Buy Arduino in Vietnam

Just found out there’s a shop that supply Arduino in Vietnam, HCM City.

Home page: http://www.sotatec.com/arduino

If you’re in Vietnam, you can contact:

Công ty TNHH SOTATEC

Địa chỉ:          162 Đường Số 7

                      P. Bình Trị Đông B,

                      Q. Bình Tân, TpHCM

Email:            sales [at] sotatec.com

Tel/Fax:          (+84 8) 3762 4459

Mobile:           (+84) 98 93 99 650

Số TK (VND):  2100 1485 1007 957  (Ngân hàng Eximbank – Chi nhánh Bình Phú, Tp. Hồ Chí Minh)

 

or, get accquainted on Facebook: Sotatec Facebook Page

and the owner: Nghia Hoan Ho Facebook

Week #02 – Fade a LED

One simple Arduino project every week!

(1) Objectives

- Know the concepts of PWM.

- Apply it to change brightness of the LED.

- Make LED fade in and fade out.

(2) Requirements

- An Arduino board, of course.

- A LED.

- Adapter cable to connect Arduino and PC.

- Some wires and breadboard if needed.

(3) Setup

- Plug the LED to the board.

- Connect the GND with short leg.

- Connect the long leg with pin 3.

(sorry, I don’t have Fritzing at the moment, but in the next coming projects I will try to use it).

Setup

 

(4) Explanation

Q:  Why pin 3?

A: Please get the concept of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) first; then check your board to know which pins are PWM. On my Arduino UNO, the PWM pins are: 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11.

You can get more information about PWM here: http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/Arduino-PWM-Frequency

(5) Source

/**
 * @author		Pete Houston
 * @Objective	fade a LED in and out
 */

// use port 3
const int PORT_LED = 3;

void setup()
{
	// nothing to do here
}

void loop()
{
	// set init brightness value
	int val = 0;

	// start fade in
	for(val = 0; val <= 255; val += 10) {
		analogWrite(PORT_LED, val);
		// wait for a while
		delay(50);
	}

	// reset to max
	if(val >= 255) { val = 255; }

	// start fade out
	for( ; val >= 0; val -= 10) {
		analogWrite(PORT_LED, val);
		// wait for a while
		delay(50);
	}
}

(6) Execution

- The source code is easy enough to understand.

- On your column breadboard, you can plug several LEDs in a line to see the fading effect. I plug three, and they’re fading fine.

Result

(7) Final Words

- Just try to find out, what you’ve learned and known from this project? and what can you do further with this?

 

Cheers,

Pete Houston

Get the Multimeter

Phew, I’ve just received my order, the Multi-meter this afternoon.

Multimeter

Having some tries w/ electric, it seems to work fine; however, it’s a Chinese product, don’t know when it’s broken…lol )

The price is $8.5.

If you are in Vietnam, just go and get it in “Chợ Giời” =))

Cheers,

Pete Houston

 

Use Samsung Galaxy Nexus Power Adapter as Power Source for Arduino

Well, just got from my Galaxy Nexus package the power adapter.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Power Adapter

Some specifications:

INPUT: 100-240V, 50-60Hz, 0.15A

OUTPUT: 5.0V, 1.0A

This is my try…

Nexus Adapter for Arduino

Cheers,

Pete Houston

Week #01 – Blinking a LED

#There will be a tutorial every week that helps you learn Arduino with me.

As for every programmer, things are started at a “Hello World!“. However, for us, electrical engineer/hobbysts, we start with other thing, we light up a LED.

(1) Objectives (lesson targets)

- Learn the very basics of Arduino coding.

- We will need to light up a LED.

- Be able to blink it.

(2) Requirements (things to prepare)

- An Arduino board, I use Arduino UNO, you pick your own kinds, any will do.

- A LED light.

- The adapter cable to connect PC to Arduino.

- Visual Studio w/ Arduino plugin installed (if you don’t have, refer to my previous article – Arduino Plugin for Visual Studio)

#assuming that you’re already had experiences in programming C/C++.

(3) Setup (connect devices and objects)

Setup

- Use cable to connect PC and Arduino board.

- For LED, plug the long leg to pin 13, the short leg to the GND (stands for “ground”).

(4) Source

- Create a new Arduino project and run the below code:

/**
 * @author		Pete Houston
 * @homepage	http://tronixino.wordpress.com/
 * @objective	blink a LED
 */

/** constants **/
const int PIN_LED = 13;	// port to use for LED
const int TIME_DELAY = 1000; // 1000 ms

/** setup **/
void setup()
{
	// set OUTPUT mode for port 13
	pinMode(PIN_LED, OUTPUT);
}

/** loop **/
void loop()
{
	// light up the LED
	digitalWrite(PIN_LED, HIGH);
	// wait for a second
	delay(TIME_DELAY);
	// turn the ligh
	digitalWrite(PIN_LED, LOW);
	// wait for a second)
	delay(TIME_DELAY);
}

(5) Execution

- Click F5 on Visual Studio to compile and upload to the Arduino board.

- You see the result as expect, the LED blinking every second.

(6) Final words

- This lesson is pretty much simple and easy, but if you’re absolutely new to this stuff, I’d suggest you try to read and follow properly. Also, use Google to learn and know a bit about things you don’t know in this lesson; it certainly helps you more in future stuffs.

- Do it, think it and mix it to complete!

Cheers,

Pete Houston

Get the place where you can learn & study Arduino

If you are new to Arduino and want to find a good source where you can learn firmly about Arduino, I’d suggest this famous address:

(+) Arduino Official Page – Tutorials

It’s really awesome, however, some articles are quite hard to understand and follow, but don’t worry, community is the best place where you can ask people for some helps.

You can ask:

(+) The author of this post, this blog. Yes, right! It’s me, I can help you.

(+) StackOverflow – Tag [arduino]

(+) StackExchange – Electrical Engineering Community

Some others sources might help also:

(+) t r o n i x s t u f f s

(+) ladyada.net – Learn Electronics w/ Arduino

Oh, well, hope it helps

 

Cheers,

Pete Houston

Arduino Addin for Visual Studio

As long as I use the Arduino IDE, I’ve found quite inconvenient to use it. Sometimes it messed-up my typing, something like tab and space indentation, curly braces…

After a while googling, found a great addin for Visual Studio: A complete Arduino plugin for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010

A Sample Look on VS 2010

Trying it for a while, I feel really love this, because:

+ it helps organizing my Arduino projects better.

+ have all views on one screen while developing.

+ fimiliar with my beloved C++ syntax highlight color.

+ intellisense on typing.

+ quickly navigate and run source on multiple Arduino devices simultaneously.

That’s all of the good stuffs.

You might wanna give a try for it: http://visualmicro.codeplex.com/

 

Cheers,

Pete Houston