Introduction to Arduino

What is Arduino?

Arduino board was first made in the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute. Main intention was to help students and enthusiastic who are without or very little background in electronics and programming concepts. This board capturing the attention of a big community of amateur and professional electronics project makers and started to evolve to adapt to new requirements and challenges, separating its presence from simple 8-bit boards to products for IoT (Internet of Things) applications, 3D printing, wearable, and embedded surroundings.

At present, Arduino is one of the most popular open sourced electronic platform to makers, enthusiast, hobbyists, technicians, engineers, experts, scientists. Because of its low cost, versatility, easy to access nature
As it is open sourced, all original source code and design files are freely available .This gives the opportunity to hack, tweak and redesign the boards to needs. And it makes Arduino more popular and versatile
The heart of the hardware is a micro controller which can be programmed through the dedicated IDE (Integrated Development Environment) named sketch easily.. The simplicity of the Arduino language makes it very easy for almost everyone who has an interest in electronics to write programs without the understanding of complex algorithms or codes.

Why Arduino is so popular?

Both Arduino hardware and software are open sourced. Means, all the design files (drawing, source code and technical literature) related to hardware and software are freely available for personal or commercial use. The development cost of the hardware is very nominal against the similar proprietary products by the industrial giants. Though it doesn’t require any licenses to develop,modify, use, redistribute or even sell the product, Arduino name is trade mark protected (Arduino™) i.e., anyone is free to sell his version of Arduino board by any other name but if they want to sell it under the name “Arduino” then they need to take permission from the founders and follow their quality terms.
The Software also open sourced means source code library are available to modify. This make the project more versatile and improve its capabilities. T
The Arduino is supported by strong online community of students, educators, professionals and teachers which means you will get many supporting hands for any of your problems

Why to learn Arduino ?

Arduino board is widely used for making different engineering projects and different applications.
1. Easy to Use: The Arduino software is very simple to use for beginners, yet flexible adequate for advanced users.
2. Versatility : Cross-Functional.  It runs Windows, Linux, and Mac. Teachers and students in the schools utilize it to design low-cost scientific instruments to verify the principles of physics and chemistry.
3. The simplicity: clear programming environment 
4. Cost Effective : Software is free and hardware are cheap compare to others

There are numerous other micro-controller platforms obtainable for physical computing. The Netmedia’s BX-24, Parallax Basic Stamp, MIT’s Handyboard, Phidget, and many others present related functionality.

Cost of Arduino ?

• In compare to industrial controllers, sensors and actuator, this is very cheap.
• Arduino Uno R3 is available between 600 to 700 INR and sensors are available from 40/- to 300/-

Arduino Variants available in Market

When you go to the market to buy your first Arduino, you will find that there are many variants are available.

• Arduino Uno
• Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimila
• Arduino Nano
• Arduino Mega or Mega 2560
• Arduino Mega ADK
• Arduino Leonardo
• Arduino Leonardo ETH
• Arduino Micro
• Arduino Esplora
• Arduino Mini
• Arduino Ethernet
• Arduino Fio
• Arduino BT
• LilyPad Arduino USB
• LilyPad Arduino
• Arduino Pro or Pro Mini
• Arduino NG or older
• Arduino Robot Control
• Arduino Robot Motor
• Arduino Gemma
• Adafruit Circuit Playground
• Arduino Yün Mini
• Arduino Industrial 101
• Linino One
• Arduino Uno WiFi

These variants are depends upon different functionality like memory, wi-fi capabilities etc. Below reference of most popular Arduino boards to understand the differences. Arduino uno is the most basic to start with. We will discuss in details about Arduino uno in next post and most the projects of this site is with Arduino Uno.

comparison of popular Arduino boards