The Arduino website lists 27 different board models, with 5 currently marked as “sold out”. We will assume for these articles that the ones that are sold out will return. Of the 27, three use the very old, but not quite original for Arduino, ATmega328P microcontroller.. Two of these are the still popular, and widely …
This post is completely off topic. I’m getting fed up with email and telephone SPAM. I just want to point out a couple things I’ve done recently that have gotten rid of most of my current SPAM. First I get 10-20 spam emails a day on one account, my Gmail account. Here are my most …
One of the features of most microcontrollers is that they allow easy access to connected peripherals like sensors and actuators. This allows fast, accurate, and inexpensive operation. However some recent Arduino boards use microcontrollers that obfuscate the underlying hardware interfaces. A look into the Arduino Library for these parts show that they are calling vendor …
I thought it would be interesting to compare the speeds of various Arduino boards, from older designs to the newest microcontrollers. I looked at the following: Note that the Nano 33 IoT, the Nano RP2040, and the Uno R4 (WiFi version) all have an ESP32 as a coprocessor for the radio functionality. The Nano ESP32 …
Traditional Arduino boards, like the Uno R3 or Nano, are typically programmed using the Arduino Library functions. These conveniently present most of the microcontroller’s functionality to the hobbyist user. Books like my Far Inside The Arduino and the microcontroller’s documentation show how to access additional functionality not addressed by the Arduino Library. As more advanced …
The map function takes a long integer value, x, in the range in_min through in_max and maps it into the range out_min through out_max. It is very convenient for scaling measurements and the function is defined: It is important to realize some limitations of this function. Some Arduino models define a function mapResolution that does …
The Arduino Uno R4 Minima seemingly has a purpose of eventually replacing the Arduino Uno R3. It’s a 5 volt board with the same form factor as the earlier Uno that seemingly offers more performance (speed and memory capacity) at a 25% lower price point. People are finding flaws in that it has lower current …
The EEPROM library (https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/built-in-libraries/eeprom) has functions for reading and writing single bytes but no function for erasing. The EEPROM in the AVR microcontrollers are capable of erasing and writing single bytes and 100,000 erase/write cycles in a location is the design maximum before the EEPROM will wear out. To maintain compatibility, the EEPROM functions in …
Today I got the new Arduino Uno R4 boards in the mail. This includes the Minima and Wifi models, but this post will just concern itself with the Minima. The R4 Minima is much less expensive than the R3, but still a bit more than a good R3 clone like the Elegoo. You can see …
The DAC (analogWrite to A0 in Arduino Nano 33 IoT, MKR, and Zero boards) isn’t specified to work to the extreme limits. Basically it doesn’t go below 50mV or above 3.25 volts. While the Arduino documentation doesn’t mention this, the datasheet does in section 37.11.5. While the DAC is 10 bits, the analogWrite function reduces …