Arduino:
- Comprised of both hardware and software
- Used to make fairly straightforward commands and inputs for electronic devices
- Examples: Turning LED lights on or off, activating various sensors, making cars, drones, robotics, etc
Arduino Hardware:
- The major component is the Arduino board, also known as a microcontroller board, which processes the inputs and turn them into outputs
- There are various types of Arduino boards, the one you are playing with is called Arduino Uno
- Basically, the Arduino Uno reads in the commands you put in from your code, and send them to the desired equipments and devices
- The board has two types of pins, analog and digital:
- Analog pins can read any number of values, to measure this value, the board has an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), which converts analog voltage to a digital value between 0 and 1023. You read this with the function analogRead().
- Digital pins can only read and output either High (5V or 3.3V) or Low (0V) voltage, corresponding to binary inputs (1 or 0), you use digital pins in situations where the input or output have one of those values, such as turning a switch on or off.
- When trying to send a value to a pin instead of receiving the signal, use the function analogWrite(), which has range from 0 to 255. You will see this in your driving test code when trying to send a speed command to the car, with 255 corresponding to the maximum speed the car can go.
Arduino Software:
- The programming language for Arduino is Arduino IDE, which is a version of C++ with built-in functions
- The two essential functions in Arduino IDE are setup() and loop()
- setup() is the function that runs the commands only once, and the one you always put first
- loop() is the function that runs the commands repeatedly
- You can make additional functions, and put them inside these two functions
- The time scale, at least in the codes that we'll be using, is in microseconds (1000 corresponds to 1 seconds)
- Speed of the car is measured in analog values, so 0 to 255