Why use Arduino for Electronics Projects

Electronics Projects can solve day-to-day problems

There are many day-to-day problems which can be solved by Electronics Projects. For example, I remember some years back I had gone out of my home and there were plants which needed watering. But, I did not have a solution to this so until I was just wondering if only I had a system which could take care of my plants when I am away from home. Now we can make automatic watering system or automatic irrigation system easily.

Similarly, Sometimes when I go out of my home there are elderly people who are not able to communicate with me so I just thought like if again there was a system which could communicate on their behalf and tell me about the well-being of the people.

I am sure such incidences or such things happen to many people around us day-to-day and we feel that there should be some systems or some help from electronics systems that we can use in order to solve these problems.

Student’s ideas for Electronics Projects

As a teacher, I interact with so many students every day. They have some wonderful ideas which they wish to implement. But again, they are not having that much of knowledge to implement those or maybe they are not aware of what are the things that are available
by which they can implement their ideas.

Startups based on Electronics Projects

I also interact with students who are in their final years or they have some great ideas through which they want to have their own startup.

Prototype

Basically, some idea which you want to implement but you are not aware of how to implement that. In technical terms, we call this as a prototype.

Student’s or Startups limitations

So, we want to build a prototype but we want to do it fast, we want to do it at a very low cost, so that we are not spending too much on it. At the same time that idea is getting converted into the solution.

Intelligent Systems with Microprocessor / Micro-controller

If you look at our bodies, the system that is controlling the entire functioning of our body is the brain. Similarly, in electronic systems there is an intelligent part or a device which will be controlling all the other components and other devices. Who does this function of the intelligent system? In electronic terms it is a microprocessor or a micro-controller.

Variations in Micro-controller and Microprocessor

There are so many varieties of these intelligent systems available. If you Google microprocessor, you will get 3 crore hits.

If you google micro-controller you will get 10 crores of hits.

So, how do you decide which micro-controller or which microprocessor should I use for prototyping.

Arduino Board

There is a better and a simpler solution for your problem and that is using the system or the board which is known as the Arduino board. This Arduino board has become very very popular and many people now using these boards all over the world.

Why do we use Arduino Board

Open-Source: The first and the most important reason is that it is an open source hardware. You don’t have to pay any license fee for that so you can come up with your system at a very low cost.

Easy to Program: It is very very easy to write the coding for that particular board compared to micro-controller programming. If you consider micro-controllers, you have to go through the entire process of learning the programming part of that and it’s not very easy.

For everyone: The people at the Arduino board have developed this board so that it can be used even by a hobbyist, by school children, by a person who has no knowledge of electronic systems. At the same time, they are available in many versions from low end to the high end so all your requirements are taken care of and they are easily available. I can get it online or I can go to a hardware shop.[amazon_link asins=’B07C8G4N6X,B015C7SC5U,B00MJZYACI|B00NLAMS9C,B007R9TUJE,B00D9NA4CY’ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’yogepal-21|yogendrapal-20′ marketplace=’IN|US’ link_id=’9ed695a7-ddf1-11e8-a5d9-1bc88eea9ccb’]

Cross-Platform: When you are writing the code for the Arduino board, naturally we are going to use either a desktop or a laptop for writing the code. What is called as a development environment. The IDE for Arduino is available for Linux, Windows and Mac.

So, it has the advantage of being easy on the software part as well as easy and fast on the hardware implementation.

Easy, Fast and for non-programmers: if you are a hobbyist, if you are a school goer and you have some fantastic idea and you want to implement that idea in a very less time and inexpensive way. At the same time, if you are a student maybe an engineering student who wants to implement your idea faster, cheaper and you don’t want to spend too much time writing the code. Even if you don’t have good command over programming, you can build your system with the Arduino board in a very fast way, simple way and not spending much from your pocket.

When use Microprocessor or Micro-controller

If you are a startup at the proof of concept level, using the Arduino board is fine. If you are an engineering student, implementing your idea with Arduino is fine. But, if you want to multiply, you want to make multiple units of your proof of concept, build it with the help of microprocessor and micro-controllers.

Use Arduino for prototyping and microprocessor for production.

I would recommend that use Arduino for prototyping and microprocessor for production. This is what I had to say about the Arduino board.

Happy Arduino boarding.