Getting started with

BE

TA

Ve
r

sio
n

arduino

Written by Massimo Banzi.

With materials written by Massimo Banzi, Erica Calogero,
David Cuartielles, Je Gray, Tom Igoe, David Mellis and Cristian Nold.
Illustrations by Elisa Canducci.

Thanks
The Arduino team is composed of:
Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, David Mellis and Gianluca Martino.
The Arduino team would like to thank the following people and institutions for the
support in making this booklet:
Aliadi Cortelletti for typesetting the booklet.
Barbara Ghella, Stefano Mirti, Claudio Moderini.
Interaction Design Lab, Milano
Domus Academy, Milano
Interaction Design Institute, Milano
Malm University, Faculty of Art, Culture and Communication (K3)

This booklet is released under a Creative Commons License:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
You are free:
* to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
* to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
* You must attribute the work in the manner specied by the author or licensor.
* You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
* If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting
work only under a license identical to this one.
* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this
work.
* Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright
holder.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/deed.en

arduino
Index

Introduction 4
/ what is interaction design ? 5
/ what is physical computing ? 5

the arduino way 7

/ tinkering 8
/ patching 9
/ circuit bending 10
/ keyboard hacks 11
/ we love junk 12
/ hacking toys 13
/ collaboration 14
/ the arduino hardware 15
/ the software (IDE) 16

really getting started... 19

/ the interactice device 19
/ sensors and actuators 19
/ basic introduction to programming 20
/ blinking an LED 23
/ what is electricity ? 25
/ the breadboard 28
/ reading a push button 30
/ trying out dierent on~o sensors 32
/ use the light sensor instead of the pushbutton 33
/ analogue inputs 34
/ try duerent resistive sensors 36
/ serial communication 37
/ analogue inputs (PWM) 39
/ driving bigger loads (motors, lams, etc) 40
/ complex sensors 42
/ talking to software 43
3

Introduction
Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board
and a development environment that implements the Processing language. Arduino
can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software
on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, Max/MSP). The boards can be assembled by
hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.
Arduino is dierent from other platforms that can be found on the market because
of these features:
The Arduino Project was developed out of an educational environment and is
therefore great for newcomers to get things working quickly.
It is a Multi Platform environment; it can run on Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
It is Based on the Processing programming IDE
It is programmed via a USB cable not a serial port. This is useful because many
modern computers dont have serial ports anymore.
It is Open Source hardware and software - If you wish you can download the circuit
diagram, buy all the components, and make your own, without paying anything to the
makers of Arduino.
The hardware is cheap. The USB board cost about EUR 20 and replacing a burnt out
chip on the board is easy and costs no more than EUR 5. So you can aord to make
mistakes.
There is an active community of users so there is plenty of people who can help you.
What does this all mean? Were going to discover it this through this booklet that is
designed to help designers and artistis to understand what benets they can get from
learning how to use the Arduino platform and adopting its philosophy.

/ what is interaction design?

There are many denitions of Interaction Design but the one that I like the most
is simply Interaction Design is about the design of any interactive experience. In
todays world this generally is about the creation of meaningful between us (humans)
and artefacts. We also like to explore the creation of beautiful and maybe even
controversial between technology and us.
Specically we believe in designing through an iterative process based on prototypes
of ever increasing delity. This approach ,also part of some types of conventional
design, can be extended to include prototyping with technology and in particular with
electronics.
This particular brand of Interaction Design is called Physical Computing (or Physical
Interaction Design). This booklet is in no way a substitute for a book on Physical
Computing, we recommend you buy Tom Igoes excellent Physical Computing
book.

/ what is physical computing?

Physical Computing is about prototyping with electronics, turning sensors, actuators
and microcontrollers into materials for designers and artists.
It involves the design of interactive objects that can communicate with humans using
sensors and actuators controlled by a behaviour implemented as software running
inside a microcontroller.
In the past using electronics meant having to deal with engineers all the time and
this kept the designer from playing directly with the medium. Most of the tools were
meant for engineers and required extensive knowledge.
In recent years microcontrollers (small computers on a single chip) have become cheap
and easier to use allowing the creations of better tools.
The work that we have done with Arduino is to try to bring these tools one step
closer to the beginner allowing people to start building stu after only 3 or 4 days of
workshop.
With Arduino the designer or artist can get to know the basics of electronics and
sensors very quickly and start building prototypes with an investment of as little as
70EUR.
5

From the punk-zine snin glue England, circa 1977

6

The Arduino Way

The Arduino philosophy is based on making design rather then talking about it. It
is a constant search for faster and more accurate ways to build better prototypes. We
have explored many prototyping techniques and developed ways of thinking with our
hands.
The classic engineering relies on a strict process for getting from A to B while the
Arduino way is based on maybe getting lost in the way and nding C instead.
This is the process of tinkering that we are so fond about; playing with the medium in
an open-ended way, nding the unexpected. In this search we also selected a number
of software packages that enable that process, this constant manipulation of the
software and hardware medium.
Another concept we developed is the opportunistic prototyping: why spend time
and energy building from scratch, a process that requires time and profound technical
knowledge, while we can take already made devices and hack them in order to exploit
the hard work done by large companies and good engineers?
This become evident in Ivrea where the heritage of Olivetti is represented by a few
junkyards where computer parts, electronic components and devices of any sort have
been dumped after the demise of the Italian company. We could buy those devices for
a few euros and hack them into our prototypes dramatically shortening the loop.
The last element is the community. Engaging people and push them to share by being
the rst to share. Were standing on the shoulders of the giants of open source here.
In the next few paragraphs you can see some of our references that have inspired the
Arduino Way.

/ tinkering

We believe it is essential to play with the medium, exploring dierent possibilities

directly on the hardware and software, sometimes without a very dened goal.
We call this process Tinkering. An exhibition that took place at the Exploratorium in
2004 had the best denition of it:
Tinkering is what happens when you try something you dont quite know how to do, guided
by whim, imagination, and curiosity.
When you tinker, there are no instructions - but there are also no failures, no right or wrong
ways of doing things. Its about guring out how things work and reworking them.
Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects working in harmony - This is the stu
of tinkering.
Re-using existing technology is one of the best ways of tinkering. Getting cheap toys
or old discarded equipment and hacking them to make them do something new is one
of the best ways to get to great results.
8

/ patching

Robert Moog built his analogue synthesizers in a modular fashion and the musician
could try endless combination by Patching together dierent modules with cables.
This made the synthesizer look like an old telephone switch but, combined with the
numerous knobs, was the perfect platform for tinkering with sound and innovating
music. This technique has been translated into the world of software by programs like
Max or Pure Data.
9

/ circuit bending

Circuit bending is one of the most interesting forms of tinkering.

Its the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio
devices such as guitar eects, childrens toys and small synthesizers to create new
musical instruments and sound generators. The heart of this process is the art of
chance. It began in 1966 when Reed Ghazala by chance, shorted-out a toy amplier
against a metal object in his desk drawer, resulting in a stream of unusual sounds.
10

/ keyboard hacks

Taking apart a keyboard reveals a very simple (and cheap) device. The Heart of it is
this small board. By replacing the keyboard matrix with sensors we can implement
new ways to interact with software. This is a key hardware component to learn about
when starting in Physical Computing.
11

/ we love junk

One of the best ways to quickly get to results is to nd a great source of technology
junk and use it to quickly (and cheaply) get to prototype an experience. Accumulate
junk and go through it before starting to build something from scratch.
12

/ hacking toys

Toys are a fantastic source of cheap technology to hack and reuse. The best
interpretation of this way of working comes from Husman Haque and Adam
Somlai-Fisher that, with their Lowtech sensors and actuators project, have perfectly
described this technique.
13

/ collaboration
Collaboration between users is one of they key points in the Arduino world, through
the forum people from dierent parts of the world hel each other while learning about
the platform. The Arduino team encourages people to collaborate also at a local level
by helpig them to seutp users groups in every city they visit.

14

/ the arduino hardware

This is a picture of the Arduino board. At the beginning you might be a bit confused
with all those connectors. Here is an explanation of what every element of the board
does:
14 Digital IO (pins 0 - 13,) can be inputs or outputs as set in software.
6 Analogue In (pins 0 - 5) are dedicated analogue input pins. These take analogue
values (i.e. voltage readings) and convert them into a number between 0 and 1023.
3 Analogue Out (pins 9, 10, 11) these are actually 3 of the digital pins that can be
reassigned to do analogue output.
The board can be powered from your USB port or from the power socket. This setting
can be changed with the jumper marked SV1 in the diagram. If the jumper is closest
to the USB plug then the board is powered from there. If the jumper is on the 2 pins
closest to the DC connector then it is powered from there.
15

/ the software (IDE)

The last component of Arduino is the software. This is a special program running on
your computer that allows you to write programs for the Arduino board in a simple
language modelled after the Processing language. The magic happens when you
press the button that uploads the program to the board: the code you have written
is translated into C language, that is normally quite hard to use for a beginner, and
passed on to the avr-gcc compiler, an important piece of open-source software that
makes the ultimate translation into the language understood by the microcontroller.
This last step is quite important because its where Arduino is making your life
simple and hiding away as much as possible of the complexities of programming
microcontrollers.
Downloading and installing the software
In order to program the Arduino board you need to download the development
environment (IDE) from here:
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
Choose the right version for your operating system.
Download the le and uncompress it.
The rst thing to do is to install the drivers that allow your computer to talk to your
board through the USB port.
Macintosh:
Look for the Drivers folder inside the arduino-0004 folder and double-click on
the le called FTDIUSBSerialDriver_v2_0_1.dmg. When this has opened, install the
software contained in the FTDIUSBSerialDriver.pkg. At the end of this process youll
have to restart your machine to make sure the drivers apre properly loaded.
After the installation is successful you will also need to run the command called
macosx_setup.command
Follow the instructions provided by the program and type the password that you use
to login into your computer when asked.
After this program has run successfully you need to turn o your computer. Dont just
reboot or logout, really turn it o and back on again.
When this phase is over you can plug the board into the computer.
Windows:
Unzip the le called [FIXME] contained in the Drivers directory into a directory you
can easily nd later on.
Plug the board into the computer and, when the [FIXME] New Device Found
[/FIXME] window comes up, specify the location for the install wizard to look for the
drivers.
This will happen twice because the rst time the computer installs the low level driver
16

then a piece of code that makes the board look like a serial port.
Once the drivers are installed we can launch the development environment and start
using Arduino.
Using the development environment
After the application has come up you will see a window like this one

Firstly, you need to nd out which port your device is connected to

Macintosh:
From the Tools menu select Serial Port and select the port that begins with /dev/
cu.usbserial-. The last 3 characters identify which one is the USB port the board is
plugged to and change if you plug arduino into a dierent port.
17

[PIC screenshot of the Tools / Serial Port menu showing the list of ports]
Windows:
On Windows the process is a bit complicated at the beginning.
Opening the device manger from:
Start menu -> Control Panel -> System.. -> Hardware -> Device Manager
Look for the device in the list under Ports (COM & LPT).
Arduino will come up as an USB Serial Port and will have a name like COM4.
[PIC screenshot of the device manager showing arduino]
Note: For some reasons on some windows machine the COM port has a number
greater than 9 and this creates some problems when Arduino is trying to communicate
with it. Check in the Arduino troubleshooting section of the website how to x that.
Then in the IDE, select the appropriate port from the
Tools / Serial Port menu.
Now the Arduino development environment can talk to the Arduino board and
program it.

18

Really Getting Started with

Arduino
Now that we have introduced the Arduino philosophy and its components we are
ready to make something happen with your board.
In the following pages we will go through a few examples of the basic things you can
do with Arduino. At the end of these exercises you are ready to experiment on your
own.

/ the interactive device

Most of the objects we will build using the Arduino board follow a very simple pattern
that we call the Interactive Device
Its an electronic circuit that is able to sense the environment using components
called sensors and processing the information through behaviour implemented
as software. The device will then be able to interact back with the world using
actuators.

/ sensors and actuators

Sensors and Actuators are electronic components that allow a piece of electronics to
interact with the world.
Since the microcontroller is a very simple computer it can only process electric signals
(a bit like the electric pulses that are sent between neurons in our brains) in order to
enable it to sense light, temperature or other physical quantities it needs something
that can convert them into electricity. In our body the eye, for example, converts light
into signals that get sent to the brain using nerves while in the electronic we could
use a simple device called LDR that can measure the amount of light that hits it and
report it back as a signal that can be understood by the processor. [PIC LDR.ti]
Once the sensors have been read the device has the information needed to decide
how to react. This is done through Actuators. These are electronic components that
can convert an electric signal into a physical action. For example in 0ur bodies,
muscles receive electric signals from the brain and convert them into a movement
while in the electronic world this functions could be performed by an electric motor.
[PIC motor_fan.ti]
In the next chapters we will see how to read sensors of dierent types and control
dierent kinds of actuators.
19

/ basic introduction to programming

Some of you may never have programmed before, if you have you may skip this part.
Programming is about translating the behaviour we have in mind for our device into
instructions that can be understood by the processor.
In reality the processor uses a very detailed and very low-level language so through
time high level languages have been developed. These are a bit more close to human
languages than instructions like
lda 0x0f

Lets see how we would go about translating a simple behaviour into a piece of
program.
A simple programme can always be mocked up as sentence, for example:
When it is very dark I want the light to go on and the motor to start turning slowly
We could then rewrite this into pseudo code (something that looks more like a
program but its still human language):
If light level is less than 50 then
Turn Light on
Turn motor on slow
Loop again

We quickly realise that we need two types of programming structures: loops and
conditional statements.
A loop is necessary to allow the processor to continually read the states of its inputs as
well as to update the states of its outputs. Conditional statements will be used to check
for certain conditions and change the course of the program depending on them.
So the basic Arduino program looks like this:
// This is a comment
// variable declaration
int x;
void init() {
// put code here
}
void loop () {
// put code here
}
20

At the beginning of the program we declare variables, areas of memory used to store
data. Then the void init() function is used to setup the program (dene which pins on
the processor are inputs and which one are outputs etc)
The last function, void loop(), will then be executed indenitely until you turn the
Arduino board o. So this is where we want all our conditional logic to be stored. It is
the real program and where we can control the ow of the program.
The text beginning with // is a comment, its very useful for you to remind yourself
what your code does when you re-open it after a while or for other people
Variables
One special thing about programming is that every time you want to store some value
you need to use a variable that you have to declare. That is, tell the computer what
kind of value to expect. There are a few basic data types that a computer can expect
that we will go through here:
int an integer is a whole number i.e. 1,2,3,5 etc.
byte an integer number between 0 and 255, this is useful if you need to save memory
because it uses only 1 byte of memory. (Remember that the arduino board has
only 1024 bytes of RAM)
For most of the programming you will be doing, these data types will be all you need,
to go into more detail, see: [URL of arduino reference]
Flow control
If [condition] Then
In Arduino, an if statement looks like this:
if(expression)
{
statement;
statement;
}

Where the expression could be one of the following:

a == b
a != b
a>b
a<b
a =< b
a >= b

a equals b
a is not equal to b
a is greater than b
a is less than b
a is less than or equals to b
a is greater than or equals to b
21

(N.B. do not confuse == with the assignment operator = that actually changes the
value of the variable to the left of it, this can be very dangerous!)
Statements can be anything you like (including more conditional statements).
For loops
for (i=1; i <= 8; i++)
{
statement;
}

A for loop is a way to execute a certain piece of code for a very specic amount of
times. In the example shown statement is executed 8 times with i going from 1 to
8.
Note In Arduino you dont need to initialise the local variable i. However in java-based
languages like Processing you add int in front of the rst instance of i.
Delays
delay(100) //

The delay() function is useful for embedded programming to slow down the rate at
which the processor updates. This is used to make thing happens at a certain rate, for
example if we want to blink and led every second, after we turn it on we can place
a delay(1000) which will make the processor sit there and do nothing for a second
(1000 milliseconds)
Delay is also useful in debugging and general ow control.

22

/ blinking an LED
This program is the rst code to run to test that your Arduino board is working and
congured correctly. Type the following text into your Arduino editor.
Now that the code is in your IDE we need to verify it and upload it to the board.
Press the Verify button and if everything is correct youll see the message Done
compiling appear at the bottom of the program text.
At this point we can upload it into the board: press the reset button on the Arduino
board, this forces the board to stop what its doing and listen for instructions coming
from the USB port. Now we have about 6 or 7 seconds to press the Upload to I/O
Board button. this sends the current program to the board that will store it in its
memory and eventually run it. You will see a few messages appear in the black area
at the bottom of the window, these are messages that make it easier to understand
if the process has completed correctly. There are 2 LEDs marked RX and TX on
the board, they ash every time a byte is sent or received by the board. During the
download process they keep ickering, if this doesnt happen it means there is some
communication problem or you havent selected the right port in the Tools / Serial
Port menu.
/* Blinking LED
* -----------*
* turns on and off an LED connected to pin 13
*
*/
int ledPin = 13;
void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);

// LED connected to
// digital pin 13

// sets the digital

// pin as output

}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(1000);
}

//
//
//
//

23

turns
waits
turns
waits

the
for
the
for

LED on
a second
LED off
a second

Assuming that program has been uploaded correctly connect an LED to the pins 13
and GND on the board like you see in the illustration.

24

/ what is electricity
If you have ever done any plumbing at home, electronics wont be a problem for you
to understand. Jokes aside, in order to understand how electricity and electric circuits
work the best way is to build a mental model called the water analogy. Lets take a
simple device like a portable fan,

if you take it apart you will see that it contains a small battery a couple of wires going
to an electric motor and one of the wires is interrupted by a switch. Now makes sure
you have a new battery tted in the device and activate the switch; the motor will start
to spin providing the necessary refreshment. How does this work? Well imagine that
the battery is a water pump and the switch is a tap while the motor is one of those
wheels you see in watermills, when you open the tap water will ow from the pump
and push the wheel into motion.
Now in this simple hydraulic system two parameters are important: the pressure of the
water (this is given from how powerful is the pump) and the amount of water that will
ow in the pipes (this depends from the size of the pipes and the resistance that the
wheel will oppose to the stream of water hitting it).
25

You quickly understand that if you want the wheel to spin faster you need to increase
the size of the pipes (but this works only up to a point) and increase the pressure that
the pump can achieve. Increasing the size of the pipes allows more ow of water to go
through them, eectively by making them bigger we have reduced the resistance they
oppose to the ow of water. This works until a certain point where the wheel wont
spin any faster because the pressure of the water is not strong enough and this is when
we need the pump to be stronger.

This can go on until the point when the wheel falls apart because the water ow is
too strong and destroys it. Another thing you will notice is that as the wheel spins the
axle will heat up a little bit, this is because no matter how good is the way we have
mounted the wheel the attrition between the axle and the holes it is mounted in will
generate heat. This is important to understand that in a system like this not all the
energy you pump into the system will be converted into movement, some will be lost
in a number of ineciencies and will generally show up as heat emanating from some
parts of the system.
So what are the important parts of the system as we described it before? The pressure
produced by the pump is one, the resistance that the pipes and wheel oppose to the
ow of water and the actual ow of water (lets say that this is represented by the
number of litres of water that ow in one second) are the others.
Without going into much details electricity works a bit like water, you have a kind of
pump (any source of electricity like a battery or a wall plug) pushes electric charges
(imagine them like drops of electricity) down pipes represented by the wires where
some devices are able to use them to produce heat (your grandmas thermal blanket)
26

light (your bedrooms lamp) sound (your stereo) movement (your fan) and much
more.
So when you read on a battery 9V you can imagine the Voltage of the battery like the
water pressure that can be potentially produced by this little pump. This is measured
in Volts from Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the rst battery.
The ow of water has got and electric equivalent called current that is measured
in Amperes from Andre Marie Ampere. Finally the resistance opposed to the ow of
current by any means it travels through is called, yes you guessed right, resistance and
its measured in Ohms from the German physicist Ohm.
Mr ohm is also responsible for coming up with the most important law in electricity
and the only formula you will really need to remember.
He was able to demonstrate that in a circuit the Voltage, the Current and the
Resistance are all related to each other and in particular that the resistance opposed by
the circuits determines the amount of current that will ow through it give a certain
supply voltage.
Its very intuitive if you think about it: Take a 9V battery and plug it into a simple
circuit while measuring current, you will nd that the more resistors you add to the
circuit the less current will travel through it. Going back to the water owing in pipes,
given a certain pump if I place a tap (which we can assimilate to a variable resistor in
electricity) the more I close the tap, increasing resistance to water ow, less water will
ow through the pipes. Mr Ohm summarised his law into this formulas:
R (resistance) = V (voltage) / I (current)
V=R*I
I=V/R
This is the only rule that you really have to memorise and learn to use, because in most
of your work this will be the only one you will really need.

27

/ the breadboard
The process of getting a circuit to work is largely based on making lots of changes
to it until it behaves properly; its a very fast iterative process that could be seen as
the electronic equivalent to sketching. The design evolves in your hands as you try
dierent combinations. In order to achieve the best results you want to use a system
that will allow you to change the connections between components in the fastest, most
practical and non-destructive way.
This requirement clearly rules out soldering, its a time consuming procedure that puts
every component under stress every time you heat them up and cool them down.
The answer to our problems comes from a very practical device called Solder-less
Breadboard.

As you can see from the picture its a small plastic board full of holes, each one of
them contains a spring-loaded contact. You can push a components leg into one of
the hole and it will establish an electrical connection with all the other holes in the
same vertical column of holes. Each hole is at a distance of 2.54 mm distance from
the others, since most of the components have their legs, known to techies as pins,
are spaced at that standard distance therefore chips with multiple legs will t nicely.
Not all the contacts on a breadboard are created equal, there are some dierences: the
topmost and bottom row (coloured in red and blue and aptly marked with + and -) are
28

connected horizontally and are used to carry the power across the board so that when
we need power or ground we can provide it very quickly with a short jumper (this is
not a sweater or a funny insect but a short piece of wire used to connect two points
in the circuits) The last this you need to know about breadboards is the in the middle
there is a large gap that is as wide as the size of a small chip. This shows that the each
vertical line of holes is interrupted in the middle so that when you plug a chip you
wont short circuit pins that are on the two sides of the chip, clever eh?

29

/ reading a pushbutton
Now were going to see how Arduino is able to receive input from the external world.
This is done with the digitalRead() function which, given the number of a pin, will tell
you if there is a voltage applied to it. If the voltage is 2.5 or more volts, digitalRead()
will return HIGH while if there is no voltage it will return LOW.
This code checks the state of the digital pin and turn on the LED if the button is
pressed. Very simple and will get you started very quickly, just build the circuit you see
in the next page.
/* Blink LED when the button is pressed
* -----------------------*/
int ledPin = 13; // choose the pin for the LED
int inPin = 7;
// choose the input pin
// (for a pushbutton)
int val = 0;
// variable for reading the pin status
void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(inPin, INPUT);
}

// declare LED as output

// declare pushbutton as input

void loop(){
val = digitalRead(inPin);

// read input value

// check if the input is HIGH (button released)

if (val == HIGH) {
digitalWrite(ledPin,
} else {
// blink the LED and
digitalWrite(ledPin,
delay(200);
digitalWrite(ledPin,
delay(1000);
}

LOW);

// turn LED OFF

go OFF
HIGH);
LOW);

30

31

/ trying out dierent on/o sensors

Now that youve used the push-button you can replace it with a lot of dierent
sensors that have the same type of output: a contact that closes and opens.
One good example is the tilt sensor, this is a simple electronic component that
contains two contacts and a little metal ball. [PIC of tilt sensors] When the sensor is
in its upright position the ball bridges the two contacts and this is like when you press
the push-button. When you tilt this sensor the ball moves and the contact is opened
like when you release the push-button.
Using this simple component you can implement, for example, gestural interfaces that
react when an object is moved or shaken.
Another sensor you might want to try is the infra-red sensor from burglar alarms (also
known as PIR sensor). [PIC of PIR sensors] This small device triggers when a human
being is moving in its proximity. Its a simple way to detect the presence of people.
You should now experiment by looking at all the possible devices that have two
contacts that close, like the thermostat that is used in apartments to set the room
temperature or just placing two wires next to each others and dropping water onto
them.

32

/ use the light sensor instead of the pushbutton

Now were going to try an interesting experiment: take a light sensor like the one
pictured here.

This is an LDR or light dependent resistor, this means that in darkness its resistance
is quite high while when you shine some light at it the resistance quickly drops and it
becomes a reasonably good conductor of electricity. Now plug the LDR in place of the
push-button, you will notice that if you cover or uncover it with your hands the LED
turns on and o. Youve just built your rst sensor driven LED.
33

/ analogue inputs
As we have seen in the previous section Arduino is able to detect if there is a voltage
applied to one of its pins and report it trough the digitalRead function. This is ne in
a lot of applications but the light sensor that we have used before its also able to tell us
not just if there is light or not, its also able to tell us how much light there is. This is
the dierence between an on/o sensor (simply telling us if something is there or not)
and an analogue sensor whose value continuously changes. In order to read this type
of sensors we need a dierent type of pin. In the lower-right part of Arduino youll see
6 pins marked Analog In, these are special pins that not only can tell us if there is
a voltage applied to them or not but also it value. By using the analogRead function
we can read the voltage applied to one of the pins. This function returns a number
between 0 and 1023 representing voltages between 0 and 5 volts. For example if there
is a voltage of 2.5 volts applied to pin 0 writing analogRead(0) will return 512 etc etc.
If you now build the circuit that you see in the illustration by using a 10k or 4.7k
resistor and you run the piece of code you nd here youll see the led blinking at a rate
thats dependent on the amount of light that hits the sensor.

34

/* Analog Read to LED

* -----------------* copyleft 2005 David Cuartielles
*
*/
int sensorPin = 0; //
//
int ledPin = 13;
//
int val = 0;
//
//

select the input pin for the

potentiometer
select the pin for the LED
variable to store the value coming
from the sensor

void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

// ledPin is as an OUTPUT

void loop() {
val = analogRead(sensorPin); //
//
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); //
delay(val);
//
//
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
//
delay(val);
//
//
}

35

read the value from

the sensor
turn the LED on
stop the program for
some time
turn the LED off
stop the program for
some time

/ try dierent resistive sensors

Using the same circuit that you have seen in the previous section you can connect a lot
of other resistive sensors tha work more or less in the same way.
For example you could connect a thermistor.

This is a simple device whose resistance changes with temperature. In the circuit we
have shown you changes in resistance become changes in voltage that can be measured
by Arduino.
Be aware that there isnt a direct connection between the value you read the actual
temperature measured. If you need an exact reading you should read the numbers that
come out of the analogue pin while measuring with a real thermometer. You could
put these numbers side by side in a table and work out a way to gure out what is the
relationship between the values.
Up until now we have just used an LED as an output device but how do we read
the actual values that Arduino is reading from the sensor? Certainly we cant make
the board blink the values in morse code. For this type of issues we can use Serial
Communication that is described in the next chapter.
36

/ serial communication
We have seen at the beginning of the booklet that Arduino has an USB connection
that is used by the IDE to upload code into the processor.

The good news is that this connection can also be used by the programmes we write in
Arduino to send data back to the computer or receive commands from it.
For this purpose we are going to use the Serial object. This object contains all the code
we need to send and receive data.
Were now going to use the last circuit we have built using the the the thermistor and
send the values read back to the computer.

37

Type this code into a new sketch:

int sensorPin = 2;
int val = 0;

// select the input pin for the

// potentiometer
// variable to store the value coming
// from the sensor

void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);

// open the serial port to send

// data back to the computer at
// 9600 bits per second

}
void loop() {
val = analogRead(sensorPin);

//
//
//
//

Serial.println(val);

read the value from

the sensor
print the value to
the serial port

delay(100);
}

Now that we have the program running you should press the Serial Monitor button
on the Arduino IDE and youll see the numbers lining up in the bottom part of the
window. Now any software that can read from the serial port can talk to Arduino.

38

/ analogue output (PWM)

With the knowledge that you have accumulated until now you could take up the task
of building an interactive lamp, a lamp that can be controlled not just with a boring
on-o switch but maybe in a bit of more poetic way.
One of the limitations of the blinking LED examples we have seen until now is that
you can only turn on and o the light while a fancy interactive lamp needs to be able
to dim the light properly. To solve this problem we can use a little trick that makes a
lot of things like TV or Cinema possible: Persistance of Vision.

39

Take the rst LED blink example we have seen and now change the numbers in the
delay function until you dont see the LED blinking any more. You will see that the
LED seems to be dimmed at 50% of its normal brightness. Now change the numbers
so that the time the LED is on is of the time its o. Run the program and youll see
the brightness is roughly 25%.
This technique is called Pulse Width Modulation, a fancy name to say that if you blink
the LED fast enough you dont see it blink any more but you can change its brightness
by changing the ration between the on time and the o time. Here is a small diagram
showing how this works.
This technique also works with other devices than the LED. For example you can
change the speed of motor in the same exact way.
While experimenting you will see that blinking the LED by hand is a bit inconvenient
because as soon as you want to read a sensor or send data on the serial port the LED
will icker. Luckily enough the processor used by the Arduino board has a piece of
hardware that can very eciently blink 3 LEDs while your program does something
else. This is implemented by pins 9, 10 and 11 that can be controlled by the
analogWrite() instruction.
For example writing analogWrite(9,128) will set to 50% the brightness of an LED
connected to pin 9. Why 128? because analogWrite expects a number between 0 and
255 as a parameter where 255 means 100%.
Having 3 channels is very good because if you buy red, green and blue LEDs you can
might their light and make light of any colour you like!

40

/ driving bigger loads (motors, lamps etc.)

Each one of the pins on an Arduino board can be used to power devices that use up to
20milliamps, this is a very small amount of current, just enough to drive an LED and
not much more. If you try to drive something like a motor the pin will immediately
stop working and will potentially burn the whole processor. To drive bigger loads
like motors or incandescent lamps we need to use an external component that can
switch such things on and o driven by an Arduino pin. One of such devices is called
a Mosfet Transistor, beyond the real meaning of the funny name, its an electronic
switch that can be driven by applying a voltage to one of its three pins called gate.
Eectively it can be seen like the light switch we use at home where the action our
nger does to turn the light on and o is replaced by a pin on the arduino board
sending voltage to the gate of the Mosfet.
In the following picture you see how you would use a Mosfet like the IRF520 to turn
on and o a small motor attached to a fan.
You will also notice that the motor takes its power supply from the 9V connector on
the Arduino board, this i another benet of the Mosfet: it allows us to drive devices
that have a power supply dierent from the one used by Arduino. Since the Mosfet is
connected to pin 9 we can also use analogWrite() to control the speed of the motor
through PWM..(There is a mistake in the drawing, the diode connect to the MIDDLE
pin on the Mosfet)

41

/ complex sensors

We dene complex sensors the one that produce a type of information that requires
a bit more than a digitalRead() or an analogRead() to be used. These usually are
small circuits that have already a small microcontroller inside that pre processes the
information.
In the illustration you can see an Ultrasonic Ranger, an Infrared Ranger and an
Accelerometre. You can nd examples on how to use them on our website in the
Tutorials section.

42

/ talking to software

In this section we will show you how to use the data sent by an Arduino board
through the USB port to a piece of software running in your computer.
Virtual Etch a Sketch Arduino Code
This project requires 2 varible resistors that we are using to control the X and Y axis
respectively. The important thing here is how send out the data by prefacing it using
the letters A or B for the two sensors. This method can be used to send the data from
many dierent sensors.

/* Virtual Etch A Sketch using 2 Potentiometers

This program reads two analog sensors via serial and draws
their values as X and Y
Arduino Code
Christian Nold, 22 Feb 06
*/
int potPin = 4;
int potPin2 = 5;
potentiometer
int ledPin = 13;
int val = 0;
the sensor
int val2 = 0;
the sensor

// select the input pin for the potentiometer

// select the input pin for the
// select the pin for the LED
// variable to store the value coming from
// variable to store the value coming from

void setup() {
beginSerial(9600);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

// declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT

void loop() {
val = analogRead(potPin);
val2 = analogRead(potPin2);
sensor

// read the value from the sensor

// read the value from the

printString(A);
printInteger(val); // Example identier for the sensor
serialWrite(10);
printString(B);
printInteger(val2); // Example identier for the sensor
serialWrite(10);
43

Virtual Etch a Sketch Processing Code

This code looks for the letters A followed by the data and uses this for the X axis. Then it
waits for letter B and uses this for the Y axis. The gradually fading line is implemented
by repeatedly copying a semi transparent (alpha) black square over the stage.

/* Virtual Etch A Sketch using 2 Potentiometers

This program reads two analog sensors via serial and draws
their values as X and Y
Processing Code
Christian Nold, 22 Feb 06
*/
import processing.serial.*;
String buff = ;
String temp = ;
oat temporary = 0.0;
oat screenwidth = 0.0;
oat xCoordinate = 0;
oat yCoordinate = 0;
int val = 0;
int NEWLINE = 10;
Serial port;
void setup()
{
size(200, 200);
strokeWeight(10);
stroke(255);
smooth();

// fat

port = new Serial(this, COM2, 9600); // Change this to the

correct serial port
}

44

void draw()
{
ll(0,2); // use black with alpha 2
rectMode(CORNER);
rect(0,0,width,height);

while (port.available() > 0) {

serialEvent(port.read());
}
point(xCoordinate, yCoordinate);
}
void serialEvent(int serial)
{
if(serial != NEWLINE) {
buff += char(serial);
} else {
if (buff.length() > 1) {
temp = buff.substring(0, buff.length()-(buff.length()-1));
// this isolates just the beginning sensor identied
if(temp.equals(A) == true) {
//sensor A value
temp = buff.substring(1, buff.length());
temporary = oat(temp);
xCoordinate = width/(1024/temporary);
println(xCoordinate);
}
if(temp.equals(B) == true) {
//sensor B value
temp = buff.substring(1, buff.length());
temporary = oat(temp);
yCoordinate = height/(1024/temporary);
println(yCoordinate);

}
// Clear the value of buff
buff = ;
}
45