PART ONE

Hello – it’s great to see that there are a bunch of you interested in Arduino and model boats

I love playing with Arduino, I learn something new almost every day and find it mentally stimulating and rewarding working through the “How can I do this” of an Arduino project.

It’s a big topic and comes with a set of it’s own jargon so it can be difficult to know where to start, how much is it going to cost, where can I purchase the boards etc. etc.

There are some fundamental building blocks that you need in place to be able to start your Arduino journey and it can be all to easy to give up on the subject when you hit a brick wall.

My approach will be blended learning – there are some fabulous free learning resources on the internet – these are top notch well thought out and well-presented short videos.

We all have different levels of understanding about Arduino – I will pitch the posts at those just starting their adventure – read on past if this is not you and and you come across familiar territory and maybe check back in when things get a bit more juicy.

A taster for some of the projects to come

A bilge water alarm -

A Morse code/ Aldis flasher -

No more waffle from me - lets scratch the surface of 2 of the building blocks – investing time watching these video a couple of times each will give you a good grounding in the subject.

Arduino Hardware overview and Arduino Integrated Development Environment – the free text editor like software where you create a program (from this point onwards referred to as the IDE)

The four videos below have some overlap but they give a great introduction - enjoy

This post is intended to set the scene and give you an overview of the subject

Please do post any questions / feedback

PART TWO will cover:
Writing your first program

Regards
Jonathan

If you have watched the “setting the scene” videos from Part 1 you should now be more familiar with some aspects of Arduino.

I am going to suggest that you don’t purchase any boards or accessories right now. Wait until we have covered a bit more of the topic – you will be able to judge then whether this is for you or not and therefore save wasting money.

In Summary:

Arduino is open source and anybody can manufacture the boards – if not made by Arduino(Italy) then they should have a different name e.g. Seeeduino

The boards have inputs and outputs (Analog 0-5v, Digital 0 or 5v)

It is necessary to select the com (communication) "port" in the IDE that the Arduino board is connected to

It is necessary to select which Arduino board type (Uno,Nano etc) you are using in the IDE

Programs (also known as Sketches) are written in the free IDE computer software

Programs are uploaded from the IDE to the Arduino board using a USB cable

The next video shows you how to write a very simple program to flash an LED - the full program code can be seen in the attached image

Regards
Jonathan

HINTS AND TIPS

>>DOCUMENT your code as you go

We can add comments to our program code to help us understand what each line or section is doing. All text on the same line after a double forward slash is defined as a comment
e.g. // This is a comment

This has no effect on the program code or memory use when uploaded to the Arduino.

In a simple program this may seem unnecessary – it is however a good habit to adopt. When you open a program 6 months down the road you may find you look at the code you wrote and struggle to understand your long forgotten logic – it can be very annoying when you can’t understand your own code!

>>SAVE your program regularly with a different name

I use an approach where I give the program a name and suffix _xxx.

xxx is simply an incremental serial number “MyLedFlasher001.ino”, “MyLedFlasher002.ino” etc

Often my enthusiasm overruns and I change lots of lines of code all at the same time only to find the program does not do what I expected or results in an error. If you have overwritten your previous working copy with the same file name you will feel your blood pressure rising. When the going gets tough I rename after each and every change - trust me this approach pays dividends...

>>SYNTAX – what is it?

Definition = “the structure of statements in a computer language”

There are a set of rules (syntax) you need to comply with in order for the IDE to accept your program code as valid.

For example one syntax rule is most lines of code require the “line terminator character” – a semi colon to be added to each line of code to tell the IDE “end of line”.

If you make Syntax errors then the code will not upload(compile) to the Arduino board and you will be left with an orange error bar at the bottom of screen and some error text hinting at what might be wrong with your code.

Another example of a Syntax error is incorrect use of lower case or capital letters for program commands.

digitalWrite(LEDPin, HIGH); is valid syntax and works
digitalwrite(LEDPin, HIGH); is invalid syntax and does not work as the letter w is in lower case

Brackets are always used in pairs - open and close () or {} - it is easy when code gets more complex to omit a bracket

Get used to the orange error bar and syntax errors they happen all the time to all programmers – or at least it does for me.

You will get familiar with solving the errors over time – some can take a few minutes to work out what you have done wrong.

In the worst case it can be best to take a step backwards – open the previous saved working version, rename it so the working version is left untouched and then start again with your changes.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

So that was some heavy stuff, on a lighter note looking forward to some of the upcoming projects I will touch on - very happy to add requests to this list

Bilge water alarm
Temperature Alarm
Dimming LED’s
Morse code & Aldis lamp signalling your own message
Simulating rotating emergency light
Moving a servo - this could be to let down a ramp or simulating gun turret movement
Slowing down servo movement
Running a servo movement sequence
Automatic ballast trim to correct/rebalance vessel leaning to one side or other
Active stabilisers
Reading the receiver channels
Engine sound device
Switching 16 circuits from just one transmitter stick
Holding a compass heading

Remember Rome was not built in a day - Be patient with yourself and enjoy this fascinating topic

Regards
Jonathan

Summary of learning points so far:

Arduino is open source – anybody can make the boards

Arduino boards have inputs and outputs - analog (0-5v) and digital 0 or 5v

We use the IDE to write our code and upload it via a USB cable to the Arduino board

We need to tell the IDE which com “port” and type of Arduino board we are using

Programs are also known as sketches

Programs have 2 parts – SETUP runs once as the program starts and LOOP that runs continually

DOCUMENT code as you create it using // This is a comment

SAVE your code regularly using a new name each time, the name hints at what the program does – e.g. MyLedFlasher001, MyLedFlasher002, etc

Syntax – a set of language rules you must comply with

>> Terminate lines with ;
>> Use upper and lower case appropriately where needed
>> Brackets always used in pairs – open and close

Future topics we will cover:
+ Data types
+ Compiling code
+ Debugging code
+ Functions
+ Common programming structures/concepts e.g. "If this then do that"
+ Command sheets
+ Addin libraries
+ Interrupts
+ Serial monitor
+ Debouncing
+ i2c & SPI
+ PWM = pulse width modulation
+ Sensors
+ Arduino performance
+ How to power the Arduino
+ Quick glimpse at ATtiny, Teensy and esp32

And the command I hate the most “delay” - like driving a Ferrari with the hand brake on...

Regards
Jonathan

After this buidling block hopefully things will start to fall into place and become more interesting - hold the faith👍

The next building block we are going to cover is the IDE SERIAL MONITOR.

The SERIAL MONITOR allows us to “see” what is going “under the hood” of our program – it’s a bit like having a see-through oven door! to get used to how it works we will send a simple message from the Arduino to the IDE Serial Monitor on our desktop computer.

The SERIAL MONITOR is mainly used during program development & debugging to help identify what is going on inside our program LOOP as will be seen in the next tutorials..

Using the SERIAL MONITOR we can:

>>> Receive data from the Arduino serial port (serial = one character after the other)

>>> Send DATA to the Arduino serial port. (which I am not going to cover here)

The SERIAL MONITOR is accessed through the IDE command ribbon by selecting “TOOLS” and then “SERIAL MONITOR” - when selected a popup window opens on your computer which is the SERIAL MONITOR. (see pic 2)

To send serial data from the Arduino to the SERIAL MONITOR we have to:

In SETUP
Start the serial connection using the command Serial.begin(speed) where speed for serial communication is one of the following Supported baud rates are 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 14400, 19200, 28800, 31250, 38400, 57600, and 115200

In the program LOOP
We need to send data to the serial port - to do this we use this command

Serial.print(); an example might be Serial.print(“hello from your Arduino”);

Everything between the quote marks will be sent to the Arduino serial port and be received by the IDE SERIAL MONITOR via the USB cable and displayed in the desktop IDE popup window.

The serial monitor popup in image 3 is highlighted in yellow

The example program is detailed in image 1 and also below

void setup() // put your setup code here, to run once:
{
Serial.begin(9600); // start the serial connection at speed 9600 bits per second (baud rate)
}

void loop() // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
{ // open bracket for the START of the main LOOP

// send the characters inside the quotes mark to the Arduino serial port

Serial.print("Hello from your Arduino ");

} // close bracket for the END of the main LOOP

and with all the // comments removed

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
Serial.print("Hello from your Arduino ");
}

NOTES
# We need to make sure that the baud rate speed we set in the program SETUP – Serial.begin(9600); matches the SERIAL MONITOR baud rate – we can change the Serial Monitor baud rate by selecting a value from a drop down list just to the right at the bottom of the monitor popup window – if they don’t match you will either see lots of odd characters or nothing at all in your SERIAL MONITOR popup window

# A good speed to use to start with for the Serial Communication baud rate is 9600.

# The Arduino Uno and Nano only have one serial port. Other Arduino boards may have more serial ports and we would need to use a slightly different command as we would also refer to the serial port number e.g. SETUP serial3.begin(9600); and Serial3.print(“hello”);

Regards
Jonathan

Time for some carrots!!!

Putting in the time and energy to learn a new skill is hard work, until you reach the tipping point where things begin to fall into place it can all seem a bit confusing, boring and pointless.

Often initial motivation ebbs and the realisation of the new skill fades.

So time for something inspirational ....DIGITAL MULTI VOICE SOUND DEVICE

So these videos are of a guys amazing project which might re-ignite some motivation.

It's "Jedi" level so not for the next tutorial😉

There are many different sounds/ engine types that are available free and you can easily encode your own sound - yes it's in a truck but think how this concept could be transferred to a model boat - engine sound, horn, anchor, guns, sea gulls , general harbour noise ......

Total cost excluding small amplifier and speaker about £10

Oh and did I mention that this was Jedi level - it's a very complex project as published, hundreds and hundreds of lines of code and does some crazy amazing stuff - most not relevant to model boats - extract the good bits and we have a simple sound project which performs as well as some commercial boards costing 5 to 20 times the price....

However complex the code this is the single command that makes the noise

dacWrite(DAC1, Value);

Enjoy these videos - I hope you find them inspirational...

Jonathan

Apologies to those interested in this topic for the long gap between posts - life got in the way!

Summary of learning points so far:

Arduino is open source – anybody can make the boards

Arduino boards have inputs and outputs - analog (0-5v) and digital 0 or 5v

We use the IDE to write our code and upload it via a USB cable to the Arduino board

We need to tell the IDE which com “port” and type of Arduino board we are using

Programs are also known as sketches

Programs have 2 parts – SETUP runs once as the program starts and LOOP that runs continually

DOCUMENT code as you create it using // This is a comment

SAVE your code regularly using a new name each time, the name hints at what the program does – e.g. MyLedFlasher001, MyLedFlasher002, etc

Syntax – a set of language rules you must comply with

>> Terminate lines with ;
>> Use upper and lower case appropriately where needed
>> Brackets always used in pairs – open and close

We can send text from the Arduino to the IDE Serial Monitor popup window by using the command Serial.print()

Arduino has INPUTS and OUTPUTS

In this post we will use an input 'state' to send some text to the IDE Serial Monitor popup

The code below monitors the 'state' of one input pin (pin8) and depending on the 'state' of pin8 (HIGH or LOW) sends some text to the IDE Serial Monitor popup window.

To make pin 8 HIGH I connect a jumper cable between the Ardunio 5v pin and pin 8
To make pin 8 LOW I connect a jumper cable between the GND (ground or zero volt pin) and pin 8.

When using Arduino you will regularly come across the concept of pins (both INPUT and OUTPUT) being HIGH or LOW.

HIGH simply means that the pin is at 5 volts and LOW that the pin is at 0 volts (zero or GND (gound)) – NB Some Arduino’s are based around 3.3v logic not 5volt – I’ll cover this later

So:
HIGH = 5volts or logic value 1 (one)

and

LOW = 0 volts or logic value 0 (zero)

The HIGH or LOW are often referred to as “logic states”

To 'test' the logic state of the pin8 we will use the command digitalRead(8) – this will return one of two values – ‘1’ = the pin is high @ +5v or ‘0’ the pin is LOW @ 0v

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We need a way to work with the result 1 (HIGH) or 0 (LOW) - the result of the digitalRead(8)

To do this we use the 'if' command.

The 'if' command checks for a condition (e.g. =1) and executes some code only if the condition is 'true'.

The code below will check if pin8 =1 and if true print text to the IDE Serial Monitor

void setup() // put your setup code here, to run once:
{
Serial.begin(9600); // start the serial communication
pinMode(8, INPUT); // set the pin 8 as INPUT
}

void loop() // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
{
if (digitalRead(8)==1) // test if pin8 is HIGH (value of 1)
{
// if the above condition is 'true' send the text
// to the serial port which we can view in the IDE Serial Monitor

Serial.println("Digital pin 8 is HIGH");

}
}

A Youtube video link is attached that shows the output text in the IDE Serial monitor - it's not very exciting!

Well done if you have made it here !! we now have enough building blocks in place with some minor additions to do some more meaningful stuff....

Regards
Jonathan

Here is the full code for a Bilge Water Alarm.

If you have followed this thread you should be able to follow what's going on - the video is using the same code as posted below.

Part of learning Arduino is uploading someone else's working code that you may not understand to your own Arduino board and then changing values etc and seeing what affect that has ....

Regards
Jonathan .

+

// Water Alarm 25/07/2020
// Use 2 wire probes located in the area that may contain water, place them a few cm's apart
// Connect one wire to a GND pin the other to Analog pin A0
// To make the sound we connect a small piezoelectric sounder to pin 6 and GND

int soundFreq = 700; // Sound frequency (in Hz)
int soundStep = 50; // Sound frequency increment - to make the alarm sound vary in pitch we will increment the tone frequency when it is triggered

const int ledPin = 13 ; // LED pin
const int soundPin = 6; // Ouput pin 6 connected to our piezoelectric sounder device
const int sensorPin = A0; // Simple piece of wire connected to pin A0 used as a probe located in area that may contain water

uint16_t sensorValue = 0; // variable to store the analog pin value when it is read using command analogRead(pin) - value will be in the range 0-1023

void setup() // Setup code - this runs once and sets up outpin etc.
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT) ; // define our ledPin as output
pinMode(soundPin, OUTPUT); // define our soundPin as output
pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT_PULLUP); // define our analog sensor pin as input - we are using pin A0
//digitalWrite(A0, INPUT_PULLUP); // Set the default state
}

void loop()
{
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // Read the analog value of A0 - will return a value between 0 and 1023
if (sensorValue > 1000) // test the analog sensor value now stored in variable "sensorValue" - if it's greater than 1000 then continue. If less than 1000 process the code defined by "else"
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
noTone(soundPin);
delay(50);
}
else // if the sensoValue is less than 1000 then process the code below
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // Turn on the LED by setting the ledPin to High (5v)

// The code chunk below is used to make the frequency of the sound on the soundPin vary
// By increasing frequency to a preset value and then decreasing to a preset value - it then repeats each loop up & down in frequency to shape the alarm sound
tone(soundPin, soundFreq) ; // Set the soundPin to the value stored in soundFreq
soundFreq = soundFreq + soundStep; // increment the soundFreq by adding the value stored in the variable named soundStep - if soundStep = 50 the frequency will increase / if soundStep = - 50 the frequency will decrease
if (soundFreq == 1200) // test the soundFreq - if it's reached 1200 then
{
soundStep = -50; // change value of soundStep to - 50
}

if (soundFreq == 700) // test the soundFreq Value
{
soundStep = 50; // change value of soundStep to 50
}

delay(25); // pause 25ms
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // turn the led pin off (0v) by setting the value to LOW
delay(25); pause 25ms
}
}

Below is the same code but without comments - might make easier reading as displayed on the forum.

int soundFreq = 700;
int soundStep = 50;

const int ledPin = 13 ;
const int soundPin = 6;
const int sensorPin = A0;

uint16_t sensorValue = 0;

void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT) ;
pinMode(soundPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT_PULLUP);
//digitalWrite(A0, INPUT_PULLUP);
}

void loop()
{
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
if (sensorValue > 1000)
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
noTone(soundPin);
delay(50);
}
else
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
tone(soundPin, soundFreq) ;
soundFreq = soundFreq + soundStep;
if (soundFreq == 1200)
{
soundStep = -50;
}

if (soundFreq == 700)
{
soundStep = 50;
}

delay(25);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(25); pause 25ms
}
}