CIRCA:Arduino

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Description

The Arduino is, primarily, a standard design for a micro controller board, which is, in essence, a very simple computer. The board consists of a single microcontroller, or processor, and a series of onboard sensors, plus additional electronic connection banks for inputs and outputs to, basically anything that will accept or produce an electric signal (ie. Switches, electronic thermometers, LCD displays, LED’s, etc). To program the microcontroller, a user has available to them a relatively easy to use programming language that is relatively similar to C++. Based on a similar language, Wired, the Arduino has two functions that must exist in each program. Setup(), which initializes any and all of the input and output pins the Arduino will use with that program installed, and Loop(), which will run in a constant loop on each successive clock-cycle of the microcontroller, which the Arduino is powered. The Ardunio, as described by the product website: “Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the 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 writing software for the boardArduino Website Currently there are 13 version of the Arduino boards available (link to product page). Produced by Smart Projects (link to company web page), they range in size and capabilities.

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