- Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel.
Today what I wanted to do
was talk a little bit about Arduino boards.
Now, I myself have always been intimidated with electronics,
so I spent the weekend reading over everything I could find
and learning a lot about Arduino boards
to see if I'm able to accurately communicate to you
and explain to you what it actually is.
Because I think if I fully understand it
then I should be able to communicate that to you.
So if you don't know,
my sudden interest in Arduino and in electronics
is because I am currently trying to build my own sensor
and I'm vlogging about it on my channel.
So if you're interested in that,
you can click the playlist on the side here
that I will link and then you can follow
all of that fun journey.
And if you're just here to learn something
about the Arduino, then I hope this video helps you out.
So,
what is Arduino?
It's basically just a circuit board
built around a microcontroller chip
with already soldered connections.
So what's a microcontroller chip?
A microcontroller is basically just a really small computer.
So generally in a computer,
you have your CPU, or multiple CPUs,
which are central processing units.
The CPU is basically the part of the computer
that carries out instructions given by a computer program.
So computers contain CPUs, they contain memory,
and they also contain
programmable input and output terminals.
So the great thing about this thing
is that it has a microcontroller chip
that does all three of those functions.
So it's a CPU,
it has memory,
and it also has programmable input and output terminals.
And then the Arduino basically just has
all of those connections already laid out and soldered
in an easy to use format on this little board.
And so I'm using the Arduino Nano as an example,
but really the general principles behind this board
and the Uno, for example,
and other similar Arduino boards, are very similar.
You just have to find a diagram
and match up the different terminals.
So basically we've talked about the microcontroller.
What else is there on this board?
Well, the Arduino Nano for example
has this micro USB attachment,
which you can plug into your computer,
and I think the Uno has a regular USB attachment.
But basically you're able to then plug this in
and it's able to power itself
when you plug it into your computer.
So it doesn't need an external power.
You plug it into your computer
and then you should be able to connect to this little board.
So this little USB I'll get into in a bit.
Next thing I wanna talk about are all these pins.
So each of these pins' main function
is to be configured as either an input or an output.
So what would be configured as an input?
A sensor for example.
So you're sensing an outside external component
and you want the data to be read
into
your Arduino board,
whereas an LED, for example,
would be configured as an output
because you're gonna want for example your LED
to flash every time
you decide every time a measurement is taken.
So your board is going to be telling the LED to flash.
So each one of these pins is configured
as either input or output.
Then you have both analog and digital pins.
The difference?
Well, digital pins basically read or output binary.
So binary is zeroes and ones,
and then the analog pins read or output
a signal between zero and five volts.
For example, an analog sensor
would be something like a thermocouple
because you have correlations
between temperature and voltage output.
Taking voltage as a measurement
then you're able to measure temperature.
Whereas for example my pressure sensor...
My barometric pressure sensor
is digital so this would give me a digital input signal
that would go into my Arduino board.
Now going specifically into these different pins,
we'll start off with this +5V.
So this is where you would connect
a five volt regulated power supply for the board,
which would be used to power
the controller and the other components placed on the board.
Then you have VIN,
which is the unregulated input power supply voltage,
and this can take anywhere from seven to 12 volts,
and it's also used to power the Arduino board.
Then you have the 3.3V pin, which is basically
the minimum voltage generated
by the voltage regulator on the board.
Then you have two different ground pins,
and you have two reset pins,
and the reset pins are helpful
when running some complex scripts on your Arduino.
Then you have two pins for Serial communication.
So one of them is to receive data
and one of them is to transmit data.
Basically you use this
if you wanna hook up a GSM module.
In addition to the Serial protocol
you also have SPI protocol,
and SPI is Serial Peripheral Interface.
The SPI protocol is also for
data transfer but it would be between
the microcontroller and external components,
which would be other sensors
or logging on to an SD card, et cetera.
Then we have two pins on the analog side,
which are dedicated to I-squared-C protocol.
So the A4 pin represents the Serial Data line
and the A5 represents the Serial Clock line.
This is basically the clock signal
generated by the master device
and is sent and then used for data synchronization
between
the
Arduino board and whatever I-squared-C bus
is connected to the Arduino board.
So for example,
I wanna connect a realtime clock module
as my I-squared-C bus.
Why?
Because the sensor I'm going to develop
is going to require that I have an external clock
to start and stop my Arduino
to take periodic measurements,
and in the meantime, I don't want my Arduino
to be running on battery the entire time,
'cause if I'm going to deploy for like six months,
I don't want to have to go back every three weeks
and change the battery.
So that's why I would want to send
the clock and data information from my Arduino board
to my realtime clock
so that I can have them both in sync.
So some other pins worth mentioning.
You can hook up
pin 13,
which is used simply for testing.
So it's connected to this little LED light here.
In addition to the
pin 13 LED, which is used for testing,
you also have a power LED and then you also have
Serial communication receiver and transmitter lights.
So these LEDs are basically just used as indicators.
So some other pins on the digital side.
D2
and D3
are used as external interrupt pins,
which are basically used to stop the main program,
and then you can program some special instructions
to be played out,
and then when this emergency protocol is done executing,
it would return to the regular protocol
of your programmed Arduino board.
Finally there are six pins on the Arduino,
which can provide Pulse Width Modulation output.
If you don't know what Pulse Width Modulation is
basically just go online.
It's just a way to convert binary to an analog signal.
If you specifically need that,
you have six pins that you can connect those to.
And then finally you have this AREF pin,
which is used to measure
the reference input voltage of your device.
So something that may or may not be interesting for you.
We were talking about
the internal clock of this device and
so at least this Arduino,
I'm not sure if it is on every single Arduino,
but on the Nano, it has a crystal oscillator,
which is basically just used
to generate a 16 hertz frequency,
and this frequency is basically just a precise way
to keep time on the Arduino board.
That's how the clock signals generate on the Arduino Nano.
I mentioned this little
mini USB here that plugs into your computer.
So Arduino has its own little program
used for yeah, programming the Arduino board
called Arduino IDE and it's written in Java,
and it's open source so when you plug this
into the computer, you can download that program
and then there are tons of tutorials online
so you can learn to start playing with it.
You can start connecting things
to the input and output terminals
and controlling the pins
inside the Arduino IDE program.
And if you ever screw up, it comes with
this little handy little reset button in the middle.
And that's pretty much everything I know
about the Arduino at this point.
And if you have any questions,
then please leave them in the comments below.
If you have any suggestions for other people
then please feel free to answer other people's comments
but please be nice in the comments.
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Thank you so much for watching this video.