Book Image

Learn Arduino Prototyping in 10 days

By : Kallol Bosu Roy Choudhuri
Book Image

Learn Arduino Prototyping in 10 days

By: Kallol Bosu Roy Choudhuri

Overview of this book

This book is a quick, 10-day crash course that will help you become well acquainted with the Arduino platform. The primary focus is to empower you to use the Arduino platform by applying basic fundamental principles. You will be able to apply these principles to build almost any type of physical device. The projects you will work through in this book are self-contained micro-controller projects, interfacing with single peripheral devices (such as sensors), building compound devices (multiple devices in a single setup), prototyping standalone devices (powered from independent power sources), working with actuators (such as DC motors), interfacing with an AC-powered device, wireless devices (with Infrared, Radio Frequency and GSM techniques), and finally implementing the Internet of Things (using the ESP8266 series Wi-Fi chip with an IoT cloud platform). The first half of the book focuses on fundamental techniques and building basic types of device, and the final few chapters will show you how to prototype wireless devices. By the end of this book, you will have become acquainted with the fundamental principles in a pragmatic and scientific manner. You will also be confident enough to take up new device prototyping challenges.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Day 4 - Building a Standalone Device

"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."
- Abraham Lincoln

So far, in all the previous chapters, we have been building and powering the prototypes by plugging in the Arduino board into the computer using a USB cable. First, the Arduino board would get powered by this USB connection. In turn, the Arduino board was supplying power to the connected peripheral devices.

While building real-world device prototypes, independent (not from a computer's USB port) power sources must be used, so that the device prototype can work without being connected to a computer. Hence, in this chapter, we will learn how to make standalone devices that have their independent power sources.

You will learn the following topics in this chapter:

  • Introduction to standalone devices
  • Different considerations for power sources based...