Mechatronics Quiz Notes

Context of Arduino

There are a number of different types of Arduinos to choose from, however, the
most common being the Arduino Uno.
Legacy versions of the Arduino Uno product line consist of the NG, Diecimila, and the
Duemilanove. Key differences from these to the Uno include:
o Use a less powerful chip (ATMEGA168 instead of ATMEGA328)
o Require manual selection of either USB or battery power (and also have a
jumper next to the USB port)
o The NG requires you to hold the rest button on the board for a few seconds
prior to uploading a program.

Features

Relatively cheap
Direct plug straight into a computers USB port
Easy to set up
Open source design
The chip on the board plugs straight into your USB port and registers on your
computer as a virtual serial port. This allows you to interface with it as through it
were a serial device.
Built-in voltage regulation (you can connect an external power source of up to 12V
and it will regulate it to both 5V and 3.3V.
Can be powered directly off a USB port without any external power.
16mhz clock
32KB of flash memory for storing code
13 digital pins and 6 analogue pins.
ICSP controller for bypassing the USB port and interfacing the Arduino directly as a
serial device.
An on-board LED attached to a digital pin 13 for fast and easy debugging of code
Button to reset the program on the chip.

Arduino IDE

Before you can start doing anything with the Arduino, you need to download and
install the Arduino IDE (integrated development environment).
The Arduino Programmer is based on the Processing IDE and uses a variation of the
C and C++ programming languages.

Plug it in

Connect the Arduino to your computers USB port.

The Arduino Uno requires a male USB A to male USB B cable.

Settings

Before you can start doing anything in the Arduino programmer, you must set the
board-type and serial port.

Serial Monitor

Takes data that your Arduino is receiving from sensors and other devices and
displays it in real-time on your computer.

Arduino Blink Tutorial

To build the circuit connect one end of the resistor to Arduino pin 13.
PinMode(13, OUTPUT); initialises pin 13 as an output pin.
DigitalWrite(13, HIGH) turns on the LED (supplying 5V to pin 13).
DigitalWrite(13, LOW) turns off the LED.

Digital Read Serial

LECTURE NOTES

De-bouncing can be done in code (no de-bounce circuit required)

A rotary encoder can transform rotation information to digital (high/low)
information
You could make encoders using reed switches and magnets.
The encoder is a sensor attached to a rotating object (such as a wheel or motor) to
measure rotation.
Photo interrupter is connected to two 1K ohm resistors and 5V.
In a theoretically perfect wind turbine, a maximum of 59.3% of the winds kinetic
energy can be converted to blade rotational kinetic energy.

Putting an encoder on your turbine shaft allows you to measure tip speed, which can
thus allow you to improve the performance of your WPV.
Wind turbine blades work by generating lift due to their shape. The more curved
sides generate low air pressure while high pressure air pushes on the other side of
the aerofoil.
The net result is a lift force perpendicular to the direction of flow of the air.
The power in the wind is derived by combining the above equations:
o

Power = 0.5 x SweptArea x AirDensity x Velocity3 = = 2 3 .

However, the power actually captured by the wind turbine rotor, PR, is a fraction of
the wind power due to the Betz limit and other aerodynamic and mechanical losses.

The coefficient of performance, Cp, of the turbine is expressed as =

The tip speed ratio is the ratio of the speed of the turbine tip, at radius R when
rotating omega radians/second, divided by the speed of the wind, v:
o =

Tip speed is a function of RPM.

Torque, the torque coefficient, Ct, is defined as:

o = 1 2 .
2

Solidity: The total blade area as a fraction of the total swept disc area is called the
solidity. Aerodynamically there is an optimum solidity for a given tip speed and
number of blades.

Multi-bladed high solidity rotors run at slow speeds and are somewhat less
efficient than few bladed low solidity rotors, but they have much greater starting
torque.
High angle of attack is suitable for higher solidity blade the angle of attack must still
be set carefully.
If the angle of attack is too high, the blade creates too much drag if too low, not
enough lift (rotational force) is generated.
The millis() function returns the number of milliseconds since the Arduino board
began running the current program.
AnalogRead is used to read the outputs of encoder/pushbutton circuits.
EEPROM stores values after power is disconnected.
The mega328 has EEPROM this memory is kept when the power is off
The mega328 has 512 usable EEPROM addresses.
To pull a pin high, you connect the 3.3V power via a resistor (1K).
To pull a pin low, you can connect the pin to a 1K resistor which is connected to
ground.