Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.orgThis site is divided into levels according to complexity. Pages in the lower level sections should be easy to read, and involve little effort or expertise. Topics which are more complex and/ or require more Arduino fluency are relegated to the higher levels.
This material assumes you have a working Arduino playing nicely with the big computer you're using to program the Arduino. If you are still getting set up, be sure to see the excellent help and troubleshooting material provided at the official Arduino site. AFTER you've looked there, you can also access the helpful forums. Alternatively, I've done a guide to setting up an Arduino. I wrote it while I was still a raw Arduino novice, so maybe I've managed to mention some of things that more experienced Arduino hands didn't realize weren't "obvious".
Level Zero How To's: (Really introductory information)
"You light up my life...": Well... maybe a few LEDs anyway. Basic information about connecting LEDs to an Arduino.
"Thank you for your input...": An introduction to connecting switches and push-buttons to an Arduino. The basics.... but they'll stand you in good stead for much work.
The Big Three: Voltage/ Resistance/ Current. You can go a long way with ad hoc answers to things, but you owe it to yourself to someday master the underlying fundamentals. This page is my introduction to those basic concepts.
Level 1 How To's:
Serial Monitor: A way to obtain text and numbers from an Arduino program, on your PC screen, without buying anything beyond the basic Arduino and installing the basic, free, Arduino development environment software.
Analog sensor: Interfacing an Arduino to an analog sensor. The sensor used ($26) measures distances (0 - 254 inches) ultrasonically, but there are general points applicable to any analog input. The "How To" includes a way to make the Arduino display the analog reading on a "bar graph" of Arduino- driven LEDs.
Level 2 How To's:
Sending floating point numbers to the serial stream: How to "print" a type-double value.
Level 3 How To's:
1-Wire interface... How to use a $8 pre-programmed microcontroller to greatly simplify communications with the wonderful 1-Wire family of sensors and actuators. This page was heavily re-written in the first part of April 2008. Not only could it be of interest for the stated topic, but also it exemplifies communicating between and Arduino and serial devices in general. However, "SPI" is not covered here.
Level 4 How To's:
None yet!
Level 5 How To's:
None yet!
Perpetual Motion: Use an Ardunio, a magnet, an electromagent and two switches to create a penulum which never stops gently swinging. Count the swings if you want to know the time of day, but created for the fun and asthetics of it. (Comes with complete program code.)
My tutorials about programming for the Dallas Semiconductor 1-Wire (tm) chips, as used on a MicroLan (tm), have been moved to here.. Those tutorials are written for Delphi (language) programmers, but they contain much information that would apply to other language environments. I also maintain pages which introduce MicroLans and explain the hardware.
Further to the Arduino ideas the page you are reading now will take you to, I have posted a series of essays which try to help you become a better Arduino programmer and engineer... but, for the best result, you will have to buckle down and work your way through them in sequence. The "How To's" here can be accessed in whatever order you like.
My experience is with the Arduino Diecimila and two clones, the The Bare-Bones Board ("BBB") from ModernDevice.com and the Boarduino from AdaFruit. I've only used version 0010 of the Arduino Development Tool, on a Windows XP box. Having said all that, I have confidence that the product works well across various platforms. I am beginning to use Linux, although my Arduino work hasn't gone across the bridge yet.
Forgive an impertinence? You came here, I hope, Arduino help. I invite you to consider also some pages I've produced in an attempt to persuade you that the database being shipped with Open Office version 2, called "Base", or "ooBase", is worthy of your consideration.
Feel free to use this information in programming courses, etc, but a credit of the source would be appreciated. If you simply copy the pages to other web pages you will do your readers a disservice: Your copies won't stay current. Far better to link to these pages, and then your readers see up-to-date versions. For those who care- thank you- I have posted a page with more information on what copyright waivers I extend, and suggestions for those who wish to put this material on CDs, etc.
I dislike 'fancy' websites with more concern for a flashy appearance than for good content. For a pretty picture, I can go to an art gallery. Of course, an attractive site WITH content deserves praise... as long as that pretty face doesn't cost download time. In any case....
I am trying to present this material in a format which makes it easy for you to USE it.
Before I turn to fancy things, here's a simple idea which I think will be useful to you. These pages are browser friendly. If you resize the window your browser occupies, these pages will re-wrap themselves nicely. They are much easier to work with if you make the column of text you are trying to read narrower.
Most of us have HTML capable wordprocessors. My pages don't do "clever" things. You can save them from a browser, and re-load them to the browser from your hard-disc later, off-line. (I describe this in detail below.) OpenOffice (the excellent, FREE, office suite for Windows AND Linux from www.openoffice.org) takes HTML in its stride. With WordPerfect, you can load the .htm file, select all, copy to clipboard, start a new WordPerfect document, then paste in the text, mostly intact and cleansed of HTML.
You should be able to read the tutorials on-line without difficulty. However, you should ALSO find it easy to capture them for off line use, including editing for your own purposes. The following should work. I would suggest that you create a folder for the tutorials so that you can retain my filenames with no risk of clashes:
On-line, use your browser to view the tutorial you want to capture.
Use the browser's File|Save As... to save the web-page to your disc. At this point you can log off, or visit other pages, perhaps saving them, too.
When you have logged off, just use your browser's File ! Load command to view the material. If you want to edit the files, try using your usual wordprocessor. Failing that, start Notepad (or Wordpad, or anything you like, but then you're on your own <g>). Load the file you saved. Turn word-wrap on. (Notepad: Edit|Word-wrap.)
Snip off the html header and footer. Re-save the document, changing the extension to .txt or .doc Depending on the tutorial, there will be more or less HTML code within the body of the text. With luck, your wordprocessor will cope with this. Give OpenOffice a try if not! Otherwise you can use global search and replaces to remove most of the tags fairly quickly.
________
This would seem to be the place for a plug for Textpad. It is much more than Notepad, while not being all that a "wordprocessor" is... but it DOES have features that you will soon come to love, if you do much work with text files.... especially programming or HTML coding. All of my web pages are created with it, and much of the other text work I do is done with it, too. It has a spell check. It has syntax highlighting. I turn to my wordprocessor (OpenOffice Writer, aka ooWriter) only when I want to produce a letter- formatting and font options are not extensively supported in TextPad. However, it does have many, many, very neat touches which make it a joy to use for many things. I particularly like their answer to "autotext", and the fact that the user can configure how it displays different classes of documents. Here is a link to their site. Shareware: You can try it for free, and it is not expensive to register for continued use.
________
Filenames: I've tried to be organized: Names start "aht", for "Arduino How To essays". Next is a digit, for the level. Then I've used letters one after the other, e.g. aht1a, aht1b, aht1c. The letter doesn't mean much... it just shows when I got around to that particular topic! Sadly, there are some files with non-systematic names. Sorry!
If you visit 1&1's site from here, it helps me. They host my website, and I wouldn't put this link up for them if I wasn't happy with their service.
Click here to visit editor's Sheepdog Software (tm) freeware, shareware pages.
Click here to visit the homepage of my biggest site.
Click here to visit the homepage of Sheepdogsoftware.co.uk. Apologies if the "?FrmAht" I added to that link causes your browser problems. Please let me know, if so?
Link to editor's oldest homepage.
Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org
....... P a g e . . . E n d s .....