Chapter 1

Hardware components
1.1 Arduino [1] :
Arduino is a tool for marketing computers that can sense and control
more of physical world than your desktop computer. It’s an open-
source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller
board, and a development environment for waiting software for the
board. Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking
inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety
of lights motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be
stand alone, or they can communicate with software running 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. The Arduino programming language is an
implementation of writing a similar physical computing platform,
which is based on processing multimedia programming environment.

1.1.1 Advantages [1]

a) Inexpensive - Arduino boards are relatively inexpansive

compared to other microcontroller platforms. The least
expansive version of the Arduino module can be assemblef by
hand, and even the pre – assembled Arduino modules cost less
than $50.
b) Cross – platform – The Arduino software runs on
windows,Macintosh OSX, and linux operating systems. Most
microcontroller systems are limited to windows.
c) Simple, clear programming environment – The Arduino
programming is easy to use for beginners, yet flexible enough for
advanced users to take advantage of as well.
d) Open source and extensible software – The Arduino software is
published as open source tools , available for extension by

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 e) experienced programmers. The language can be expended
through C+ libraries, and people wanting to understand the
technical details can make the leap from Arduino to the AVR C
programming language on which it’s based.
f) Open source and extensible hardware – The Arduino is based on
Atmel’s ATMEGA8 and ATMEGA168/ATMEGA2560
microcontrollers. the plans for the modules are published under
a creative commons license, so experienced circuit designers can
make their own version of the module, extending it and
improving it.

1.1.2 Arduino board [1] :

The Uno is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P. It has
14 digital input/output pins ( of which 6 can used as PWM outputs), 6
analog inputs, a 16 HHz quartz crystal, a USD connection , a power
jack, an ICSP header and a reset button. It contains everything needed
to support the microcontroller ; simply connect it to a computer with
a USB cable or power it with a AC – to – DC adapter or battery to get
started. An electronic signal transmitted as binary code that can be
either presence or absence of current, high and low voltages or short
pulses at a particular frequency.
Human perceive the world in analog, but robots, computers and
circuits use digital.A digital signal is a signal that has only two states .
These states can vary depending on the signal, the simply defined the
states are ON or OFF, never in between.

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figure 1 Arduino

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 1) Power USB
Arduino board can be powered by using the USB cable from your
computer. All you need to do is connect the USB cable to the USB
connection (1).

2) Power (Barrel Jack)

Arduino boards can be powered directly from the AC mains power
supply by connecting it to the Barrel Jack (2).

3) Voltage Regulator
The function of the voltage regulator is to control the voltage given to
the Arduino board and stabilize the DC voltages used by the processor
and other elements.

4) Crystal Oscillator
The crystal oscillator helps Arduino in dealing with time issues. How
does Arduino calculate time? The answer is, by using the crystal
oscillator. The number printed on top of the Arduino crystal is
16.000H9H. It tells us that the frequency is 16,000,000 Hertz or 16
MHz.

5) Arduino Reset
You can reset your Arduino board, i.e., start your program from the
beginning. You can reset the UNO board in two ways. First, by using
the reset button (17) on the board. Second, you can connect an
external reset button to the Arduino pin labelled RESET (5).

Pins (3.3, 5, GND, Vin)

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 Ground): There are several GND pins
on the Arduino, any of which can be used to ground your circuit.

an external power source, like AC mains power supply.

10) Analog pins

The Arduino UNO board has five analog input pins A0 through A5.
These pins can read the signal from an analog sensor like the humidity
sensor or temperature sensor and convert it into a digital value that
can be read by the microprocessor.

11) Main microcontroller

Each Arduino board has its own microcontroller (11). You can assume
it as the brain of your board. The main IC (integrated circuit) on the
Arduino is slightly different from board to board. The microcontrollers
are usually of the ATMEL Company. You must know what IC your
board has before loading up a new program from the Arduino IDE. This
information is available on the top of the IC. For more details about
the IC construction and functions, you can refer to the data sheet.

12) ICSP pin

Mostly, ICSP (12) is an AVR, a tiny programming header for the Arduino
consisting of MOSI, MISO, SCK, RESET, VCC, and GND. It is often
referred to as an SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), which could be
considered as an "expansion" of the output. Actually, you are slaving
the output device to the master of the SPI bus.

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13) Power LED indicator
This LED should light up when you plug your Arduino into a power
source to indicate that your board is powered up correctly. If this light
does not turn on, then there is something wrong with the connection.

14) TX and RX LEDs

On your board, you will find two labels: TX (transmit) and RX (receive).
They appear in two places on the Arduino UNO board. First, at the
digital pins 0 and 1, to indicate the pins responsible for serial
communication. Second, the TX and RX led (13). The TX led flashes
with different speed while sending the serial data. The speed of
flashing depends on the baud rate used by the board. RX flashes during
the receiving process.

15) Digital I / O
The Arduino UNO board has 14 digital I/O pins (15) (of which 6 provide
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) output. These pins can be configured
to work as input digital pins to read logic values (0 or 1) or as digital
output pins to drive different modules like LEDs, relays, etc. The pins
labeled “~” can be used to generate PWM.

16) AREF
AREF stands for Analog Reference. It is sometimes, used to set an
external reference voltage (between 0 and 5 Volts) as the upper limit
for the analog input pins.

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Table 1 : Arduino board

S.no Pin Pin description

01 Reset Reset Arduino

02 3v3 3.3 volts in and out

03 5v 5 volts in and out
04 Gnd Ground
05 Vin Voltage in for sources over 7v (9v-12v)

06 Analog in Analog inputs, an also be used as digital

07 RX/Tx Serial communication receive and

transmit
08 Digital Input or output, high or low
09 PWM(~) Digital pins with output option of PWM

10 AREF External reference voltage used for

analog

Table 2 : Specification of Arduino

Microcontroller Atmega328p
Operationg voltage 5v
Input voltage(recommended) 7 – 12v
Input voltage( limit) 6 – 20v
Digital i/o pins 14
Pwm digital i/o pins 6

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 Analog input pins 6
Dc current per i/o pin 20 ma
Dc current for 3.3v pin 50 ma
Flash memory 32 kb
Sram 2 kb(atmega
328p)
Eeprom 1 kb(atmega
328p)
Clock speed 16 MHz
Length 68.6 mm
width 4 mm

2.1 Light Emitting Diode (LED) [2] :

A light emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor diode that emits
incoherent narrow spectrum light when electrically biased in the
forward direction of the
pn – junction, as in the common LED circuit.This effect is a form of
electroluminescence. While sending a message in the form of bits such
as 1, the data is sent to the receiver side correspondingly the LED
glows responding the data is being received simultaneously when we
send 8 as a data the LED gets off.

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 Figure 2 light emitting diode [2]

2.2 Advantages [2]:

a) LEDs have many advantages over other technologies like lasers. As
compared to laser diodes or IR sources.
b) LEDs have several advantages over conventional incandescent
lamps. For one thing, they don’t have a filament that will burnout, so
they last much longer. Additionally, their small plastic bulb makes
them a lot more durable. They also fit more easily into modern
electronic circuits.
c) The main advantage is efficiency. In conventional incandescent
bulbs, the light production process involves generating a lot of heat.
This is completely wasted energy, unless we are using the lamp as a
heater, because of huge portion of the available electricity isn’t going
towards producing visible light.
d) LEDs generates very little heat. AS much higher percentage of
electrical power is going directly to generating light, which cuts down
on the electricity demands considerably.
e) LEDs offer advantages such as lower cost and longer service life.
Moreover LEDs have low power consumption and are easy to
maintain. Many functions can be assigned to a robot easily using
different colors of LEDs available.

2.3 Disadvantage of LEDs [2]:

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a) LEDs performance largely depends on the ambient temperature of
the operating environment.
b) LEDs must supplied with the correct current.
c) LEDs don’t approximate a “point source” of light, so can’t be used in
applications needing a highly collimated beam.

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