Summary Guide: Arduino Microcontrollers¶
This section is about establishing core concepts of computation as related to physical interface. This connects the behavior of the physical world of electrical signals to the logical world of programs, numbers, and symbols.
For the exercises and assignments, we will be using the Arduino, a popular microcontroller for physical computing. The following list is an informal summary of basic concepts related to computation with physical signals and the Arduino.
Takeaway Lessons¶
An Arduino is a small low-power computer with many conventional elements: read/write memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), a CPU which executes logical and mathematical instructions, and input/output peripheral circuitry. This class of computers are called microcontrollers reflecting their use as microprocessors controlling hardware.
Microcontrollers are appropriate for physical computing tasks with low computational requirements. They have low power consumption and input/output peripherals specialized for hardware such as analog-to-digital converters and PWM waveform generators. They have a single-threaded programming model with no operating system so writing hardware-oriented programs can be very simple.
Physical properties such as position and light intensity are intrinsically analog since they have continuity in time and space. In contrast, computational processes involve operations on numbers representing measurements of the physical properties. We use analog to digital converters (ADCs) to make periodic measurements of electrical signals to create digital representations. These numerical digital signals are sampled in both time and value, since ADCs have a finite precision and speed.
The physical world is one of simultaneity: all atoms are constantly in motion, all physical processes are unfolding in parallel. Computation as we know it is essentially serial and local: programs process numbers one at a time (or in small batches). Signal processing programs managing signals at different sample rates must simulate this simultaneity through program structure and time management.
Digital logic signals use voltages to represent discrete symbols, usually just a binary one or zero. More complex symbols, e.g. numbers, require multiple bits, either encoded on a set of wires (a parallel data bus) or over time on a single wire used as a serial data bus. Every digital number is represented using a finite set of bits and thus has finite precision and range.
Digital logic circuits are generally intended only to convey information and are hence designed to output only small currents at logic-level voltages. Controlling enough energy to operate an actuator almost always requires amplification via a driver circuit.
Systems which only manipulate outputs are said to be open-loop. Systems using feedback that measures the physical effect of an output to govern the output are said to be closed-loop. Hobby servos are a simple example of a closed-loop position-controlled servomotor.
Many useful physical interfacing components and modules are available which communicate using a serial data bus such as I2C or SPI. There are corresponding Arduino libraries to simplify interfacing to these devices.