Arduino !

Yesterday my Arduino microcontroller arrived by mail!

I used the class notes from this blog to get started. And 2 to 3 hours later, I made the video below. The arduino controls 7 blue LEDs [and yes, those are just straws on top of the LEDs] and animates them in many different ways. A potentiometer controls the speed of the animations. The Arduino makes everything really easy, it comes with software in which you can program the controller with a C-like language.

It has 8kB of Flash program memory, 1kB of RAM and a clockspeed of 12MHz. It has 13 digital in/out pins and 5 analog in pins. Analog output can be done with PWM [pulse-width modulation].



Below is a picture of the setup. The digital pins and ground of the Arduino are connected to the LEDs, the analog-in pin, the 5V and the ground to the potentiometer.