What is a Breakout Board for Arduino?

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Host Francesca Amiker sits down with directors Joe and Anthony Russo, producer Angela Russo-Otstot, stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, and more to uncover how family was the key to building the emotional core of The Electric State . From the Russos’ own experiences growing up in a large Italian family to the film’s central relationship between Michelle and her robot brother Kid Cosmo, family relationships both on and off of the set were the key to bringing The Electric State to life. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts . State Secrets: Inside the Making of The Electric State is produced by Netflix and Treefort Media.…

for 8 år siden 8:21

MP4•Episode hjem

In this lesson, we will discuss what breakout boards are, how they can accelerate your Arduino prototyping and some things to look out for when you buy them.

Want to step-up your Arduino skills?

Basic Concept of a Breakout Board

The basic concept of a breakout board is that is takes a single electrical component and makes it easy to use.

Usually the electrical component is an integrated circuit (IC). Integrated circuits, as you may know, have pins on them. The pins on an IC can do a multitude of things, but you usually have pins for supply power, pins for providing a ground, pins for receiving an input and pins for sending an output.

A breakout board "breaks out" these pins onto a printed circuit board that has its own pins that are spaced perfectly for a solderless breadboard, giving you easy access to use the integrated circuit.

There are all type of breakout boards - but most of them are for different types of sensors, for example: accelerometers, ultrasonic distance sensors, RFID tag sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, and they even have seismic breakout boards for sensing dinosaurs' footsteps!

Breakout Board vs Arduino Shield: What's the difference?

You might be wondering what the difference is between a breakout board and an Arduino shield, and that is a good question.

Breakout boards usually have a smaller form factor - they don't need the entire space of an Arduino shield to accomplish their mission.

And while the market for most breakout boards is being driven because of their use with Arduino, since the pin-out of a breakout board is not designed specific to the Arduino headers, it means you could use a breakout board with any other microcontroller development board you want - which gives them a bit more scope than Arduino shields.

Also, since breakout boards generally have fewer components than a shield does, you may find the cost is lower than a comparable Arduino shield. As you may have guessed by now, you can find a breakout board that does essentially the same thing as a shield.

You might be wondering, if breakout boards are only a few components, why not just buy the integrated circuit the breakout board uses, put it on a solderless breadboard yourself, and then hook them up to your Arduino?

That is great question, and there is nothing saying you can't – plenty of people do - especially since the components by themselves are often far cheaper to buy alone from an electronics distributor, like digikey or mouser.

So, why the heck are people buying all these breakout boards?

It essentially comes down to convenience. Let me list the ways a breakout board can help you out, and then you make the call:

Breakout boards can save you space

We have already said that breakout boards use integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are kind of like t-shirts - you can get them in all different sizes.

Usually breakout boards utilize a tiny version of an integrated circuit called an SMD (surface mounted device). The pins on SMD parts are really small - not something you can easily pop into a breadboard.

The larger form factor of an integrated circuit, called a DIP (dual inline package) has bigger pins, which fit easily into a breadboard. The DIP package of an IC will be bigger than the SMD form factor.

The point, I am getting to here, is that Breakout boards can sometimes save you space which may or may not be important for your project.

Breakout Boards are designed for reuse

Another thing about using DIP packages is that while the pins are bigger, they are not necessarily sturdy. If you plan to use a DIP component over and over, the usable life of the pins is only so long - the pins on a breakout board however, are heavy duty and designed for reuse.

The DIP version on a component may not be available

One other issue you may find is that the DIP version of an integrated circuit is not available - as electronics get smaller over time, the demand for larger components is drying up and manufacturers are moving away from even bothering with the DIP package, which ultimately brings you back to a breakout board.

Pin labeling on a Breakout board

One great feature of breakout boards is that they usually have the pin names of the integrated circuit labeled on the PCB. This makes hooking up the breakout board to your Arduino a cinch, especially when there are a ton of pins.

Otherwise, you are looking at the black box of an IC and referencing the datasheet of the integrated circuit to try to figure out which pin is for what.

So now that you know some of the benefits of a breakout board, let's talk about a couple things you might want to consider when you are buying them.

Good documentation

I said this about Arduino Shields in the last lesson, but I will say it again - good documentation is like water in the desert. The more you can get your hands on, the better.

Let's face it - a lot of this electronics and programming stuff is not self evident - you need good instructions and reference material to make it work right.

The test I usually use before buying a breakout board is to see what reference material I can find online for it. If nothing tangible exists, you might be spending way more time trying to get it up and running than you would prefer.

Breakout boards are not necessarily interchangeable

As you search for particular breakout boards, you may find that there is a super cheap version available. If you plan on using pre-existing code for a breakout board that references the more expensive version of the breakout board – i.e. maybe in the sketch comments it says, "use XYZ breakout board", one thing you will want to check is that the breakout boards use the same integrated circuit.

If they don't use the same integrated circuit, and you don't know how to adjust the code for these differences, then you may find that the cheap version will cost you more time in trying to figure out how to use it.

Soldering and header pins may be required

Many breakout boards are sold as kits. Usually, the only things you have to solder are the header pins that allow the breakout board PCB to plug into a breadboard - this is really easy to do.

It may also be the case that a kit maker just sells the breakout board with the SMD components, and you have to buy the pin headers separately.

So those are a few things to keep in mind when buying a breakout boards.

Using the correct supply voltage

Finally, once you actually have your breakout board, make sure that you know what voltage supply pin it needs hooked up to.

The Arduino has two voltage out pins, one at 3.3 volts and one at 5 volts. Many breakout boards use a supply voltage around 3.3 volts. Sometimes the supply voltage will be printed right on the PCB by the associated pin, but other times it will just say Vcc, so you will want to check the specs on the breakout board.

If you are just getting started with breakout boards, a great place to look is in the Arduino IDE examples. Some pre-written sketches get you up and running quick with some common breakout boards.

If you like the style of this lesson, I welcome you to join the free Arduino Crash Course - you can sign up below.

61 episoder

#Tech #Higher Education #Programming Electronics Academy #Podcasting Education

Learn Programming and Electronics with Arduino

What is a Breakout Board for Arduino?

Learn Programming and Electronics with Arduino

published for 8 år siden

Del

MP4•Episode hjem

In this lesson, we will discuss what breakout boards are, how they can accelerate your Arduino prototyping and some things to look out for when you buy them.

Want to step-up your Arduino skills?

Click here to join our 12-part HD Video Course.

Basic Concept of a Breakout Board

The basic concept of a breakout board is that is takes a single electrical component and makes it easy to use.

Breakout Board vs Arduino Shield: What's the difference?

You might be wondering what the difference is between a breakout board and an Arduino shield, and that is a good question.

Breakout boards usually have a smaller form factor - they don't need the entire space of an Arduino shield to accomplish their mission.

So, why the heck are people buying all these breakout boards?

It essentially comes down to convenience. Let me list the ways a breakout board can help you out, and then you make the call:

Breakout boards can save you space

We have already said that breakout boards use integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are kind of like t-shirts - you can get them in all different sizes.

The point, I am getting to here, is that Breakout boards can sometimes save you space which may or may not be important for your project.

Breakout Boards are designed for reuse

The DIP version on a component may not be available

Pin labeling on a Breakout board

Otherwise, you are looking at the black box of an IC and referencing the datasheet of the integrated circuit to try to figure out which pin is for what.

So now that you know some of the benefits of a breakout board, let's talk about a couple things you might want to consider when you are buying them.

Good documentation

I said this about Arduino Shields in the last lesson, but I will say it again - good documentation is like water in the desert. The more you can get your hands on, the better.

Let's face it - a lot of this electronics and programming stuff is not self evident - you need good instructions and reference material to make it work right.

Breakout boards are not necessarily interchangeable

Soldering and header pins may be required

Many breakout boards are sold as kits. Usually, the only things you have to solder are the header pins that allow the breakout board PCB to plug into a breadboard - this is really easy to do.

It may also be the case that a kit maker just sells the breakout board with the SMD components, and you have to buy the pin headers separately.

So those are a few things to keep in mind when buying a breakout boards.

Using the correct supply voltage

Finally, once you actually have your breakout board, make sure that you know what voltage supply pin it needs hooked up to.

If you are just getting started with breakout boards, a great place to look is in the Arduino IDE examples. Some pre-written sketches get you up and running quick with some common breakout boards.

If you like the style of this lesson, I welcome you to join the free Arduino Crash Course - you can sign up below.

61 episoder

#Tech #Higher Education #Programming Electronics Academy #Podcasting Education

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Learn Programming and Electronics with Arduino

for 8 years siden8:11

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Learn Programming and Electronics with Arduino

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What to do when you just don't know :: Arduino, ADXL345 triple axis accelerometer and an RGB LED 14:04

for 8 years siden14:04

14:04

This lesson discusses what to do when you open an existing program and realize that you simply don't understand all the stuff that is going on. It also talks about using the ADXL345 triple axis accelerometer breakout board to control the hue of a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) LED.

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3 Ways to Use Acceleration in an Arduino Sketch 17:37

for 8 years siden17:37

17:37

This lesson covers three easy ways to implement some form of acceleration in your Arduino sketches. It will cover the following: Linear Acceleration Exponential Acceleration Messing Around with the Square Root function What is Acceleration? Acceleration is the rate of change of something over time. Acceleration would help describe things like: Have fast can a stopped car get to 88mph? If I do a wing-suit jump from the top of Mount Everest, how fast will I be when I am gliding over base camp? How can I gently slow down the movement of a mechanical servo before it comes to rest? We can implement acceleration when programming Arduino quite easily with just a couple lines of code. The basic concept is that a variable will need to change - how it changes over the course of the sketch is what we are interested in. Below are three examples of how we can code change in variables so they display acceleration. Linear acceleration Linear acceleration is a constant rate of change. It can be represented by a sloped line on an x-y axis. A simple way to use it is to increment or decrement a variable every time through a loop like below... for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { //accel gets increasingly smaller as for loop continues accel = accel - 100; }//close for You can see in the code above, that each time through the 'for loop', the accel variable is decreasing by 100. If accel started at 1000, this is what accel would look like with respect to the number of iterations of the for loop. You can see that the accel variable decreases at a set rate over time in a linear fashion. Exponential Acceleration Exponential acceleration changes over time too, but it does so more dramatically (It's basically a drama queen). At first the rate of change in the variable is small, but once it begins to increase it really takes off! You can use the power function built into the Arduino IDE to make a variable change exponentially. The power function syntax is quite easy. pow( base, exponent ) The parameter base is the number that get raised to the power of the exponent . Like 2 to the 5th power. Below is an example of how you might code it to change a variable exponentially over the course of a 'for loop'. for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { //accel grows exponentially as the for loop continues accel = pow(2, i); }//close for Looking at a chart of accel over the course of the 'for loop', we can see that the way it changes is much different than linear acceleration: The theme for exponential growth is that is starts out slow, but once it starts going it really get's going! Using the Square Root Function for Acceleration The square root function can also provide some flavor to the output from your Arduino. It's syntax is simple: sqrt( x ) It returns the square root of the number or variable that you put in the parenthesis. Below is an easy way to use it in a 'for loop': for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { //accel quickly decreases through the loop accel = sqrt(accel); }//close for Let's look at how accel changes over the course of the for loop(let's say it started at 10,000): You can see the a rapid deceleration in the value of the accel variable of the 'for loop'. Practice With Acceleration: If you want to take a look at what these types of acceleration will do in "real" life, then set up the circuit below. You Will Need: (10) LEDs (10) 220 Ohm Resistors (1) Jumper Wire Arduino Board Bread Board Black Marker Set Up The Circuit: Start by by placing one resistor at pin 2 on your Arduino. Connect the other end of the resistor to the breadboard and then connect the long leg of the LED to the resistor. Place the short leg of the LED in the outer ground rail of the bread board. Then add 9 more resistors and LEDs across - you should stop at Pin 11 on the Arduino. Then add a jumper wire from GND on the Arduino to the shared ground on the breadboard. (All LEDs not pictured). That is pretty much it for the circuit. Below are the code examples for the different ways to program acceleration that we talked about: Here is the code for the linear acceleration: /* Linaer ( Constant ) Acceleration The circuit: * LEDs from pins 2 through 11 to ground created 2006 by David A. Mellis modified 30 Aug 2011 by Tom Igoe Modifeid 21 Jul 2014 by Michael James This example code is in the public domain. http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Array */ //Declare and initialize variables // The higher the number, the slower the timing. int timer = 1000; // an array of pin numbers to which LEDs are attached int ledPins[] = { 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 }; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array) int pinCount = 10; void setup() { // the array elements are numbered from 0 to (pinCount - 1). // use a for loop to initialize each pin as an output: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { pinMode(ledPins[thisPin], OUTPUT); } //Start Serial Communication Serial.begin(9600); }//close setup void loop() { // loop from the lowest pin to the highest: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer (EASY WAY) timer = timer - 100; //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Back ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop timer = 1000; // loop from the highest pin to the lowest: for (int thisPin = pinCount - 1; thisPin >= 0; thisPin--) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer timer = timer - 100; //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Forth ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop timer = 1000; }//close loop Here is the code for the exponential acceleration: /* Exponential Acceleration The circuit: * LEDs from pins 2 through 11 to ground created 2006 by David A. Mellis modified 30 Aug 2011 by Tom Igoe Modifeid 21 Jul 2014 by Michael James This example code is in the public domain. http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Array */ //Declare and initialize variables // The higher the number, the slower the timing. float timer = 1000; // an array of pin numbers to which LEDs are attached int ledPins[] = { 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 }; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array) int pinCount = 10; void setup() { // the array elements are numbered from 0 to (pinCount - 1). // use a for loop to initialize each pin as an output: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { pinMode(ledPins[thisPin], OUTPUT); } //Start Serial Communication Serial.begin(9600); }//close setup void loop() { // loop from the lowest pin to the highest: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer timer = pow(2, thisPin); //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Back ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop // loop from the highest pin to the lowest: for (int thisPin = pinCount - 1; thisPin >= 0; thisPin--) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer timer = pow(2, thisPin); //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Forth ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop timer = 1000; }//close loop Here is the code for messing around with the square root: /* square root The circuit: * LEDs from pins 2 through 11 to ground created 2006 by David A. Mellis modified 30 Aug 2011 by Tom Igoe Modifeid 21 Jul 2014 by Michael James This example code is in the public domain. http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Array */ //Declare and initialize variables // The higher the number, the slower the timing. float timer = 1000; // an array of pin numbers to which LEDs are attached int ledPins[] = { 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 }; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array) int pinCount = 10; void setup() { // the array elements are numbered from 0 to (pinCount - 1). // use a for loop to initialize each pin as an output: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { pinMode(ledPins[thisPin], OUTPUT); } //Start Serial Communication Serial.begin(9600); }//close setup void loop() { // loop from the lowest pin to the highest: for (int thisPin = 0; thisPin < pinCount; thisPin++) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer timer = sqrt(timer); //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Back ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop timer = 1000; // loop from the highest pin to the lowest: for (int thisPin = pinCount - 1; thisPin >= 0; thisPin--) { // turn the pin on: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], HIGH); delay(timer); // turn the pin off: digitalWrite(ledPins[thisPin], LOW); //decrement timer timer = sqrt(timer); //let's take a look at the numbers via the serial monitor window (Tools > Serial Monitor) Serial.print("Forth ... LED #"); Serial.print(thisPin); Serial.print(" = "); Serial.println(timer); }//close for //reset timer for next for loop timer = 1000; }//close loop I hope the lesson was helpful. The idea of adding acceleration to a sketch can seem a bit intimidating at first, but as you can see, it turns out to be a rather simple addition of code. Try on Your Own Challenge: Can you make the fade amount of an LED accelerate/deccelerate? Can you add a potentiometer to the circuit above and find a way to control the amount of acceleration - either linear, exponential or otherwise.…

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