.print(“Learning ”) ;
Serial.println(“is Fun!!!”) ;

}
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
 Serial Communication:
Serial Debugging

void loop()
{
int xVar = 10;
Serial.print ( “Variable xVar is “ ) ;
Serial.println ( xVar ) ;
}

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 Serial Communication:
Serial Troubleshooting

void loop ( )
{
Serial.print (“Digital pin 9: “);
Serial.println (digitalRead(9));
}

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 Virtual Electrical Prototyping Project
started in 2007 by the Interaction Design Lab
at the University of Applied Science Potsdam, Germany

Open Source

Prototypes: Document, Share, Teach, Manufacture

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Now that you feel comfortable putting together
circuits with your breadboard let’s talk about how
to go from the breadboard to a PCB

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 Free Time

The rest of the class is dedicated to free pursuit

Experiment with the various circuits and lessons in

the SIK.

Explore the additional tutorials available on

learn.sparkfun.com

Thank you for attending our Intro to Arduino class

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 Questions?

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 www.sparkfun.com
6175 Longbow Drive, Suite 200
Boulder, Colorado 80301

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