Introduction to Arduino UNO R3 !

Arduino UNO R3

So now we’re moving into some serious fun stuff. The image you are seeing above is of Arduino UNO R3. You can imagine it as a very small and less powerful CPU. It has a microcontroller, some other complementary components, USB port and power jack and some output/input pins.

The black chip on it is a microcontroller named “Atmega 328P “. Rest of the board can be imagined equivalent to the motherboard. Just like in a PC microprocessor do all the math and motherboard provides information gateways, safety measure and allows the microprocessor to communicate with other devices, Board of Arduino do the same for microcontroller Atmega 328P. If you want to know what’s the difference between microcontroller and microprocessor go here.

Technical specification: -

1.       Microcontroller - Atmega 328p

2.       Operating voltage – 5V

3.       Digital pins – 14 pins (6 PWM)

4.       Analog pins – 5 pins

5.       Approximate DC current - 40 to 50 mA

6.       Flash memory - 32 kb

7.       EPROM- 1 Kb

.1.       Clock speed – 16 MHz

Parts of Arduino 

Parts of the Arduino:-

         I.            Microcontroller: - 

It is the central processing unit. All operations of controlling carried out in this chip. UNO R3 board has Atmega 328p chipset which is a 28 pin IC as shown in the picture above

       II.            USB port: -

The USB port is used to connect Arduino to PC so that a program (set of instructions) which tells Arduino what to do can be uploaded to the Arduino. Arduino is connected to PC by a USB to USB mini cable. When Arduino is connected to PC Arduino is automatically powered by USB so no need to connect supplementary power Through power jack.

     III.            Dedicated Power Jack: -

Power port is used to supply only power to Arduino. For power to be supplied from USB Arduino Should be always connected to PC by USB cable and when we are working on mobile projects like RC car, Drone etc. We can’t connect it with USB cable all the time. Hence in such condition after code (program) is Uploaded we can use dedicated power jack to power it from a battery or any other source. Voltage input should be 7-12 volts.

    Pins: -

1.       I/O pins

I/O (input/output) pin are connection points to which you can connect your components like Led, potentiometer, various sensors and much more. I/O pins are of two types namely analog pins and digital pins. To know more about digital and analog signals click here Arduino has 6 Analog pins namely [A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5] are used to read sensor values but they can also, be Used as a digital pin. But this pin cannot be used to get analog output. Arduino has 12 Digital pins (numbered from 0,1,2,3,………….,13) they are used to them either as a digital pin or as a digital output pin.  Some pins from digital pins can be used as PWM (pulse width modulation) pins. PWM is adjusting frequency and width of the digital signal to get a signal which works like analog signal but not actually an analog signal we will discuss it in details in further posts. The mode of Pin is user defined in program uploaded from PC

2.       Power pins:-

Power pins are pins which provide output at two voltages 5 volt and 3.3 volts. This is used to supply auxiliary power to sensors, potentiometer etc There are many devices which required an auxiliary power supply. Also, Arduino has 3 Ground pins 2 in a group of power pin set and one in a group of digital pins. You can use anyone all of them are connected internally to learn more about what ground is click here

         I.            Reset button: -

A reset button is used to Delete the code uploaded on the board. Just hold it for about 10 seconds LED Will flash and your code is deleted.

To upload code to the Arduino we will need Arduino IDE software in next article I will step by step explain how to install the software and We'll upload our first code. stay tuned......