First Arduino Experiment

In our first Tech workshop, we were officially introduced to Arduino.

• What? Open source electronics
• Why? User interaction to test interactions and receive feedback
• Allows hands on interaction and be able to give an electric engineer for e.g. an idea down the track
• About taking more steps to build your product
• Can do temperature example, take in one input like temperature
• Project examples on Arduino website like colour detection
• Another e.g. window painting robot
• There’s no limit to what you can do with Arduino
• Exercise encouragement via automated BB gun
• Can use it for a lot of medical solutions, e.g. fall detection
• Carls’ project – Rowing Glove, worked with injury prevention and rehabilitation during rowing with mobility tracking
• James project – CPR Training device – guides users through CPR using basic inputs and outputs

Board Basics - Arduino Setup

• Power and ground pins (3.3V, 5V GND GND Vin)
• Important to know which volts your project runs on, majority is 5V
• Eception3.3V
• Recommend not power by that method unless you know
• Analog Pins (A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5)
• Temperature, for example, add the analog inputs
• Digital Input and Output Pins (13, 12, 11, 10, 9,8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) Digital inputs, the buttons and switches
• 0 and 1 are difference TX RX
• - Squiggly line is PWM Pulse Width Modulation, Pseudo-Analog inputs (11, 10, 9, 6, 5, 3)
• Breadboards – is used for prototyping its like a connector board, with connector channels to connect components and wires. A and D are for running power, B and C are for connecting components
• Can use the breadboards to power your powerline and, how you would wire a LC board
• Different components can give off interference, and you may have it on a different circuit so they don’t influence each other
• Inputs is what your Arduino reads, user interacts with inputs, outputs user responds with
• If then statements
• Checks a variable for certain requirements, performs a task based on the result
• If the button is pressed – turn LED light
• If it is dark outside – turn the outside lights on
• Flowcharts – when running code always needs option, if you’re doing if statements than you need an else
• Always easy to write code that has been flowcharted first

Exercise Activity

• Blink exercise
• Void setup – setup once, its for the info to loop again etc
• Void loop – is the main loop that is doing everything
• Google different ways to debounce buttons
• Fading light example

The Fading Light Example (Video)