Experiments with the Arduino

Lately I became the happy owner of an Arduino Sidekick Basic Kit.

I will post here some experiments with this lovely device.

What is the Arduino

Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.

Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP.) The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.

The Arduino programming language is an implementation of Wiring, a similar physical computing platform, which is based on the Processing multimedia programming environment.

Playing with a tricolor LED

The circuit

The code

void fade(int r1, int g1, int b1, int r2, int g2, int b2, int steps, int wait)
{
  float dr = (float)(r2 - r1) / steps;
  float dg = (float)(g2 - g1) / steps;
  float db = (float)(b2 - b1) / steps;
  
  float r = r1; float g = g1; float b = b1;
  
  for(int i = 0; i < steps; i++) {
    analogWrite(9, r);         
    analogWrite(10, g);         
    analogWrite(11, b);
    
    r = r + dr;
    g = g + dg;
    b = b + db;
    
    delay(wait); 
  }
}

void setup()  { 
} 
 
void loop()  {

 fade(255, 0, 0, 0, 255, 0, 100, 50);
 delay(1000);
 fade(0, 255, 0, 255, 0, 0, 100, 50);
 delay(1000);
}

The result

Conclusion

I'm an absolute beginner in electronics, but I already felt in love with this micro-controller board. Looking forward to experiment and understand some more :-)