Introduction to Arduino Uno

Arduino Uno is a beginner's board for students and hobbyists to get familiar with microcontrollers and programming. It is relatively cheap ($24 on Amazon), and it supports both C programming (the hard way) and Arduino language (the easy way).

All of its functions, memory address, and what each address controls when you toggle it are fully documented in the datasheet. You can easily find it online. To program it, you need to download the Arduino software. We mentioned before that the easy way to program it is to use the Arduino language specifically designed for Arduino boards. Setting it up can be as easy as less than 10 lines of code.

The void setup function sets up the Arduino environment, and the loop function is the main while loop that the microcontroller enters once the setup stage is done. A microcontroller is really good at doing simple tasks at a very fast speed, like reading values from a sensor for 1000 times per second. What it's not good at doing is processing complicated tasks like analyzing a giant data set, because it does not have a power processor like our gaming laptops do. It also does not have a complicated operating system by default unless we write on ourselves.

However, if you decide to set it up the hard way, then you have to look at what each memory address controls in the datasheet, and then toggle the ones that you need. Below is a version of the schematic for Arduino Uno.

A simple project that you can get started on right away is to toggle an LED light on and off periodically with Arduino. Simple set one of the GPIO pins to be output HIGH, and then wait for a certain period of time, like 1 s, and then set the same GPIO pin to be output LOW. Note that a LED light needs some protection resistor of around 200 ohm~300 ohm so that it does not get too bright; otherwise it will burn out much faster. An example code is provided below:

Feel free to try it out yourself. Don't forget that the Arduino official website has many useful tips on how to use the Arduino functions. Google it when you need help.