Using an Arduino to Make an LED Light Blink Can Be Done in Less Than 5 Minutes.

It's the first basic step to building complex, beautiful projects.By plugging your Arduino into the computer, you allow the computer to upload your code directly into the processor of the Arduino. If you write some code in the editor that tells pin 9 on the Arduino board to turn on, then the computer can upload that script to the Arduino board and as soon as the processor in the board receives power, the script is executed.

As I said in the last post, Arduino uses C to communicate with hardware attached to the board. C is a fundamental language used basically everywhere, from massive corporations to small startups. C is a super fast way to communicate with the processor in a piece of hardware and directly "talk to" the hardware.

In fact, SpaceX engineers mainly use C to guide their rockets through space.A great place to expand Arduino specific knowledge is:Arduino - FoundationsThe Foundations section gives you some specific knowledge about the principles and techniques that are behind the...www.arduino.ccAnyways, to start up a project script, you need two basic "methods.

" Think of them pretty much as functions that take an input and return an output automatically and in order.The first one is known as the setup( ). This is only run once, in fact, and as the name suggests, this method is used to set up the code. It initializes the settings for the pin inputs and outputs.

For a simple project like ours, we will only have one pin to set up.void setup() / initialize digital pin 13 as an output. pinMode(13, OUTPUT);This example sets pin 13 up for outputting a command to anything connected to pin 13.

pinMode is just a way to tell the Arduino that we're going to use pin 13.Next, we have the loop( ). As the name suggests, this method is used to run code over and over again until told to stop or told to change. To make a light blink, here we're going to communicate with the pin and tell it to output electrical charges in a pulsing or blinking fashion.

void loop() digitalWrite(13, HIGH); / turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level) delay(1000); / wait for a second digitalWrite(13, LOW); / turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW delay(1000); / wait for a secondThis example tells the Arduino to "write" a command to pin 13. digitalWrite is just something the Arduino uses to "turn on" a pin or "turn off" a pin. delay( ) is literally a delay in the code where nothing changes for a certain amount of milliseconds.

By first writing that the pin 13 will be HIGH, this turns on the LED. Then the Arduino waits for a second. Then, pin 13 is set to LOW, which turns off the LED. Then the Arduino waits, and repeats the loop.

Now that the software is clear to understand, we need to set up our LED light as a physical hardware component.Using a kit or individual components, set it up like this:The resistor (the brown thing with the stripes) is not really needed, because pin 13 has built in voltage protection. You can actually directly put the short leg of the LED into the GND pin and the long leg into pin 13.

Then upload your code to your Arduino by clicking the upload button in the top left of the editor. The Arduino should flash and reset, and the code should run.Congrats! Your LED is blinking!

·RELATED QUESTION

I didn't get Google Glass Explorer Edition. Is trying to learn Glass dev without the hardware a futile effort?

No, you can still learn the fundamentals of Glass development without the hardware.

There are three main approaches for accomplishing this:

1) Visit the Mirror API documentation, get into the playground, and start hashing up some code. Download the PHP, Java, and Python library, whichever you're most comfortable with. Familiarize yourself with the jargon and converntions (timeline, bundles, menus, etc). Read the support documentation (second link below) to see how the Glass hardware actually functions. Build some apps to this specification. Soon enough, you will find a friend with hardware to t