Spooky Projects

Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino

Class 2
14 Oct 2006 - machineproject - Tod E. Kurt

Whats for Today

Reading buttons
Reading analog values (knobs and photocells)
Detecting the dark
More complex LED circuits
Also, any questions about last week?
Or about stuff on the Arduino site?

Recap: Blinky LED

Recap: Programming
Edit

Compile

Reset

Upload

Known Good
Configuration
Rule #1 of experimenting:
Before trying anything new,
Get back to a known working state

So lets spend a few minutes & get led_blink working again

Get your entire edit->compile->upload->run working
Even if it becomes so second nature to you that you feel you shouldnt need to, do it anyway.
Especially when mysterious problems arise, revert to a known state

LED Light Tubes

Snug-fit straws on
the end of your
LEDs to make
them glow more
visibly

I have a box of multi-colored straws for whatever color LED you like

Digital Input
Most inputs youll use are variations on switches
Switches make or break a connection

knife switch
(SPST)

Fundamentally, theyre all like the simple knife switch

Single pole = only one circuit is being controlled
Double pole = two circuits are being controlled at once
Single throw = only one path for circuit
Double throw = two potential paths for circuit

toggle switch
(SPDT)

Many Kinds of Switches

magnetic

hexidecimal

tilt

lever

Tilt sensor has a little ball inside you can hear.

Used to have mercury switches, with real metallic mercury inside. Not so much now tho.
Magnetic reed switches are cool, but delicate.
The hex switch is actually many switches in one, and outputs 4 signals

Tiny Switches
gap
connect
when
pushed

always connected together

Pressing the button, closes the gap
These are the switches in your kit. One should have a slightly different button on it than the other.

Make Your Own

Switches
Anything that makes a connection
Wires, tin foil, tinfoil balls, ball bearings
Pennies!
Nails, bolts, screws

Or repurpose these tiny switches as bump

detectors or closure detectors

Homemade Switches
Trick Penny
Penny on a surface.
When the penny is lifted, alarms go off

Homemade Switches
Trick Penny

Wire soldered to penny.

Wire looped or crimped to aluminum sheet.

Homemade Switches
Smart Wind Chimes
When the wind blows hard enough,
youre sent email

Should use stranded wire, not solid.

Code analyzes series of on/off/on/off pulses to determine wind.

Digital Input
Switches make or break a connection
But Arduino wants to see a voltage
Specifically, a HIGH (5 volts)
or a LOW (0 volts)
HIGH
LOW

How do you go from make/break to high/low?

Switch to Volts:
Positive Logic
Digital inputs can

float between 0 and

5 volts

Resistor pulls down

input to ground (0
volts)

Pressing switch sets

input to 5 volts

pull-down

Press is HIGH
Release is LOW

Dont want pull-down to be too small, or it uses a lot of current

Switch to Volts:
Inverted Logic
Resistor pulls up
input to 5 volts

Switch sets input

to 0 volts

But now the sense

is inverted

Press is LOW
Release is HIGH

Inverted logic like this is common in microcontrollers

pull-up

Arduino Digital Input

Add switch circuit to any digital input
For output, use either existing pin 13 LED or
wire up your own

(except pin 13)

Arduino Digital Input

Output is on-board pin 13 LED for now

Using the fact that two of the switch leads are connected.
Also, notice color coding. Blue is ground, purple is signal
But pin 13 LED is underneath! So gotta take a peak.

Making Jumper Wires

strip off about 1/2 of insulation
Can use wire strippers, cutters, or fingers
Can be a pain, so I have some pre-cut wires

Making Jumper Wires

The end result

Or buy pre-cut

One of these how much is your time worth? situations.

If you do a lot of breadboarding, pre-cut jumpers can save a lot of time.

Using digitalRead()
In setup(): use pinMode(myPin,INPUT)
to make pin an input

In loop(): use digitalRead(myPin) to

get switch position

If doing many tests, use a variable to hold the output value of

digitalRead().
e.g. val = digitalRead(myPin)

Enough with the atoms, back to the bits

Digital Input Sketch

Load examples/digital IO/digital_read

Now you control the blinking

Press to turn on, release to turn off.

Changing Blink Rate

Or, combine led_blink with digital_read

Built up of pieces youve seen before. Sorta like Lego.

Not an example in the Examples folder, but just something I made up.

Multiple Switches
Same sub-circuit,
just duplicate

Can do lots of switches this way.

Multiple Switches

An example of how to lay it out. Dont have to do it here. Try at home.

I have extra 10k resistors.

Digital Input Uses

spooky, remember?

Take a Break

Analog Input
To computers, analog is chunky

image from:

http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/me307/lectures.html

Analog Input

Many states, not just two (HIGH/LOW)

Number of states (or bins) is resolution
Common computer resolutions:

8-bit = 256 states

16-bit = 65,536 states
32-bit = 4,294,967,296 states

Analog Input
Arduino (ATmega8) has six ADC inputs
(ADC = Analog to Digital Converter)
Reads voltage between 0 to 5 volts
Resolution is 10-bit (1024 states)
In other words, 5/1024 = 4.8 mV smallest
voltage change you can measure

Analog Input
Sure sure, but how to make a varying voltage?
With a potentiometer. Or just pot.

+5V
measure
gnd
Color coding: red goes to power, blue to ground, purple to measure here (its a mix, see?)

Potentiometers
Moving the knob is like moving
where the arrow taps the voltage on the resistor

And thats actually how it works, btw, if you take apart a pot.
But I might have the directions reversed (clockwise vs. anti-clockwise).

Arduino Analog Input

Red to Vcc
Purple to A0
Blue to Gnd

Hook it up, plug in the wires in directly

Vcc is alias for +5V.
Raw is alias for external power (approx 9V)

Analog Input Sketch

Sketch Examples/sensors_resistive/analog_read_led
Change to 0

Turn knob to vary blink rate of the LED

Notice no pinMode() for analog inputs

What good are pots?

Anytime you need a ranged input

(were used to knobs)

Measure rotational position

steering wheel, etc.
But more importantly for us, potentiometers
are a good example of a resistive sensor

Sensing the Dark

Pots are example of a voltage divider
Voltage divider splits a voltage in two
Same as two resistors, but you can vary them

Sensing the Dark:

Photocells

aka. photoresistor, light-dependent resistor

A variable resistor
Brighter light == lower resistance
Photocells you have range approx. 0-10k

schematic symbol
Pretty cheap too. Can get a grab bag of 100 misc from Jameco for $20

Photocell Circuit
Vcc

pin A0

gnd
Looks a lot like the pot circuit, doesnt it?

Photocell Arduino
Sketch
Can use as before, sketch analog_read_led
Change to 0

Wave your hand over it = blink faster

Point it towards the light = blink slower
Just like magic!
If circuit was configured the other way (photocell on bottom), then darkness would make it blink
slower.

More Spooky, Please

All this blinking is okay, but...

Booo!

I design
your eyes

Okay, so the googly-eyeness of it makes it more Simpsonesque than spooky.

Evil Glowing Eyes

Almost as cool as Roy Batty

LED Eyeballs
Use your two orange LEDs
Little bit of hot glue and youre set

Use the two orange LEDs.

Save the R,G,B LEDs for next week.
Hot glue is the best thing in the world.
I brought my hot glue gun if you want to do this right now

Driving Two LEDs

Could use two
Arduino pins.
But wasteful.

Instead, put two

in series

Doesnt work for

blue LEDs

(and white, and some green)

Blue LEDs have a voltage drop of ~3.4V, two in series makes ~6.8V which is greater than the 5V the
Arduino puts out.
Dont put LEDs in parallel. http://members.misty.com/don/ledd.html
Notice pin 10. Thats important.

LED Eyes

photocell circuit is as before

Notice, pin 10. This will become important later.

LED Eyes Brightness

To complement analogRead(),
there is analogWrite().

available on digital pins 9,10,11.

Only
(yes, a little confusing)
More next week about how it works.
Can use it to set brightness of LEDs

LED Eyes Sketch

Sketch analog_brightness

As it gets darker, the LEDs get less bright

You just built an auto-dimmer
This is cool, but still not spooky enough.

Making Eyes Glow

(where glow is the throbbing of brightness)
How does that glow throbbing work?
Sleeping laptops do something similar
Need to describe how brightness changes over time

LED Brightness Functions

Brightness over time can be described as a graph
100% on

brightness

off

time

Draw your graph, use the resulting numbers

Doesnt matter which numbers you choose right now

LED Brightness Functions

Then turn those numbers into an array

Use any pattern of numbers you like

but they must range between 0-255
0 = full off
127 = half on
255 = full on
Make sure max_count is not too large!

LED Brightness Functions

Once you have your table...

...the rest is just programming

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Get a bright_table value

Send it out with analogWrite()
Advance counter into bright_table
Wait a bit
Repeat

Glowing Eyes Sketch

led_glow

I can

Glowing Eyes

Going Further
Glowing LEDs
The last sketch is data driven
So you can plug in any brightness function
Make a flickering candle or a bad neon
light

Going Further
Photocells
Think of some interesting uses
What about multiple photocells?
Homemade Sensors
Make some of your own!

Next Week
Motion with Servos
R,G,B color mixing for mood lighting
Controlling Arduino from a computer
Controlling a computer from Arduino

END Class 2
http://todbot.com/blog/spookyarduino

Tod E. Kurt
[email protected]