# An Introduction to the Arduino for Beginners

- Link: https://studyelectrical.com/2016/04/an-introduction-to-arduino-for-beginners.html
- Published: 2016-04-11T17:13:00+00:00
- Author: 

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### What is Arduino?

Arduino is an open-source platform used for building electronics projects. Arduino
consists of both a physical programmable circuit board (often referred to as a microcontroller)
and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that runs on
your computer, used to write and upload computer code to the physical board.

 

Arduino is a flexible programmable hardware platform designed for artists, designers,
tinkerers, and the makers of things. Arduino’s little, blue circuit board, mythically
taking its name from a local pub in Italy, has in a very short time motivated a 
new generation of DIYers of all ages to make all manner of wild projects found anywhere
from the hallowed grounds of our universities to the scorching desert sands of a
particularly infamous yearly arts festival and just about everywhere in between.

 

Usually these Arduino based projects require little to no programming skills or 
knowledge of electronics theory, and more often than not, this handiness is simply
picked up along the way.

 

For programming the microcontrollers, the Arduino project provides an integrated
development environment (IDE) based on a programming language named Processing, 
which also supports the languages C and C++.

### What Does it Do?

The Arduino hardware and software was designed for artists, designers, hobbyists,
hackers, newbies, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
Arduino can interact with buttons, LEDs, motors, speakers, GPS units, cameras, the
internet, and even your smart-phone or your TV! This flexibility combined with the
fact that the Arduino software is free, the hardware boards are pretty cheap, and
both the software and hardware are easy to learn has led to a large community of
users who have contributed code and released instructions for a huge variety of 
Arduino-based projects.

 

For everything from robots and a heating pad hand-warming blanket to honest fortune-
telling machines, and even a Dungeons and Dragons dice-throwing gauntlet, the Arduino
can be used as the brains behind almost any electronics project.

### What’s on the board?

![ArduinoDiecimilaComponents](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NIt5vc0Ti0Y/VwvTmHWlP-I/
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There are many varieties of Arduino boards that can be used for different purposes.
Some boards look a bit different from the one below, but most Arduinos have the 
majority of these components in common:

#### Power (USB / Barrel Jack)

Every Arduino board needs a way to be connected to a power source. The Arduino UNO
can be powered from a USB cable coming from your computer or a wall power supply(
like this) that is terminated in a barrel jack. In the picture above the USB connection
is labeled (1) and the barrel jack is labeled (2).

 

The USB connection is also how you will load code onto your Arduino board. More 
on how to program with Arduino can be found in our Installing and Programming Arduino
tutorial.

#### Pins (5V, 3.3V, GND, Analog, Digital, PWM, AREF)

The pins on your Arduino are the places where you connect wires to construct a circuit(
probably in conjuction with a breadboard and some wire. They usually have black 
plastic ‘headers’ that allow you to just plug a wire right into the board. The Arduino
has several different kinds of pins, each of which is labeled on the board and used
for different functions.

 

GND (3): Short for ‘Ground’. There are several GND pins on the Arduino, any of which
can be used to ground your circuit.

 

5V (4) & 3.3V (5): As you might guess, the 5V pin supplies 5 volts of power, and
the 3.3V pin supplies 3.3 volts of power. Most of the simple components used with
the Arduino run happily off of 5 or 3.3 volts.

 

Analog (6): The area of pins under the ‘Analog In’ label (A0 through A5 on the UNO)
are Analog In pins. These pins can read the signal from an analog sensor (like a
temperature sensor) and convert it into a digital value that we can read.

 

Digital (7): Across from the analog pins are the digital pins (0 through 13 on the
UNO). These pins can be used for both digital input (like telling if a button is
pushed) and digital output (like powering an LED).

 

PWM (8): You may have noticed the tilde (~) next to some of the digital pins (3,
5, 6, 9, 10, and 11 on the UNO). These pins act as normal digital pins, but can 
also be used for something called Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM). We have a tutorial
on PWM, but for now, think of these pins as being able to simulate analog output(
like fading an LED in and out).

 

AREF (9): Stands for Analog Reference. Most of the time you can leave this pin alone.
It is sometimes used to set an external reference voltage (between 0 and 5 Volts)
as the upper limit for the analog input pins.

#### Reset Button

Just like the original Nintendo, the Arduino has a reset button (10). Pushing it
will temporarily connect the reset pin to ground and restart any code that is loaded
on the Arduino. This can be very useful if your code doesn’t repeat, but you want
to test it multiple times. Unlike the original Nintendo however, blowing on the 
Arduino doesn’t usually fix any problems.

#### Power LED Indicator

Just beneath and to the right of the word “UNO” on your circuit board, there’s a
tiny LED next to the word ‘ON’ (11). This LED should light up whenever you plug 
your Arduino into a power source. If this light doesn’t turn on, there’s a good 
chance something is wrong. Time to re-check your circuit!

#### TX RX LEDs

TX is short for transmit, RX is short for receive. These markings appear quite a
bit in electronics to indicate the pins responsible for serial communication. In
our case, there are two places on the Arduino UNO where TX and RX appear – once 
by digital pins 0 and 1, and a second time next to the TX and RX indicator LEDs (
12). These LEDs will give us some nice visual indications whenever our Arduino is
receiving or transmitting data (like when we’re loading a new program onto the board).

#### Main IC

The black thing with all the metal legs is an IC, or Integrated Circuit (13). Think
of it as the brains of our Arduino. The main IC on the Arduino is slightly different
from board type to board type, but is usually from the ATmega line of IC’s from 
the ATMEL company. This can be important, as you may need to know the IC type (along
with your board type) before loading up a new program from the Arduino software.
This information can usually be found in writing on the top side of the IC. If you
want to know more about the difference between various IC’s, reading the datasheets
is often a good idea.

#### Voltage Regulator

The voltage regulator (14) is not actually something you can (or should) interact
with on the Arduino. But it is potentially useful to know that it is there and what
it’s for. The voltage regulator does exactly what it says – it controls the amount
of voltage that is let into the Arduino board. Think of it as a kind of gatekeeper;
it will turn away an extra voltage that might harm the circuit. Of course, it has
its limits, so don’t hook up your Arduino to anything greater than 20 volts.

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