What is Arduino?
The Arduino project was born at the “Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII)” in Ivrea, Italy. It is an open-source company, project and user community that designs “single board micro-controllers” and “micro-controller” kits for building devices with ease. Ardunio is a very user-friendly platform, used by hobbyists, professionals, engineers and even people with very limited knowledge of programming and electronics.
The “Arduino Programming Language” is based on another open-source programming language and integrated development environment called “Processing”. This platform was specially built with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context.
Who is it for?
Arduino is for everyone!
Yes, that’s true! Arduino is used by millions worldwide. It is very easy to use and do not require significant knowledge of electronics or programming as everything you needed to know to build genius things you needed to knows already comes with your Arduino board.
It is used by Programmers, Engineers, Professionals, Students and even kids these days.
Why Use Arduino?
Arduino boards are cheap and easy to use. These boards have a microcontroller chip in their hearts which holds the program. Therefore, using Arduino in a circuit will enable one to control their circuit as desired with simple and basic programming knowledge. Arduino saves a lot of time and money as putting together a blinking LED circuit without Arduino requires a lot of hassle with capacitors, resistors, ICs, power supplies and etc. But, with Arduino, you can achieve that same task with just 1 LED light and a few lines of code.
What Does A Arduino Board Look Like?
There are many varieties of Arduino boards, such as Arduino Uno, Arduino Nano, Arduino Mega, Arduino Leonardo and etc. These boards are for most parts, quite similar to one another to work with, but, they differ in sizes, available pins, and other functionalities.
Arduino Uno is perhaps the most popular, widely used and available Arduino board in the market. This is how an Arduino Uno looks like:
How to setup an Arduino UNO (Or any Arduino Board)
- Navigate to: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
- Download and install the Arduino IDE
- Open the Arduino IDE on your computer
- Connect the Arduino board to your computer via USB cable
- If using a Windows machine, you will notice a popup like the one below
- After the device driver has been successfully installed, it will show you the port it is connected to. In the case of this example it is “COM9” but may be different for you. Note this port number down, as we will need it later on.
- In the Arduino IDE, navigate to Tools > Port: “COM9 (Arduino/Genuino Uno)” > “COM9”.
This may be different for you, as it is dependant on which COM port was assigned to your board in the previous steps.
- Congratulations, You have successfully installed the Arduino IDE software and connected to your Arduino board.
