Stefan aka Noneus

I just got my Arduino I ordered at watterott (http://www.watterott.com/). Watterott is a german shop, which sells arduino and accessories for it. I orderd the standard Arduino board: a Duemilanove.

I also ordered a book for it. It’s called “Getting started with Arduino”. But this book is for people that never had anything to do with programming, electronics and programming. So it’s pretty much useless to me. I gave it to me father. Perhaps it will get him interested in electronics and microcontrollers.

But the board itself is pretty cool. You don’t have to know that much about the microcontoller for settings of special-function-registers and so like with the mikrocontrollers I tried at home or university. You just have to download the Arduino software. Then put in a sketch, which is basicly writing C++ with some addons for the mikrocontroller. Now connect the Arduino with an USB-cable and upload the sketch. As a first test I connected 9 leds to the arduino board. Each in series with a 1kOhm transistor. I wrote a short sketch, which now outputs predefined patterns to the 9 leds. For the full sketch take a look under the more link.

Here are some pictures and an animated GIF showing a pattern I display with my sketch.

Getting Started with Arduino by MAKE

Arduino with some LEDs

The patterns I programmed:

Code for my sketch:

int leds = 9;
int ledPins[9] =  {12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4};

int patterns[20][9]{
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
  {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
 };

void setup()   {
  int i;
  for(i=0; i<9; i++)
    pinMode(ledPins[i], OUTPUT);
}

int j = 0;
int k;

void loop() {
  if(j%2)
    digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
  else
    digitalWrite(13, LOW);

  for(k=0; k<leds; k++) {
    if(patterns[j][k])
      digitalWrite(ledPins[k], HIGH);
    else
      digitalWrite(ledPins[k], LOW);
  }

  delay(250);
  j = ++j % 20;
}