Report on Arduino Microcontroller: History, Circuits, and Coding

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Arduino microcontroller, starting with its historical background at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) and the evolution from the Wiring platform to the Arduino we know today. It details the microcontroller's applications in modern digital projects, from simple LED blinking to complex automated systems. The report outlines the four key steps in the Arduino coding process, including defining the program, defining inputs and outputs, creating methods, and calling those methods in a loop. Furthermore, it explores the hardware design, emphasizing its open-source nature, the use of Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontrollers, and the availability of software under copyleft licenses. The report also specifies the details of the Arduino Uno board, including the number of digital input and output pins and the use of female headers for circuit connections, along with relevant references.

Running head: ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER
Arduino Microcontroller
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER
History of Arduino:
The Arduino is an electronics platform and is open source in nature which is mainly
microcontrollers. This microcontroller is able to read inputs from various types of sensors and
can provide output as per the demand of user. For this the user need to upload appropriate
coding to the microcontroller. Considering the history of Arduino, this project was started in
Italy at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII). Around the year 2003 in IDII there was some
peoples who created a new platform called wiring as their Master’s thesis project. The main
aim of this thesis was creating and simple low cost tools for producing digital projects
(Badamasi 2014). This wiring platform was having a PCB and on that PCB there was an
ATmega168 microcontroller. This platform was also having an IDE for library function
processing for programming the microcontroller. In the same year David Mellis, Massimo
Banzi and David Cuartielles integrated support of ATmega 8 microcontroller to wiring which
was even cheaper. Instead of further working on wiring the project was forked by them and it
was renamed to Arduino. From then the Arduino created its presence in market.
Use of Arduino in Modern Days:
As a cheap microcontroller the Arduino provides various types of facilities to the
modern days. Currently this Arduino is used in various types of digital project. Arduino can
be used for performing simple tasks such as led light strip blinking to some critical task
which includes automated street light control (Fransiska et al. 2013. The Arduino is
consisting various types of sensors in the market which takes the usability of the Arduino to
the next level. In the current situation the Arduino is mainly used by students of various
universities for performing their project related tasks. Arduino can be also used for crating
simple connection from a complex type of circuit connection.

2ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER
Steps in Coding:
In the coding process or the programming process of the Arduino there are total four
general steps which need to be followed. The first step is related with defining the program.
In the second step each of the input and the output of the Arduino is defined. In the third step
of coding appropriate methods regarding a specific program is created. In the last step, crated
methods are called in a loop. The first step in this case is not necessarily required as this is
nothing just a comment block (Bawa and Patil 2013). Programmer can use this part to
demonstrate some information about the code. The rest of the parts are required in the coding
process and a complementary part of the coding process.
Details about Arduino and its circuits:
The Arduino is an open source hardware. The design of the hardware are referenced
under and circulated under creative common attribution Share-Alike 2.5 licence. The design
of the software and hardware of Arduino are available freely under copyleft licences. Most of
the Arduino board consists Atmel 8-bit AVR type of microcontroller and each of these board
models varies in terms of pins, flash memories and features (Arduino 2015). These
microcontrollers of Arduino are pre-programmed using a bootloader which assists in
uploading programs directly to the on-chip flash memory of Arduino microcontroller. In this
case the default bootloader is the optiboot bootloader. Considering the architecture of
Arduino, this is having both the programmable circuit board and the software for writing the
code that will be uploaded to the board. Most of the I/O pins are exposed by this
microcontroller for the use of other circuits. For the particular board Arduino Uno there are
total 14 digital input and output pins which are able to generate pulse width modulation
system. These pins of Microcontroller are located at the top of the actual board via female
headers.

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References:
Arduino, S.A., 2015. Arduino. Arduino LLC.
Badamasi, Y.A., 2014, September. The working principle of an Arduino. In 2014 11th
International Conference on Electronics, Computer and Computation (ICECCO) (pp. 1-4).
IEEE.
Bawa, D. and Patil, C.Y., 2013. Fuzzy control based solar tracker using Arduino
Uno. International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology, 2(12), pp.179-187.
Fransiska, R.W., Septia, E.M.P., Vessabhu, W.K., Frans, W. and Abednego, W., 2013,
November. Electrical power measurement using arduino uno microcontroller and labview.
In 2013 3rd International Conference on Instrumentation, Communications, Information
Technology and Biomedical Engineering (ICICI-BME) (pp. 226-229). IEEE.