{"id":292,"date":"2010-10-08T18:26:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T18:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2010-10-08T18:26:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T18:26:34","slug":"arduino-a-simple-microcontroller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/08\/arduino-a-simple-microcontroller\/","title":{"rendered":"Arduino – a simple microcontroller"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Arduino<\/a> is a popular, cheap (around 25 USD), and open source microcontroller platform. We use them all over the lab. Students can learn to program them very quickly, they’re versatile, and there is a large user base with tutorials that make implementations easy. The programming environment is quite simple and is almost identical to Processing. In fact, there’s an Arduino plug-in for Processing<\/a>. There are certainly more powerful options available, but in order to get things done without much learning or development time, these simple tools are great. For example, I have one of these cards wired up to 8 configurable BNC jacks, and it acts a general purpose logic box and timer. Sometime I have it delivering trains of stimuli at the onset of a trigger pulse, other times it manages behavioral rigs. The USB connector is exposed in the back, and I just upload a new program whenever I need to change settings.<\/p>\n

Here’s what the programming interface (IDE) looks like:<\/p>\n

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As you can see, the syntax is pretty C-like and simple. The program above simply reads the input from a push button switch and lights an LED while the switch is pressed. It can be interfaced<\/a> with many different programming languages\/environments (e.g., MATLAB, Python, C++, etc.), usually using the serial port to exchange data.<\/p>\n

The hardware comes in a variety of official versions<\/a>, with different form factors, wireless capabilities, and so forth. Other manufacturers have released their own compatible variations referred to as “Freeduinos”, or other “-duino”-suffixed words to distinguish them from the official versions of Arduino hardware. There are also a large number of plug-in shields<\/a> for ethernet connectivity, driving motors, and other applications. There are many, many tutorials to get new people started interfacing with other hardware<\/a>, including sensors, motors, displays, and flash memory.<\/p>\n

The best place to get started is on Arduino’s own website<\/a>. Toolduino<\/a> is a fun app for a beginner to start with. It’s handy for setting up circuits, prior to programming. <\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

Arduino<\/a> is a popular, cheap (around 25 USD), and open source microcontroller platform. We use them all over the lab. Students can learn to program them very quickly, they’re versatile, and there…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22,13,10],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","tag-electronics","tag-gadgets","tag-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}