The Arduino

Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller, descendant of the open-source Wiring platform, designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR processor and on-board I/O support. The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and the boot loader that runs on the board.

Arduino hardware is programmed using a Wiring-based language (syntax + libraries), similar to C++ with some simplifications and modifications, and a Processing-based IDE.Currently shipping versions can be purchased pre-assembled; hardware design information is available for those who would like to assemble an Arduino by hand. Additionally, variations of the Italian-made Arduino—with varying levels of compatibility—have been released by third parties.The Arduino project received an honorary mention in the Digital Communities category at the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica.The name is an Italian masculine first name, meaning "strong friend". The English pronunciation is "Hardwin", a namesake of Arduino of Ivrea.

Wikipedia

Microcontrollers can be thought of as very small, simple and inexpensive computers-on-a-chip, found in everything from microwaves to robots. They have memory, digital and analog I/O pins, and can execute the instructions that you program them with

The platform. I have included a few pictures of the Arduino UNO Board below. The Arduino is an open source microcontroller platform that was initially developed in Italy, based on the Atmel AVR microprocessor. It's simple to connect to your computer to power and program over USB. There are essentially a number of pins that one can access including analog inputs (for ADC), PWM output pins for driving motors, servos, or in our case LEDs, power pins, communication pins, and digital I/O pins for reading and writing high or low voltages. The intent of this blog is not to duplicate all of this information, so I would direct you here for . Our focus will be on making the thing work for our music visualizer.