Arduino

For the electronics enthusiast, programming languages have become a tool almost as ubiquitous as the soldering iron. Just as there’s the old trusty iron on most workbenches, not far away lies some sort of compiler or IDE.

Sure, there are useful and cool things that you can produce without the use of a microcontroller, but there’s also a lot of useful and cool things that would be very difficult or impossible to make without a microcontroller.

One problem is — for those new to electronics at least — that learning to program can be daunting, just like learning to solder for can be daunting some.

A Closer Look Inside the Arduino Uno, Part 2: Powering the Arduino

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A while ago, I wrote an article called A Closer Look Inside the Arduino Uno. In the article, I glossed over powering the Arduino.

The post also gives a brief history lesson on the board, goes over the layout and some of the main components, discusses the Arduino pin out, and finally, talks about a few nuances of the Arduino Uno which may cause some seemingly weird errors to occur.

In that post, I made the promise to go into more detail on some of the often overlooked, but important nuances of the Uno.

This time around, we’ll delve a bit deeper into powering the Arduino Uno and talk about some of its limitations and best practices for doing so.

Let’s get started!

A Closer Look Inside the Arduino Uno

Getting Naked: Working With Naked Microcontrollers vs Trainers Like Arduino

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Open source electronics “trainer” boards like the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, the BeagleBone and others have been an enormous boon to introducing more people to electronics and science.

This is because they make working with microcontrollers and programming easier by way of abstraction.

The popularity of these boards has exploded over the past 8-10 years or so.

In the past, using a microcontroller in your projects meant working directly with the micro and supporting hardware, programming in C, and a host of other things.

Be that as it may, there are reasons why the hobbyist should consider learning to work directly with the “naked” or stand-alone microcontroller. We’ll talk about some of those reasons in the words that follow, but first we’ll talk about the difference between a trainer and a microcontroller.

Video – Use an Arduino & 2 Push Button Switches to Control an LED

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Programming Arduino & Other Microcontrollers

A Closer Look Inside the Arduino Uno, Part 2: Powering the Arduino

A Closer Look Inside the Arduino Uno

Getting Naked: Working With Naked Microcontrollers vs Trainers Like Arduino