HW programming pre-course workshop

Green Fox Academy

Greetings!

Welcome to our pre-course hardware programming workshop! Today you are going to jump into the C programming language basics by using an Arduino micro development board.

Warming-up

At first you are going to write smaller programs in JavaScript. This programming language is used widely in web development.

Please go to this site. If you click on the speech bubble you will get more info about the current task, the Green Fox will guide you through the exercises.

Just play around with the code, spend maximum one hour on this task!

Hardware!

During the previous task you learnt the basic concepts of programming:

• variables
• functions
• if-elseif-else blocks
• loops

The Arduino micro board is a tiny PCB with a microcontroller, which can be programmed through USB.

At first create a profile on tinkercad.com. This website contains an online circuit simulator, where you can try out the written Arduino code before it is uploaded to the real Arduino micro board.

In the simulator you don't need to modify the hardware, modify only the source code. There will always be comments in it, which will help you to solve the exercises. Always take a look at the end of the source code, where we collected some useful web page links.

After the code is running perfectly in the simulator you can try to build the hardware on the breadboard. Please ask a mentor to verify it before you connect the Arduino to a USB port! If you mess something up the USB port could be destroyed!

To program the Arduino you will need a software which can do that. There is an online tool which can be used for this, it is called Arduino Create. Another registration is required to use the tool, please sign in and follow the setup guide! (probably drivers need to be installed on your machine)

After the installation completes you can program your Arduino board:

• copy the source code from the tinkercad simulator into the Arduino Create source code editor
• select the Arduino/Genuino Micro from the drop-down list at the top of the screen
• click on right arrow button to upload the code onto the board

1. Digital outputs and inputs

a) Digital output

b) Digital input

2. Analog signals

a) Light sensor

b) Temperature sensor

3. Connecting the analog and the digital world

a) Controlling a FAN

b) Thermostat

4. Electric candle

Electric candle

5. RGB LED

RGB LED