Arduino UNO R3, Original

The Arduino Uno is one of the best known microcontrollers on the planet. Based on the Atmel ATMEGA328 chipset, the Uno is a versatile, easy to use, programmable brain for your electronic projects. It is great for grabbing data from sensors or other inputs and using that data to drive motors, displays, or other outputs.

The Uno is programmed using the Arduino IDE software, which is freely available from the Arduino website. The software is used to write code which is then uploaded to the Arduino and stored internally so it can run on its own. The software, documentation, and wide variety of tutorials available make this a great choice for anyone looking to get into the world of programming and electronics.

The board has a single USB “B” port (used to program and power the board) a DC Barrel jack for power (7 – 15VDC input), 14 digital pins capable of being inputs our outputs along with 6 10-bit analog inputs. The Uno also has a hardware serial port, SPI, and I2C; these are typically used to communicate with other boards, advanced sensors, displays, or wireless modules.

Rather than an FTDI chip, USB to TTL serial conversion is handled on board by another Atmel chip – the ATMega16U2. This secondary microcontroller acts like a hardware FTDI chip, converting USB Serial from your computer to TTL Serial for the microcontroller, but also allows the Uno to act like a Keyboard, Mouse or Joystick input with the computer.

To get the Arduino Uno up and running you will need a Windows / Mac / Linux computer with a USB port and the Arduino IDE software installed (Version 1.0 or newer) . To connect the Arduino to your computer a USB “B” cable (USB printer cable) is required.