Practical -1

Write an overview of Arduino platform with technical specifications.

Arduino is an open source platform composed of electronic boards, sensors and expansion boards, as well
as a software development environment, initially developed in Italy by a team lead by Massimo Banzi.
Thanks to its low cost and the free availability of its hardware design and software, the Arduino platform
rapidly became an international standard and is now widely adopted all over the world for various kinds
of projects: from fast prototyping to Internet of Things (IoT) projects.
The main boards exist in various flavors and form factors. The simplest and most widely used one is the
Arduino UNO, based on the ATmega328P chip running with a clock at 16 MHz. All the boards share the
same programming environment and may differ for form factor, memory size, number and type of ports
and speed. For the purpose of a physics laboratory the Arduino UNO board is perfectly suitable. The
board can be bought for as low as about 20 euros.

Fig. 1. The Arduino UNO board. On top of the figure there is a row with 14 digital pins.
Power and analog pins are on the opposite side

The Arduino UNO board (Fig. 1) has 14 digital I/O pins. Digital pins may have two states: LOW and
HIGH, corresponding to a voltage of 0V and 5V, respectively. When used as output ports, digital pins can
provide a current up to 20 mA. Six out of 14 pins can be used as Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
outputs. They can be assigned a value between 0 and 255 and, correspondingly, the pin stays HIGH for a
percentage of time between 0 and 100% with a 2 ms base. It also has six analog inputs, each with ten bits
resolution, and with a dynamic range from 0 V to 5 V. Power ports provide a 5 V and 3.3 V source
together with the ground reference (GND) and provides currents up to 50 mA.
A USB connection allows a user to program the chip using the Integrated Development Environment
(IDE) software, freely available from the Arduino website. The user writes his/her own program on a PC,
compiles it and then transfers the program to the Arduino memory, that starts immediately executing it
every time it is powered on. Arduino boards can be powered either using the USB cable connecting it to
the PC for programming it, or via an external source providing from 7 to 12 V (a 9 V battery is perfectly
suitable).
The Table 1 encompasses various technical aspects of the Arduino Uno, including its microcontroller
details, memory specifications, I/O capabilities, power requirements, communication interfaces,
dimensions, weight, operating temperature, clock speed, bootloader, and additional features.

Table 1: Arduino Technical Specifications

Component Specification
Microcontroller Atmega328P
Architecture 8-bi AVR
Clock Speed 16 MHz
Operating Voltage 5V
Flash Memory 32 KB (0.5 KB used by bootloader)
SRAM 2 KB
EEPROM 1 KB
Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins 6
Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12 V (from DC power jack or Vin pin)
Input Voltage (limit) 6-20 V
DC Current per I/O Pin 20 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA
USB Interface USB Type-B connector
Communication Interfaces UART, I2C, SPI
Dimensions 68.6 mm x 53.4 mm
Weight 25 g
Operating Temperature -40°C to 85°C
Flash Endurance 10,000 write/erase cycles
EEPROM Write Endurance 100,000 write/erase cycles
Flash Write Time 2.7 ms for a 32-byte page
Flash Read Time 0.8 µs per byte
SPI Clock Speed 16 MHz (Maximum)
I2C Clock Speed 100 kHz (standard mode), 400 kHz (fast mode)
Bootloader Optiboot
Input Voltage (Absolute Max) 6-20 V
Power Consumption 50 mA
Digital I/O Voltage 5V
DC Current for 5V Pin 200 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA
Reset Button Included
PWM Pins Frequency ~490 Hz
External Interrupts 2 (interrupt 0 and 1)
Serial Communication 1 (UART)
PWM Resolution 8-bit (256 levels of output)
LED Built-in 1 (connected to digital pin 13)