Arduino; a platform, company, hardware, software or name?

 

Well I have to say that is all of them, is a microcontroller platform which has became one of the most famous platform over the years.

It is a open source software and hardware, which has a huge community willing to help you with your projects. The Arduino UNO hardware for example consist on a basic microcontroller (Atmega328P) which is the brain of the platform.

This is the Atmega328P and combining this microcontroller with a well design PCB and a translator TTL-USB we have gotten the Arduino UNO which you can see in the next picture.

 

I´ll be referring only on the Atmel328P because you could also do the same only with the same microcontroller on a different printed circuit board. I will also use the Arduino Software or IDE (Integrate Development Environment) version 1.05 and other software like Proteus ISIS and Proteus ARES to design PCBs and to simulate how the microcontroller works.

Here you can see the schematic of the Arduino UNO platform, take into account that the TTL-USB translator is an Atmega16U2 and it has it own firmware to do this translation or conversion.

 

 

It has its own power regulating circuit to 5 volts is also has a switching circuit that lets you power the board from a USB port when there is no voltage on the power jack or vice versa.

BuzzNet Tags: Arduino