What Is Arduino? How It Works?

Arduino is an open-source hardware and
software company, project and user
community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and
microcontroller kits for building digital devices, projects and interactive
objects that can sense and controls things in the physical and digital world.
Arduino company products are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public
License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the
manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone.

Arduino boards are available online as
do-it-yourself (DIY) kits.

Arduino board designs uses a
variety of microprocessors and controllers. The Arduino boards contain a set of
digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins that may be interfaced with various
expansion boards or breadboards(shields) and other circuits. The Arduino boards
contain features like serial communications interfaces, Universal Serial Bus(USB) (Only on some
models of Boards), which are used for loading programs from personal computers.

The microcontrollers
typically uses the same type of language features from the programming
languages C and C++. Along with the traditional compiler toolchains, Arduino
Project provides an integrated development environment (IDE) which is based on
the Processing language project.

Most of the Arduino boards consist
of an Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller (ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328,
ATmega1280, ATmega2560) with varying amounts of flash memory, pins, and
features. For the first time, the 32-bit
Arduino Due was introduced in 2012 which is based on the Atmel SAM3X8E. The
Arduino boards uses a single or double-row pins or female header that makes
connections easier for programming and incorporation into other circuits.

These may connect with add-on
modules termed shields. Multiple and stacked shields can be individually
addressable by an I²C serial bus. Most of the Arduino boards will have a 5V
linear regulator and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator or ceramic resonator. Some of
Arduino designs, such as the Lily Pad, run at 8 MHz and provide an onboard
voltage regulator due to specific form-factor restrictions.

Arduino microcontrollers are
pre-programmed with a boot loader that makes it easier to upload programs to
the on-chip flash memory. The default boot loader of the Arduino UNO is the
Optic boot loader. Arduino boards are loaded with a program code by a serial
connection to another computer. Some Arduino boards of serial connections
contain a level shifter circuit to convert between RS-232 logic levels and
transistor-transistor logic (TTL) level signals. Current Arduino boards are
programmed by Universal Serial Bus (USB), implemented using USB-to-serial
adapter chips such as the FTDI FT232.

Some Arduino boards, such as recent Uno
boards, substitute the FTDI chip with a separate AVR chip which contains
USB-to-serial firmware, which is reprogrammable by its own ICSP header. Other
variants in boards, such as the Arduino Mini and the Arduino Uno, uses a
detachable USB-to-serial adapter board or cable, Bluetooth or other methods.
When used with traditional microcontroller tools, instead of the Arduino IDE,
standard AVR ISP(in-system programming) programming is used.

Mostly Arduino board exposes the
microcontroller’s I/O pins are used by other circuits. Arduino boards like
Diecimila, Duemilanove, and Uno provide 14 digital I/O pins, in which six of
them can produce pulse-width modulated signals, and another six can produce
analog inputs, which can used as six digital I/O pins. These I/O pins are on
the top of the board, via female 0.1-inch (2.54 mm) headers.

Several
plug-in application shields are also commercially available.

The Arduino Nano, and
Arduino-compatible Bare Bones Board and Board Uno boards may provide male
header pins on the underside of the board that can plug into solder less
breadboards.

Many Arduino-compatible and
Arduino-derived boards exist. Most of them are functionally equivalent to an
Arduino and can be used by changing them. Many intensified the basic Arduino by
adding output drivers, mainly for use in school-level education, to simplify
making buggies and small robots. Others are electrically equal but changes the
form factor, sometimes retaining compatibility with the shields, sometimes not.
Some variants use different processors, of varying compatibility.

Arduino and Arduino-compatible boards
uses a printed circuit expansion boards called shields, which plug into the
normally supplied headers of Arduino pins. Shields can supply motor controls
for 3D printing and other applications, Global Positioning System (
GPS), Ethernet, liquid crystal display (LCD), or breadboarding (prototyping).
We can also made several shields do it yourself(DIY).

Arduino has different types of
boards, totally there are 26 different types of boards are available in Arduino
boards.

These
are the Arduino boards that are developed by the Arduino Company.

1. Arduino Nano

2. Arduino Uno

3. Arduino Due

4. Arduino Mega 2560

5. Arduino Mega

6. Lilly pad Arduino Simple

7. Lilly Pad Arduino Main Board

8. Arduino Pro

9. Arduino Ethernet

10.
Arduino Yún

11.
Arduino Zero

12.
Arduino Pro Mini

13.
Arduino Micro

14.
Arduino Leonardo

15.
Arduino Esplora

16.
Arduino M0 Pro

17.
Arduino Duemilanove

18.
Arduino Fio

19.
Arduino 101

20.
Arduino Ethernet

21.
Arduino Diecimila

22.
Arduino BT

23.
Arduino MKR Zero

24.
Arduino MKR 1000

25.
Arduino Uno WiFi

26.
Arduino Portenta H7

Arduino is a rapid prototyping development
which is based on AVR ATmega series 8-bit micro-controller. Arduino IDE is a
tool to write code for Arduino and download binary .hex to the board. Arduino
IDE is C++ based wrapper to write a complex program in a simple way by using
different libraries available.

Arduino
IDE Code look like:

void setup()

{

// Write your setup
code here

// i.e. Serial begin,
GPIO PIN MODE setup etc

}

void loop()

{

// Write Your
continuous code here which will be called forever.

// i.e. read serial
data, blink LED etc

}

I Hope, it will help you…….

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