Arduino
Welcome on the Arduino part of my website.
The arduino project is a open source electronic platform with a large community behind it. There are a few versions of the ardiono micro controller board, but the largest diffrents are in memory and number of i/o ports.
The cool part of the arduino platform is that a lot of users write libraries for it. Theres a collection of default arduino libraries thats contains the most basic functionality. With them you can easily write to ports, the serial port and use interrupts and timers. All of these functions can be used without the specific knowledge of the atmega cpu, so theres no need of wrestle yourself throwout the datasheet. The users of the community posts libraries for special hardware or tough algorithm most of the time. They can be used by another user who cant solve a problem or wants a quick and good solution for a problem. Because of the libraries that are being posts are open sourced, everyone can read and check them. So after a while the libraries are getting better and better.
Last weeks I wrote my first library for the public. It makes it possible to communicate with a MCP23016 pin expander. That microchip works on the I2C bus and has 16 i/o ports. The library provides the user a interface just like the interface you use for the normal I/O ports.You can find the page of the library on this page: IO expander library
koenwar 