Friday, September 16, 2011

Arduino

Greetings

Sorry for the long hiatus in posting. I had no time to create anything, what with all final exams of grade 11, and didn't have my kits for the entirety of the summer vacations. In any case, I ma back now.

A technology that has now interested me is Arduino.  Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform, which comes with an AVR ATmega328  microprocessor, 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.The micro controller can be programmed using the Arduino programming language, which is based on Wiring. Wiring is pretty much C/C++, but with two mandatory functions that have to be defied to run the program: loop() and run().

Once I got my hands on an Arduino, I immediately borrowed a seven-segment-display, which has 6 input pins and 2 ground pins. After  connecting these input pins with six digital input/output pins on the board, I connected the two round pins to the ground on the Arduino. Then I got a simple push button, and connected it to +5V., ground and one of the input/output pin on the board. So, whenever I pressed the button, +5V would be sent to the digital input/output pin, which I could detect.

Then I created a simple program, which would define the state of the LEDs in the seven segment display, to display a certain digit. For example, for the digit 1, the state would be defined as

0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0

which means that only 2 leads from the seven segment displays must be give power and in this case it is leads 4 and 6. There is also code in the program to increment numbers by and roll back to 0, when he number is 9, whenever the button is pressed.

I don't have a schematic of my circuit, but I did manage to take some pics. Here you go:

View from the top. Notice the 7 resistors.

Another view
And here is the fully annotated code. You will need the Arduino software to compile it.

Link to the code (.pde file)

This is not the end.

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