2. Arduino Tutorial for Beginners - Overview

           

Arduino Tutorial for Beginners - Overview

              Arduino is an opensource platform which based on plug and play hardware & software. It is having various types of programmable development boards (Microcontroler based boards) and easy to use programming software which is also known as Arduino IDE. Arduino IDE is a single software which is used to create arduino programs (also known as 'Sketch') and to upload the program inside the Arduino boards. Now, we are going to discuss few feature of Arduino board, the board features are as follows,

1. Arduino boards has the ability to read digital as well Analog data, which is coming from the variety of sensors. For the interfacing of output devices like LED's, Motors, LCDs etc, all arduino boards are having digital output GPIO's (General Purpose Input Output).
2. All arduino board are easy to program. There is not need of extra hardware needed to upload the programs or sketches.
3. If you talk about Arduino IDE. They have developed there own programming language to program there boards, which base on C/C++ based libraries but in a more user friendly manner. You can also program these boards directly with the help of Embedded C programming language.
4. Arduino IDE also gives you facility that you can develop or customize your own libraries in Embedded C/C++. and import these libraries inside IDE.
5. Arduino is platform independent. Arduino also support cross platform development, what i mean is you can develop your project on any OS platform weather it's Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. It is can support all 3 of them.
6. Arduino have also provide PCB files for the manufacturing of the boards. So, if you have your own PCB manufacturing firm them you can develop your own Arduino development board with your own brand name.

Variety of Boards :

          Variety of boards are available in Arduino community. But the good new is you can program all these with one single IDE and programming language. Is'nt it great and also sounds magical, that you have two different boards but same program will work on both of them. But then you what is the difference between all there boards. How will categories them? and the answers is core of the arduino borad, which is microcontroller. All the boards having different number of input and output pins. These pins are depends on which microcontroller you are using. Most of the microcontroller which is used in these boards are AVR series of microcontrollers. Also we have different power options are also available. arduino boards mainly comes within a range of 5 Volts to 3.3 Volts of power supply.    You can check out below mention list to arduino boards for selection purpose,

Arduino Boards With Atmega328 Microcontroller : 

Board Name	Operating Voltage	Clock Speed	Digital I/O	Analog Inputs	PWM	UART	Programming Interface
Arduino Uno R3	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	USB via Atmega16u2
Arduino Uno R3(SMD)	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	USB via Atmega16u2
Red Board	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	USB via FTDI
Arduino Pro 3.3V/8Mhz	3.3V	8MHz	14	6	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Pro 5V/16Mhz	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Mini 05	5V	16MHz	14	8	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V/8Mhz	3.3V	8MHz	14	8	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Pro Mini 5V/16Mhz	5V	16MHz	14	8	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Ethernet	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	FTDI
Arduino Fio	3.3V	8MHz	14	8	6	1	FTDI
Arduino LilyPad 328 Main Board	3.3V	8MHz	14	6	6	1	FTDI
Arduino LilyPad 328 Simple Board	3.3V	8MHz	9	4	5	0	FTDI

Arduino Boards With Atmega32u4 Microcontroller : 

Board Name	Operating Voltage	Clock Speed	Digital I/O	Analog Inputs	PWM	UART	Programming Interface
Arduino Leonardo	5V	16MHz	20	12	7	1	Native USB
Arduino Pro Micro 5V/16Mhz	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	Native USB
Arduino Pro Micro 3.3V/8Mhz	5V	16MHz	14	6	6	1	Native USB
Arduino LilyPad USB	3.3V	8MHz	14	6	6	1	Native USB

Arduino Boards With Atmega2560 Microcontroller : 

Board Name	Operating Voltage	Clock Speed	Digital I/O	Analog Inputs	PWM	UART	Programming Interface
Arduino MEGA 2560 R3	5V	16MHz	54	16	14	4	USB via Atmega16u2
MEGA Pro 3.3V	3.3V	8MHz	54	16	14	4	FTDI
MEGA Pro 5V	5V	16MHz	54	16	14	4	FTDI
MEGA Pro Mini 3.3V	3.3V	8MHz	54	16	14	4	FTDI

Arduino Boards With AT91SAM3X8E Microcontroller : 

Board Name	Operating Voltage	Clock Speed	Digital I/O	Analog Inputs	PWM	UART	Programming Interface
Arduino Due	3.3V	84MHz	54	12	12	4	USB Native