Arduino - What is it? Why using it?

Just as I said in my first post, I'm almost an electrical engineer. One of the areas that are studied during this career is related with control systems and automation or control engineering, which is the one that makes use of control theory to design and employ a system to make a process (whichever) to behave in a certain way, desired by the designer.

How is Arduino related with this?

Well, first of all we have to know what an Arduino is

Arduino is an open-source platform, made to design and build electronic projects. An Open-source hardware is that which its specs and schematic diagrams can be reach by anyone, paying or in a free way.

An Arduino is basically splited in two parts, a physical programmable circuit board (often referred to as a microcontroller) and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which can be used on all the well-known operative systems just like Windows, MAC Os, Linux, and even Android.

Why is it known as a microcontroller?
A microcontroller is a programmable integrated circuit made to execute the orders and instructions saved in his memory, this is what in general terms and Arduino does. It counts with a microcontroller that can be programmed to execute a work according to the information that he recieves through his I/O pins or input or output pins, these are the ones that allow the board to interact with the process that it was programmed for.

In the picture you can see an Arduino UNO board, there are different models, they are work the same way, the main difference is the size and number of I/O pins, and their processor capacity. Depending on the needs the boards can be smaller or bigger. They all are programmable using the IDE interface that Arduino provide in his webpage and making use of high level programming languages, like C++ for example.

Control systems and automation are related with Arduino because this tool can be used to automate the most basic process as it can be turning on and off a LED, as well as it can be used for more complex processes as implement a PID control loop, which is a classic control technique. There are even Arduino models with physical characteristics that are similar to a PLC, designed for industry or more agressive environments.

Arduinos can also be programmed to make simpler everyday works, and even for fun. There are people that program Arduinos to make them play a musical instrument by its own. There are endless possibilities.

I'm telling you this because this tool besides being compact, it was a great help for projects that I had to do during my career at university, with nothing more to add, greetings and see you soon☺.