Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller platform. By utilizing hardware and software libraries from that project you will get a major gain of speed in your development or production process.

This article introduces this platform, available hardware and software libraries.

Overview

Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller platform. It has been designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR processor and on-board I/O support. The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and the boot loader that runs on the board.

The Arduino platform provides a ready-to-use set of hardware devices. When you did finish development of software and hardware extensions, you may utilize the same devices to ship your solution to customers. Due to the fact, that Arduino is an open source platform, you are able to download and modify schematic and design files of the hardware. As a result you may get a customized and compatible board design with extrem low-power requirements,  high-throughput capabilities in data processing or a highly integrated embedded board design, for example.

Instant-On Applications

Solutions developed with Arduino boards are ‘instant-on’ applications. You do not have to wait for 30 to 60 seconds until a complex kernel has been loaded and has finished localizing and initializing all available hardware devices.

Because of this feature Arduino devices are predestined to be utilized in projects where machine control or systems monitoring has to be performed instantly after powering on systems.

Interaction with Linux

Arduino is not based on Linux. But it is suited to interatct with Linux based systems. There are a number of interfaces available to interface with Linux systems by utilizing wired and wireless network technologies.

The number of available bus and network technologies is quite large. Because of the enormous popularity of this platform a lot of additional hardware suppliers do provide extension hardware.

IDE and Programming

Arduino’s programming language is based on C/C++. So interfacing with 3rd-party libraries is quite easy. If you prefer to do programming by utilizing pure C/C++ you are free to do so.

The development environment of Arduino is based on an Integrated Development Environemnt (IDE). It is available for free and may be downloaded from the homepage of the project.

You are not bound to the Arduino IDE. If you do prefer to utilize your own set of build tools, then you are free to utilize programming languages, tools and 3rd-party libraries of your choice.

Low-Power Applications

There are available a large number of micro controller boards varying in size, io-ports, power-consumption etc. If your application has low-power requirements, there are some ready-to-use boards available. With some application specific tweaks you are able to realize applications with extreme low-power cunsumptions.

Interface Devices

There are an enormous number of interface devices available. Additionally you are free to interface with 3rd-party devices by utilizing CA, SPI, I2C, USB, 1-Wire, XBee, WLAN, FM, AM, Bluethooth etc. So the number of technologies and device types is virtually unlimited.

Supported Bus Systems

As stated previously, there are interfaces available to a huge number of bus systems. If you do not find an extension board that is able to talk the protocol you are required to utilize, you may simply attach 3rd-party hardware by interfacing supported interconnection protocols like USB or I2C.

Arduino Processor Boards

The first generations of Arduino processor boards are based on Atmel AVR microcontrollers. Depending on the board CPUs are running with 8 or 16 MHz. For a higher processing speed compatible and derived CPU boards are available from 3rd-party suppliers running at a higher system clock speed.

The Arduino Team did announce, that a new 32-bit ARM-based (SAM3U, Cortex-M3) processor board will be available the end of 2011. It will run with with 96 MHz. The system will contain 256 KByte flash storage and 50 KByte SRAM cache memory.

Sortware Libraries and RTOS

If you do not want to develop all software modules on your own, then you may utilize software libraries and Realtime Operating Systems (RTOS) available for the Arduino platform. Each and every extension board provides its own API to be utilized by your applications. Additionally there are a lot of APIs and interfacing solutions available, that will help you to be finished in time.

At the bottom of this article you will find some links with a lot of additional information and references to Arduino projects.

References:

• Project homepage
• List of extension boards
• List of RTOS for Arduino
• A collection of additional resources at Wikipedia.org

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