Whilst ‘Arduino’ is more correctly described as an open source hardware and software company, the word is synonymously used to refer to the companies flagship product, the single board microcontroller. In this article we aim to provide a suitable introduction to the Arduino boards for future reference whenever the Arduino boards are used for making and learning.
The word Arduino has become ubiquitous in the world of prototype electronics, and for good reason. Despite a wealth of competitors, the Arduino boards are still more often than not a makers go-to board for electronic automation.
[A Little History..]
The first Arduino board was born at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. The idea for a small
What is it?
The heart of the Arduino is its ATmega microcontroller, so to understand what the Arduino is we have to first understand what a microcontroller is.
A microcontroller is an integrated circuit (See The Science Behind Integrated Circuits) which contains three things that are required for computing;
- It contains a microprocessor which allows it to process information
- It contains memory for both reading and storing information
- It contains input and output channels
Whilst the computer that you are reading this article from is likely a ‘General Purpose Computer’ which is able to compute data using a variety of programs which can be added to and changed during use. Microcontrollers are computers that are far more specific in the jobs that they carry out, they hold a much smaller amount of data and code which they use to carry out specific actions. As such, we call then ‘Special Purpose Computers’.