Arduino

Arduino is a single-board microcontroller, intended to make the application of interactive

objects or environments more accessible. The hardware consists of an open-source hardware board
designed around an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, or a 32-bit Atmel ARM. Current models feature
an USB interface, 6 analog input pins, as well as 14 digital I/O pins which allow to attach various
extension boards.
Introduced in 2005, it was designed to give students an inexpensive and easy way to program
interactive objects. It comes with a simple integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on
regular personal computers and allows to write programs for Arduino using C or C++.
The current prices of Arduino boards run around $30 and those of related "clones" as low as $9.
Arduino boards can be purchased pre-assembled or as do-it-yourself kits. Hardware design information
is available for those who would like to assemble an Arduino by hand. It was estimated in mid-2011
that over 300,000 official Arduinos had been commercially produced, and in 2013 that 700,000 official
boards were in users' hand

History
Arduino started in 2005 as a project for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in
Ivrea, Italy. At that time program students used a "BASIC Stamp" at a cost of $100, considered
expensive for students. Massimo Banzi, one of the founders, taught at Ivrea.
 A hardware thesis was contributed for a wiring design by Colombian student Hernando
Barragan. After the wiring platform was complete, researchers worked to make it lighter, less
expensive, and available to the open source community. The school eventually closed down, so these
researchers, one of them David Cuartielles, promoted the idea.
The current prices run around $30 and related "clones" as low as $9. A simple Arduino Mini
Pro clone may be had from China for less than $4, post paid.

Hardware
An Arduino board consists of an Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller with complementary
components to facilitate programming and incorporation into other circuits. An important aspect of the
Arduino is the standard way that connectors are exposed, allowing the CPU board to be connected to a
variety of interchangeable add-on modules known as shields. Some shields communicate with the
Arduino board directly over various pins, but many shields are individually addressable via an I²C
serial bus, allowing many shields to be stacked and used in parallel. Official Arduinos have used the
megaAVR series of chips, specifically the ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328, ATmega1280, and
ATmega2560. A handful of other processors have been used by Arduino compatibles. Most boards
include a 5 volt linear regulator and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator (or ceramic resonator in some
variants), although some designs such as the LilyPad run at 8 MHz and dispense with the onboard
voltage regulator due to specific form-factor restrictions. An Arduino's microcontroller is also pre-
programmed with a boot loader that simplifies uploading of programs to the on-chip flash memory,
compared with other devices that typically need an external programmer. This makes using an Arduino
more straightforward by allowing the use of an ordinary computer as the programmer.
At a conceptual level, when using the Arduino software stack, all boards are programmed over
an RS-232 serial connection, but the way this is implemented varies by hardware version. Serial
Arduino boards contain a level shifter circuit to convert between RS-232-level and TTL-level signals.
Current Arduino boards are programmed via USB, implemented using USB-to-serial adapter chips
such as the FTDI FT232. Some variants, such as the Arduino Mini and the unofficial Boarduino, use 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 programming is used.)
The Arduino board exposes most of the microcontroller's I/O pins for use by other circuits. The
Diecimila, Duemilanove, and current Uno provide 14 digital I/O pins, six of which can produce pulse-
width modulated signals, and six analog inputs. These pins are on the top of the board, via female 0.10-
inch (2.5 mm) headers. Several plug-in application shields are also commercially available.
The Arduino Nano, and Arduino-compatible Bare Bones Board and Boarduino boards may
provide male header pins on the underside of the board to be plugged into solderless breadboards.
There are many Arduino-compatible and Arduino-derived boards. Some are functionally
equivalent to an Arduino and may be used interchangeably. Many are the basic Arduino with the
addition of commonplace output drivers, often for use in school-level education to simplify the
construction of buggies and small robots. Others are electrically equivalent but change the form factor,
sometimes permitting the continued use of Shields, sometimes not. Some variants use completely
different processors, with varying levels of compatibility.

Official boards
The original Arduino hardware is manufactured by the Italian company Smart Projects. Some
Arduino-branded boards have been designed by the American company SparkFun Electronics. Sixteen
versions of the Arduino hardware have been commercially produced to date.

Shields
Arduino and Arduino-compatible boards make use of shields—printed circuit expansion boards
that plug into the normally supplied Arduino pin-headers. Shields can provide motor controls, GPS,
ethernet, LCD display, or breadboarding (prototyping). A number of shields can also be made DIY

Software
The Arduino integrated development environment (IDE) is a cross-platform application written
in Java, and is derived from the IDE for the Processing programming language and the Wiring projects.
It is designed to introduce programming to artists and other newcomers unfamiliar with software
development. It includes a code editor with features such as syntax highlighting, brace matching, and
automatic indentation, and is also capable of compiling and uploading programs to the board with a
single click. A program or code written for Arduino is called a "sketch".
Arduino programs are written in C or C++. The Arduino IDE comes with a software library
called "Wiring" from the original Wiring project, which makes many common input/output operations
much easier. Users only need define two functions to make a runnable cyclic executive program:
• setup(): a function run once at the start of a program that can initialize settings
• loop(): a function called repeatedly until the board powers off
A typical first program for a microcontroller simply blinks an LED on and off. In the Arduino
environment, the user might write a program like this:
#define LED_PIN 13

void setup () {
pinMode (LED_PIN, OUTPUT); // Enable pin 13 for digital output
}

void loop () {
digitalWrite (LED_PIN, HIGH); // Turn on the LED
delay (1000); // Wait one second (1000 milliseconds)
digitalWrite (LED_PIN, LOW); // Turn off the LED
delay (1000); // Wait one second
}
It is a feature of most Arduino boards that they have an LED and load resistor connected
between pin 13 and ground; a convenient feature for many simple tests. The previous code would not
be seen by a standard C++ compiler as a valid program, so when the user clicks the "Upload to I/O
board" button in the IDE, a copy of the code is written to a temporary file with an extra include header
at the top and a very simple main() function at the bottom, to make it a valid C++ program.
The Arduino IDE uses the GNU toolchain and AVR Libc to compile programs, and uses
avrdude to upload programs to the board.
As the Arduino platform uses Atmel microcontrollers, Atmel's development environment, AVR
Studio or the newer Atmel Studio, may also be used to develop software for the Arduino.

Development
The core Arduino developer team is composed of Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles,
Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, David Mellis and Nicholas Zambetti. Massimo Banzi was interviewed on
the March 21st, 2009 episode (Episode 61) of FLOSS Weekly on the TWiT.tv network, in which he
discussed the history and goals of the Arduino project. He also gave a talk at TEDGlobal 2012
Conference, where he outlined various uses of Arduino boards around the world.
Arduino is open source hardware: the Arduino hardware reference designs are distributed under
a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 license and are available on the Arduino Web site.
Layout and production files for some versions of the Arduino hardware are also available. The source
code for the IDE is available and released under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
Although the hardware and software designs are freely available under copyleft licenses, the
developers have requested that the name "Arduino" be exclusive to the official product and not be used
for derivative works without permission. The official policy document on the use of the Arduino name
emphasizes that the project is open to incorporating work by others into the official product. Several
Arduino-compatible products commercially released have avoided the "Arduino" name by using "-
duino" name variants.