The Arduino open source microcontroller

Communicating data is important - your Arduino might be used as a sensor, or to control some hardware, and therefore needs to either send data to another computer, or to receive commands from another computer. The core necessity is sending and receiving data. This video is an in-depth look at how to implement NRZ (Non-Return-To-Zero) data communications using a single pin on the Arduino. Also in the video is a look at connecting a certain LCD panel to an Arduino.

With a few add-on parts, you can create your own customized FM radio receiver. The attached project uses an Arduino NANO and a TES5767 radio module that can be used either with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. The display is a Nokia 5110 LCD display, but you could use any display of your choosing. The TES5767 uses an I2C interface, making it easy to integrate, and making an I2C display unit a good addition.

The most useful debugging tool many programmers have is the Print statement. They insert Print statements throughout their code, to see if the program got to certain points and if so what was the values. While there are fancy schmancy debugger packages available, the Print statement is extremely useful and simple. An Arduino presents a challenge because the software executes over on that teensy board, there's no computer display, no direct connection, where would the print statement send its output? Turns out the Arduino software stack includes a Serial console that you can view from inside the Arduino IDE. What we'll do in this article is go over a trivial example of reading an analog value to print on the serial console.

The Arduino is an extremely popular microcontroller for open source DIY hardware hacking projects. There are many flavors of Arduino, and for this project we'll use an Arduino UNO. All Arduino's have a well-defined GPIO interface supporting "Shield" boards providing customized capabilities. The GPIO pins can be connected to your DIY hardware, or to 3rd party Shields, for which there are many suppliers. That's what makes the Arduino so interesting to regular folk like you and me. There's a whole slew of microcontroller chips and boards targeted to commercial and industrial systems. That's not who we are, we're hacking away in a spare bedroom.

With this article we'll take a first step or two to get an Arduino connected to our computer, get accustomed to the IDE, and upload a couple simple programs. Down at the bottom are a few videos.

The Arduino doesn't have an intrinsically native display. Programmers frequently debug their software by printing stuff to a screen, or they need a human-machine-interface to show what's happening, and even a simple text display can be quite handy.

With this article we'll install a particular kind of LCD display, and learn how to drive the LCD display using the LiquidCrystal library. This particular LCD requires wiring up a little circuit that uses a potentiometer to control brightness. While we might yearn for a simple-to-connect-display, we do learn a little electronics along the way. At the end of the day the Arduino is about encouraging us to fire up our soldering iron and making things.

Once you've wired the display, the LiquidCrystal library makes it easy to display text on the screen.

The Arduino marketplace includes a long list of controller boards and add-on accessories. This guide shows some of the best Arduino-compatible products available.