Arduino: Beginner's Toy or Expert's tool?

And the conventional introduction goes like this, "Arduino is an open-source hardware & software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices." - according to Wikipedia.

Simply Arduino is a single PCB board containing a variety of options to program the on-board microprocessor. It offers analog, digital, and Pulse width modulation (PWM) pins that can be used either as input or output pins. These pins create direct connections to the MCU. 

Now the question comes, why this is so popular, or what is the advantage of this thing?

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✔ Simplified Interface: If you've worked with MCU's, you may have witnessed how difficult it is to program the MCU. You need an external burner to load programs in the MCU; adding several components to the MCU to work accordingly; supplying necessary power to the MCU which are sometimes not available. Arduino removes all these barriers. One can easily access to the MCU using Arduino.

✔ Arduino IDE: The most fascinating feature of Arduino is the IDE. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Using Arduino IDE, even an amateur can access the MCU programming. The onboard MCU can be programmed using simple C/C++. 

✔ Libraries & Examples: Arduino IDE comes with a vast collection of libraries that can be easily integrated into the programs to connect other modules/components/other MCUs to Arduino. One can manually install libraries in the IDE and even one can build his own library and add it to the IDE. And for the amateurs, Arduino IDE provides different example codes that are made open source.

✔ External Loading: Again Arduino can be externally programmed using the ICSP pins. Arduino can be used as an ISP. 

✔ Arduino supports various kinds of shields. That reduces the complexity of connections.

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Arduino also has SRAM, Flash Memory, EEPROM, Clock Speed. The specifications vary from board to board. There are a couple of Arduino boards;

① Arduino Uno (R3)                 

② Arduino Mega                       

③ Arduino Due                         

④ Arduino Leonardo

⑤ Arduino Nano

⑥ Arduino Micro

⑦ Arduino Lilypad

⑧ Arduino RS232

⑨ Arduino Diecimila

⑩ Arduino Duemilanove

⑪ Arduino Pro Micro

⑫ Arduino Pro

⑬ Arduino Robot

⑭ Arduino Esplora

⑮ Arduino Ethernet

⑯ Arduino Yun

⑰ Arduino Uno (R2)

⌕ Download Arduino IDE. Click IDE

⌕ Explore built-in examples. Click Examples

⌕ You can explore various Arduino projects from the website. Click Projects

⌕ Get to know about Arduino products from the Arduino website. Click Arduino Products.

There may have much more developed boards like Raspberry Pi, that offer advanced facilities and diverse environments of working but Arduino is a kinda platform that serves not only the amateurs but also the experts to build fascinating projects. The user-friendly environment of Arduino is perfect for Beginner's projects, Instructor's tool, Learner's device & so on. 

Get to know about the specifications of different kinds of Arduino boards in the next article, Arduino Family: Part - 01 

Till then, explore.............!!!

Image Source:

* DroneBot Workshop