Arduino Step by Step: Getting Started

In this section, you'll learn about the Arduino and why it's been such an important part of the Maker Revolution. 

In this lecture, you will be walked through the Arduino board, have a look at the components that you see on it and explain what each of those components is and what it does.

In this lecture, we will look at the different pins and their functions on the Arduino Uno.

In this lecture, we look at the Arduino's most important feature, its general purpose input output pins. These are the pins that allow you to interact with external devices like LEDS and buttons.

In this lecture,  we look at digital pins as inputs. 

In this lecture, we look at the the "analog" output. 

In this lecture, we look at the last function of the digital input/output pins -the analog input and how the analog input works.

Test the knowledge that you acquired in this section.

In  this section, we look at the basics of the three communication standards that are implemented in a microcontroller that powers the Arduino. We will look at the serial UART, and I²C which is also known as TWI and SPI communications.

In this lecture, we look at the serial UART.

In this lecture, we look at the I²C.

In this lecture, we look at SPI Communications.

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In this section, we look at various members of the Arduino family :Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega 2560,  Arduino Due, Arduino Zero, the Arduino 101 and, the Arduino Pro Mini. We also look at Arduino compatible boards.

In this lecture we look at some members of the Arduino family.

In this lecture, we look at the Arduino Mega 2560.

In this lecture, we look at the Arduino Due.

In this lecture we look at the Arduino Zero.

In this lecture we look at the Arduino 101.

In this lecture we look at the Arduino Pro Mini.

In this lecture we look at Arduino compatible boards.

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In this section, you will learn about the basics of prototyping with the Arduino. We look at tools like the breadboard and the motor meter, and show you how to solder and use protoboards.

In this lecture we will look at prototyping basics and the breadboard. 

In this lecture we look at jumper wires.

In this lecture we look at the essential tools.

In this lecture we look at powering your Arduino with power supplies.

In this lecture we look at working with the multimeter to measure voltage.

In this lecture we look at working with the multimeter to measure current.

Important notice: This video contains an error when I (try to) measure current with me low-cost multimeter. In the video, you can notice that the red lead is connected to the voltage "V" socket. This is appropriate for voltage measurements, but for current I should have moved the red lead to the "A" socket. I will re-do this lecture, however in the meantime, please remember that when you want to measure current, connect your black probe to the GND socket, and the red probe to the "A" socket.

In this lecture we look at working with the multimeter to measure resistance and continuity.

In this lecture we start our introduction to soldering.

In this lecture we look at soldering- preparation and using holders.

In this lecture we look at Soldering- using wire cutters and the fume extractor.

In this lecture we look at Soldering- Simple maintenance tips for your soldering iron.

In this lecture we demonstrate soldering a header onto a breakout.

In this lecture we look at an introduction to protoboards.

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The way by which you teach the Arduino what to do, is by programming it. An Arduino program is called a sketch and the best way to write one is to use the free programming environment that is offered by the company that makes the Arduino. This programming environment called the Arduino IDE or Arduino Integrated Programming Environment has been designed with a new Arduino maker in mind and provide a gentle introduction to programming.

The Arduino IDE is used to write a sketch, check that is correct and provide a simple way of uploading it to your Arduino so that it runs on it. In this section, I will introduce you to the Arduino IDE and walk you through all of its most important features and prepare you for becoming very productive with it.

What I want to talk about in this lecture is the Arduino integrated development environment, the IDE, the free tool that you use in order to program your Arduino. 

In a later lecture in the same section I'm going to show you how to use the USB port to program you Arduino

In this lecture we look at getting and installing the Arduino IDE.

In this lecture we look at the Arduino IDE- Understanding the preferences pane.

In this lecture we look at The Arduino IDE menu items.

In this lecture we look at How to upload a sketch to your Arduino.

In this lecture we look at How to upload a sketch to your Arduino -for Windows.

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In the previous section, you learned about the Arduino IDE, the tool of choice for people new to the Arduino. When it comes to the Arduino and microcontrollers in general, programming is a case skill. It's as important at least as a basic understanding of electronics but fear not. It can achieve a lot by achieving a basic level of competency in programming. In this section, I will introduce you to the Arduino programming basics. You will learn about functions, variables, and control structures. You'll learn how to control the Arduino digital input and output pins. You will use this knowledge to control LEDs and read the state of buttons and the geometers, some of the most commonly used components in Arduino prototyping.

In this lecture we look at an introduction to Arduino programming.

In this lecture we look at Understanding the basic parts of an Arduino sketch.

In this lecture we look at getting started with custom functions.

In this lecture we look at creating custom functions with parameters.

In this lecture we look at using variables.

In this lecture we look at Understanding the variable scope.

In this lecture we look at understanding constants.

In this lecture we will talk about loops and conditionals. Conditionals are useful when you want to change the flow of execution in your sketch, and loops are useful when you want to repeat a block of code multiple times. Very often, these two work together and that's why I discuss them here together. Let's start with a conditional, and let's have a look at the simplest conditional out there. It's the "if" statement. 

In this lecture we will look at the "while" structure. 

"While" is a way to create a loop. 

There is a decision involved, so it's not strictly speaking a controlled structure. It's a looping structure, a repeat structure.

Another very common looping structure that is available on the Arduino is the "for" loop. 

The "for" loop is a way to explicitly repeat a block of code a specific number of times that we have predetermined. 

In this lecture I will show you how this works.

The next structure that I'd like to show you for this part of the lecture is the "switch" structure. 

The "switch" structure provides an easy way to allow you to jump to a particular part of the structure, depending on the value of the variable. 

This is useful if you have things such as a bunch of buttons and you want your gadget to do something different depending on which button was pressed. 

Now that you have a good, even though it's just the beginning, understanding of some of the basic concepts in Arduino programming. You can move on and have a look at how to use the digital input and output pins that come with the Arduino. Of course input and output are fundamental features of the market controller can connect devices to special pins on your Arduino and to read or change the state of these pins, through special instructions in your sketch. There are two kinds of input and output pins on the Arduino. They are digital and analog pins.

In this lecture,we'll start with digital pins.

Getting an LED to blink is quite easy once you understand how to configure a digital pin to become an output control, the delay, and so on fairly simple.

In this lecture we will continue our work with the Arduino's input/output pins by taking a look at the analog pins. 

Analog signals on microcontrollers is a tricky topic. Most microcontrollers can't generate true analog signals, that means they cannot create and output true analog signals, like an audio signal for example. But they are better at reading analog signals, so they can read for example, the output of a microphone. The atmega328p which is used in the Arduino Uno simulates analog signals using a technique called "pulse width modulation", and I'll talk a little bit about it a bit later when we look at how we can get the LED to, instead of just turning on and off, to get it to fade gradually from an fully off state to a fully on state.

Reading an analog value is very simple. But what about creating an analog signal? And why would we want to do this? 

In this lecture, I will explain both.

In this lecture, what I'd like to do is to first, show you how to use an RGB LED, a red, green, blue color led to, of course, create red green and blue light coming out of the LED.

In this lecture I will show you how to wire up your RGB LED.

In this lecture I will show you how to combine the red green and blue color components to create other colors.

In this lecture I will show you how to use a library in order to make RGB color control much easier.

In this lecture I will show you some of the best resources available for people working with the Arduino. You will need them!

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In this section, I will introduce you to your first set of sensors. You can use these sensors to detect the visible light, light color, and ultraviolet light. Sensors like these can be used in all sorts of gadgets. You can use a light sensor to detect light intensity in a room so that your home automation system can figure out when to turn on the lights. You can use an RGB sensor to sort LEGO bricks according to color, and then ultraviolet sensor to know if you should stay away from the outdoors. These are just some examples. There are so many more in industrial and consumer applications. Let's have a look at light sensors.

In this lecture we're going to play around with the photoresistor. The photoresistor is one of the simplest sensors that you can use with your Arduino. It's a very simple analog device you measure voltage as it spins and that gives us an indication of the intensity of the light in the area around the sensor.

In this lecture I will explain how to select the appropriate fixed resistor to use with your photoresistor. 

In this lecture we're going to have a look at this UV light sensor. Ultra-violet radiation, is part of the light spectrum that is both useful and also harmful to humans

In this lecture we're going to play a run with an RGB light sensor. This is the TCS 35725 sensor and is packaged nicely as a breakout from Adafruit. Adafruit has also supplied their really nice, easy to use library that I'll be using in my demonstration later. This light sensor is based on an integrated circuit right in the middle of the breakout. It's got also a very bright, pure, wide any day in order to illuminate the scene.

In this lecture I will show you how to wire the RGB color light sensor.

In this lecture, I will demonstrate an interesting experiment that uses the RGB color sensor. I will use it to get a reading of a color from the sensor and then copy essentially that color and display it through my RGB LED.

Test the knowledge that you acquired in this section.

Building an environment monitoring gadget, is one of the first things that people new to the Arduino make. Just looking at these sensors, expose you to a great variety of types from simple and cheap analog devices to sophisticated, highly accurate, and factory calibrated digital devices. 

This section has a lot to offer. In this section, I will demonstrate sensors such as the hugely popular DHT 22 and 11 sensor, the analog thermistor which will give us the opportunity to study a way to improve the accuracy of analog measurements with the Arduino, and the very accurate MCP9808. Let's learn about temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors

In this lecture we're going to talk about the DHT22 or DHT11 depending on which version of the sensor you have. 

It's a very, very popular, very versatile and capable sensor that in a single package allows you to measure temperature and humidity. It's a digital sensor which means that the information that you get out of it is already containing the temperature and the humidity and you don't have to do any calculations, any conversions at all. What you get is what you need. 

It's very simple to use as well, and in this lecture I'm going to go straight into demonstrating the wiring and then playing around with the sketch that extracts the temperature and the humidity out of it.

In this lecture we're going to play around with another very simple analogue component, analogue sensor, the thermistor. In the thermistor, the resistance of the device changes as the temperature changes and through a circuit like the one that we saw in the photo resistor lecture, the voltage divider, we are able to detect that change in resistance by measuring the voltage across the pins of the thermistor.

In this lecture, I will show you how to wire the thermistor.

In this lecture I will show you how to calculate the temperature from the thermistor readings.

In this lecture I will show you how to use a library to extract more accurate and easier temperature readings from the thermistor.

BEWARE! In the video, I have mistakenly connected the thermistor in the opposite position in the voltage divider. Please take care to follow the schematic, not the video!

It is possible to improve the accuracy of the analog-to-digital conversion on the Arduino by using a different reference. This will result to more accurate readings from devices like the thermistor. 

In this lecture, I will show you how to do this.

In this lecture we're going to look at a classic analog sensor, the TMP36. This little device here, very cheap, is used specifically for taking temperature measurements. It's an analogue sensor which means that, you plug it into one of the analog pins on your Arduino and then use a small function to convert the voltage that you get out of this device, into a meaningful number.

In this lecture I will show you how to wire the TMP36 sensor.

One thing that you can do in order to get a slightly better reading as I briefly mentioned earlier is to the change the connection of the supply voltage to the sensor from the five volts pin to the 3.3 volt pin. The reason that we do that and the reason why this can potentially improve your readings slightly is because, on the Arduino Uno, the five volts supply comes from the USB port which comes from my computer or from an external supply. 

If you are looking for a temperature sensor that has got really good accuracy, much better than the DHC22 and the thermistor that we’ve seen so far, then you’re looking for something like this. 

This is the MCP9808, it’s a break out from other fruit, contains a temperature sensor on board that provides up to plus or minus 0.25 centigrade of accuracy. It’s an ice squid-C device Arduino it comes with a very convenient easy to use library as well. As a part of the break out, you also get lines that allow you to change and control the address, so that there’s no interference with other ice squid-C devices on your gadget, on your circuit that happened to use the same address. I’m going to show you how that works. 

In this lecture, we’ll start as usual with a quick look at the data sheet to understand what this device is about and its operational characteristics. Then we look at the wiring, implement the device on the breadboard and play around with the sketch. 

In this lecture I will show you how to wire the MCP9808.

In this lecture, I will demonstrate the MCP9808 sample sketch.

In this lecture I will discuss the addressing scheme of the I2C protocol.

In this lecture, we'll have a look at the BMP180 sensor from Bosch. As usual, we'll start by having a quick look at the data shade so that we can get a feel of the specifications and the operational parameters of the sensor itself. Then, we're going to move into the wiring section. As far as these sketch are concerned I'm going to show you two sample sketches - one is using a library from Adafruit and the other one from SparkFun.

In this lecture, I will show you how to wire up the BMP180, and demonstrate the sample sketch.

In this lecture I will demonstrate the first demo sketch that works with the BMP180.

In this lecture I will demonstrate the second demo sketch that works with the BMP180.