Category: The Arduino Platform

  • Installing Arduino on Your Computer

    To program the Arduino board, you must first install the IDE by downloading the appropriate file from the Arduino website. Choose the right version for your operating system. (For Windows choose the option Win 7 and Newer). On the next page of the website you may chose to make a financial contribution to support the Arduino IDE, but…

  • The Software Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

    The IDE is a special program running on your computer that allows you to write sketches for the Arduino board in a simple language modeled after the Processing language. The magic happens when you press the button that uploads the sketch to the board: the code that you have written is translated into the C language (which…

  • The Arduino Hardware

    The Arduino board is a small microcontroller board, which is a small circuit (the board) that contains a whole computer on a small chip (the microcontroller). This computer is at least a thousand times less powerful than the MacBook I’m using to write this, but it’s a lot cheaper and very useful for building interesting…

  • Introduction

    Arduino is composed of two major parts: an Arduino board, which is the piece of hardware you work on when you build your objects; and the Arduino Integrated Development Environment, or IDE, the piece of software you run on your computer. You use the IDE to create a sketch (a little computer program) that you upload to the Arduino…