Born at Ivrea Interaction Design Institute, Arduino is a an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware boards and own software IDE to read different inputs and turn them into output. he Arduino software is easy-to-use for beginners, and flexible enough even for advanced users and is adaptable to Windows, IOS and Linux systems.
To get started, obtain an appropriate board for your project from. There are many different types of Arduino boards all with different capabilities, with common ones such as the ones shown below, available for loan in the Mercer X Lab. Research capabilities and compatibility with sensors according to your project to select one.
Arduino UNO
Arduino Nano
Arduino Micro
Every microcontroller has a slightly different way they can be programmed, but one of the most common ways is through the Arduino IDE. So here you will get a quick tutorial on setup and basic functions with the Arduino, and hopefully it will translate to other microcontrollers if you decide not to use the Arduino UNO.
The first step to using an Arduino is installing the Arduino IDE software, which you can find at:
This is where you will write the code to load onto the Arduino and perform any functions. Once installed, connect your Arduino to your PC and run the program. It should look like this on the home page:
Go ahead and install any drivers you are prompted for; they are necessary for everything to work. Before you begin writing any code, you want to make sure that the board is selected in the program. Go to the Tools > Board menu and select the one board that you have, in this case is the Arduino UNO.
Also make sure to select the correct port that the Arduino is plugged into. This can be found in the Tools > Port menu.
Once that is completed, you can start writing code. The best way to start is with one of the provided example files in Arduino IDE. Just go to the File > Examples menu and select the file for what function you want to perform.
For now, let's look at the Blink example in the Basics submenu that will blink the built-in LED:
The main structure of all Arduino code is called a Super Loop. The first function called “setup()” will run once, and then the loop function will infinitely run until Arduino is powered off or unplugged. With that in mind, you want to put any code you only need to run once in that setup function and leave everything else in the other function. One example is the pinMode function, which is used to configure the digital pins on the Arduino. Inside the loop function, the program uses the digitalWrite function to send a HIGH signal to the built in LED of the Arduino, turning it on. You can also use this function to send the same signal through the Arduino’s Digital GPIO pins, labeled A0-A13.
After you are done writing your code, click the checkmark button in the top left called Verify:
