So you’ve heard of it, but never checked it out? You’re at the right place.
An Arduino is “an open-source electronics prototyping platform,” much like the teensy, but different. The Arduino features a removable micro-controller, more I/O pins & memory, allowing you to do bigger and petter projects.
What can I use it for?
Similar to the teensy, you can use it for LOTS of projects! Anywhere from a pneumatic door for your house, to a hotel room unlocker. In fact, a friend of mine used it to fix his automatic lock-unlock functions on his car, and another friend used it to create an irrigation system. The only limit to this is your imagination!
How do I program it?
With either C, or the Arduino IDE. Here are some resources to get you started:
There are almost 20 official Arduino models with very different features (not considering all the tenths of compatible boards out there). Some have removable MCUs, some don’t. Some have more memory, some less. Some run faster and some slower…
The language you use with the Arduino IDE is also C. Arduino IDE is an IDE, not a programming language. What you probably meant is that you can program the microcontroller directly in plain C or asm instead of using the Arduino high level libraries that abstract the HW details of the different boards supported by the environment.
That is not really the point. Following the same reasoning, you could just have reduced this post to a link to the wikipedia article… Why did you feel you could do better for one thing and not for the other?
Answering your questions
I use Arduino for quick prototyping. The IDE is very convenient and it is very easy and safe to hook things up to the board without any soldering or additional protection circuitry… in most cases.
I have many Arduinos, most of them I built myself following this tutorial:
Thank you for the input! I always appreciate criticism and additions, as it makes for a better writer.
I was primarily focusing on the Arduino Uno.
I didn’t think I could do a better job than the wikipedia article, I simply wrote this article for the sake of completion of the series and didn’t feel as though it needed a demonstration as it should be up to the reader to come up with their own ideas. (Even though I did provide them with links to tutorials)
I have a PI that I have really been meaning to start a project on. However I don’t have the hardware necessary for any development, besides a bulky TV monitor.
Chances are I will run network penetration tests on it using python built tools.
I always appreciate criticism and additions, as it makes for a better writer.