Arduino introduction, what is it?

Arduino is part of physical programming, meaning that the programming we do will have interaction with the physical world. A clear example of this is to move motors, open doors, turn on spotlights, make LED sequences and use different types of sensors (Infrared, humidity, gas, ultrasound, etc ...).

Arduino UNO | https://www.arduino.cc/

Basically it was designed as an educational tool to be able to program the ATmega microcontroller, in that case the Atmega 328P-PU that belongs to the arduino uno.

Arduino is part of what we know as collective intelligence, which is achieved through the internet by developing open codes and open hardware, that is to say that all the hardware plans of the construction of the card are delivered to the public so that anyone can develop it, improve or expand as well as its development platform (Arduino IDE).

Initially it was born as a degree project of a Colombian student (Hernando Barragán), who developed his plaque called "Wiring", then a group of Italian professors what he did was take this plaque and lower his production costs and put the name of "Arduino".

The development environment is based on the programming language Processing, which was initially developed by the MIT university. Processing is based on C ++, so when programming Arduino cards for those who know C ++ it is easier to do so since it has many programming facilities.

As it is open hardware you can get the electrical plans so that you can make your own board or make modifications and can even download the printed circuits (PCB) and finally In the same way, you can download the development environment by accessing the Arduino page and there you can download them here.

Another advantage is that it is multiplatform, so the development environment can be used in Windows, Mac, Linux and you can even obtain the source code of it and adapt it to your needs.

In general Arduino has really great advantages at the time we want to develop, because the community is going up the programs and sharing them so we can all learn by taking the source codes and changing them to our liking or using them depending on whether we are going working on our projects.

The development environment contains examples of very basic codes, such as turning on and off a led or fade.

The software is completely free so that each time the development team makes a change in it they deliver it as an update so it is not necessary to buy updates.

Example Shields. | https://www.robotshop.com/

Finally another of the advantages that Arduino has, is that they exist and continue to develop "Shields" to obtain some improvements, an example of them are the GSM shields that allow us to connect the Arduino to the cellular telephone network, the bluetooth modules that allow sending and receive data, etc...

Currently there are several types of arduino, some designed for general purposes and others for specific applications such as game development. In another post we will see its characteristics as well as which one to choose according to our needs.

You can access the post here.