What is the Arduino Board? – It is an open-source platform used for making or building hardware projects. Arduino consists of both physical and software. The software is used to upload the program to the Arduino Board. Arduino Board can read and write inputs and outputs. It has both, digital and analog both pins are available for I/O. Using Arduino IDE, you can program the Arduino board. Arduino Program is based on their language called Arduino Language. It is just like C and C++ programming. Over the years Arduino has been the brain of thousands of projects, from everyday objects to complex scientific instruments. Arduino Boards are widely used development board for IoT.
Why Arduino Boards?
Arduino is easy to use for beginners and also flexible for advanced users. Arduino is used in IoT applications, wearable, 3D printing, embedded environments and many more. It is low cost and easy to get started with programming. It is the most favorite board among Teachers and Students.
- Inexpensive – Arduino boards are relatively inexpensive compared to other microcontroller platforms. The least expensive version of the Arduino module can be assembled by hand, and even the pre-assembled Arduino modules cost less than $50
- Cross-platform – The Arduino Software (IDE) runs on Windows, Macintosh OSX, and Linux operating systems. Most microcontroller systems are limited to Windows.
- Simple, clear programming environment – The Arduino Software (IDE) is easy-to-use for beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users to take advantage of as well. For teachers, it’s conveniently based on the Processing programming environment, so students learning to program in that environment will be familiar with how the Arduino IDE works.
- Open source and extensible software – The Arduino software is published as open-source tools, available for extension by experienced programmers. The language can be expanded through C++ libraries, and people wanting to understand the technical details can make the leap from Arduino to the AVR C programming language on which it’s based. Similarly, you can add AVR-C code directly into your Arduino programs if you want to.
- Open source and extensible hardware – The plans of the Arduino boards are published under a Creative Commons license, so experienced circuit designers can make their version of the module, extending it and improving it. Even relatively inexperienced users can build the breadboard version of the module to understand how it works and save money.
Mostly used Arduino Boards
There are many Arduino boards are available in the market. In Arduino boards, Arduino UNO is a widely used board.
- UNO
- Mega 2560
- Nano
- 101
- Due
- Micro
- Mini
- Zero