Arduino Essentials

Enter the world of Arduino and its peripherals and start creating interesting projects

About This Book

• Meet Arduino and its main components and understand how they work to use them in your real-world projects
• Assemble circuits using the most common electronic devices such as LEDs, switches, optocouplers, motors, and photocells and connect them to Arduino
• A Precise step-by-step guide to apply basic Arduino programming techniques in the C language

Who This Book Is For

If you are a hobbyist who wants to develop projects based on Arduino as the main microcontroller platform or an engineer interested in finding out what the Arduino platform offers, then this book is ideal for you. Some prior knowledge of the C programming language is required.

What You Will Learn

• Select the correct Arduino board to meet the prerequisites of your project
• Set up a working Arduino development environment and get to grips with all of its inner workings
• Work with digital and analog outputs to act on external devices
• Sense your environment in a digital or analog way by using different types of sensors such as potentiometers, photocells, or thermistors
• Develop time-based projects that will manage the time in a precise manner
• Make your project interact with other devices via serial communications
• Use interrupts to deal with unexpected events
• Get familiar with a complete real-world project that summarizes all the concepts learned throughout the book

In Detail

The Arduino is an open source microcontroller built on a single circuit board that is capable of receiving sensory input from its environment and controlling interactive physical objects. It is also a development environment that allows you to write software to the board, and is programmed in the Arduino programming language. The Arduino has become the most popular microcontroller platform and thus hundreds of projects are being developed using it, from basic to advanced levels.

This book will first introduce you to the most important board models of the Arduino family. You will then learn to set up the Arduino software environment. Next, you will work with digital and analog inputs and outputs, manage the time precisely, establish serial communications with other devices in your projects, and even control interrupts to make your project more responsive. Finally, you will be presented with a complete real-world example by utilizing all the concepts learned so far in the book. This will enable you to develop your own microcontroller projects.