9781119489542

Bring your ideas to life with the latest Arduino hardware and software

Arduino is an affordable and readily available hardware development platform based around an open source, programmable circuit board. You can combine this programmable chip with a variety of sensors and actuators to sense your environment around you and control lights, motors, and sound. This flexible and easy-to-use combination of hardware and software can be used to create interactive robots, product prototypes and electronic artwork, whether you’re an artist, designer or tinkerer.

Arduino For Dummies is a great place to start if you want to find out about Arduino and make the most of its incredible capabilities. It helps you become familiar with Arduino and what it involves, and offers inspiration for completing new and exciting projects.

• Covers the latest software and hardware currently on the market

• Includes updated examples and circuit board diagrams in addition to new resource chapters

• Offers simple examples to teach fundamentals needed to move onto more advanced topics

• Helps you grasp what’s possible with this fantastic little board

Whether you’re a teacher, student, programmer, hobbyist, hacker, engineer, designer, or scientist, get ready to learn the latest this new technology has to offer!

John Nussey is a designer, a technologist, and an entrepreneur who loves using technology in new and interesting ways. He has worked with Arduino for many years to prototype products and create interactive artwork. A proud Arduino advocate, he has taught the craft of physical computing and prototyping to people of all ages, competencies, and abilities.

Foreword xiii

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Getting To Know Arduino 5

Chapter 1: Discovering Arduino 7

Where Did Arduino Come From? 8

Learning by Doing 11

Patching 12

Hacking 12

Circuit bending 13

Electronics 14

Inputs 15

Outputs 15

Open Source 15

Chapter 2: Finding Your Board and Your Way Around It 17

Getting to Know the Arduino Uno 18

The Brains: ATmega328P microcontroller chip 19

Header sockets 20

Digital pins 21

Analog in pins 21

What about analog out? 21

Power pins 22

USB socket 22

Power socket 22

Reset button 23

Discovering Other Arduino Boards 24

Official Arduino boards 24

Contributed (approved) Arduinos 26

Shopping for Arduino 27

Arduino Store 27

Adafruit 27

SparkFun 28

Seeed Studio 28

Watterott Electronic 28

Electronics distributors 28

Amazon 29

eBay 29

Kitted Out: Starting with a Beginner’s Kit 29

Preparing a Workspace 32

Installing Arduino 33

Surveying the Arduino Environment 33

Using Arduino Web Editor 35

Chapter 3: Blinking an LED 37

Working with Your First Arduino Sketch 37

Finding the Blink Sketch 38

Identifying your board 38

Configuring the software 40

Uploading the sketch 42

Congratulate yourself! 44

What just happened? 44

Looking Closer at the Sketch 44

Comments 46

Functions 47

Setup 48

Loop 50

Blinking Brighter 52

Tweaking the Sketch 53

Part 2: Getting Physical with Arduino 55

Chapter 4: Tools of the Trade 57

Finding the Right Tools for the Job 57

Breadboard 58

Jump wires 59

Needle-nose pliers 61

Multimeter 62

Using a Multimeter to Measure Voltage, Current, and Resistance 63

Measuring voltage in a circuit 63

Measuring current in a circuit 64

Measuring resistance of a resistor 65

Measuring resistance of a variable resistor 66

Checking the continuity (in bleeps) of your circuit 67

Chapter 5: A Primer on Electricity and Circuitry 69

Understanding Electricity 69

Using Equations to Build Your Circuits 71

Ohm’s Law 71

Calculating power 73

Joule’s Law 74

Working with Circuit Diagrams 76

A simple circuit diagram 76

Using a circuit diagram with an Arduino 78

Color-Coding 79

Datasheets 80

Resistor Color Charts 81

Chapter 6: Basic Sketches: Inputs, Outputs, and Communication 85

Uploading a Sketch 86

Using Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) 87

The LED Fade Sketch 87

Understanding the Fade sketch 91

Declarations 92

Variables 92

Tweaking the Fade sketch 94

The Button Sketch 96

Understanding the Button sketch 100

Tweaking the Button sketch 101

The AnalogInput Sketch 103

Understanding the AnalogInput sketch 106

Tweaking the AnalogInput sketch 108

Talking Serial 109

The DigitalReadSerial Sketch 109

Understanding the DigitalReadSerial sketch 112

The AnalogInOutSerial Sketch 113

Understanding the AnalogInOutSerial sketch 117

Chapter 7: More Basic Sketches: Motion and Sound 119

Working with Electric Motors 119

Discovering Diodes 121

Spinning a DC Motor 121

The Motor sketch 122

Understanding the Motor sketch 125

Changing the Speed of Your Motor 126

The MotorSpeed sketch 126

Understanding the MotorSpeed sketch 127

Controlling the Speed of Your Motor 128

The MotorControl sketch 128

Understanding the MotorControl Sketch 131

Tweaking the MotorControl sketch 131

Getting to Know Servo motors 132

Creating Sweeping Movements 133

The Sweep sketch 133

Understanding the Sweep sketch 136

Controlling Your Servo 138

The Knob sketch 138

Understanding the Knob sketch 141

Making Noises 142

Piezo buzzer 142

The toneMelody sketch 143

Understanding the sketch 149

Making an Instrument 153

The PitchFollower sketch 153

Understanding the sketch 156

Part 3: Building on the Basics 159

Chapter 8: Learning by Example 161

Skube 161

How it works 162

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Arduino for Dummies

Arduino for Dummies

1119489547

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

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