Arduino Software Internals
A Complete Guide to How Your Arduino Language and Hardware Work Together
This book is dedicated to my wife, Alison, who sometimes allows me to have some time to myself, programming, attempting to build things (with or without “Internet of”), and writing notes, articles, and/or this book.
Another person, to whom I am grateful, is Alison’s late maternal grandmother, Minnie Trees (yes, I did call her Bonsai!), who gifted me an Arduino Duemilanove starter kit and rekindled my long-lost (for over 35 years) interest in building things with electronics.
The book is also dedicated to the myriad of people and companies or organizations around the world who freely give their time and skills to produce open source software and hardware, for the benefit of others or just for fun.
If I may paraphrase the words of Isaac Newton, I too stand on the shoulders of giants, so here’s to the giants, the little people, and all the medium-sized ones too, who may or may not become giants themselves. Let’s hope the fun never stops.
Finally, my own motto is Don’t think! Find out!Hopefully this book will help you do exactly that.
If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.
—Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Letter to Robert Hooke
There are many books which discuss the abilities of the Arduinohardware and how best the maker can use this to their benefit. I have many of them in my bookcase, and digital versions on my phone and tablet – in case I get bored with life and need something interesting to read. Many of these books explain what the hardware does; and some even dig deeper into the hardware to explain how, in fairly easy to understand terms, it does it.
There are no books which take a similar view of the Arduinosoftware . There is now! This book takes you on ajourney (why do wealways have to be on a journey these days?) into the world of Arduino sketches and the various files involved in the compilation process. It will delve deep into the supplied software and look at the specific parts of the Arduino Language which deal with the underlying hardware, the ATmega328P (or ATmega328AU) microcontrollers – henceforth referred to as ATmega328P.
Once the Arduino Language has been explained, the book takes a short look at how you can strip away the Arduinohand holding and get down and dirty with the naked hardware. It’s not easy, but equally it’s not too difficult. Don’t worry, this is still the C/C++ language, there’s no assembly language required. Perhaps!
is an Oracle database administrator. Norman has had a long-running relationship with electronics since childhood and computers since the late 1970s, and the Arduino was a perfect marriage of the two interests. With a love of learning new things, examining and explaining the Arduino Language and the hardware became a bit of a hobby, and as piles of notes expanded, Norman has now decided to publish his work.
is an embedded systems engineer working for an industrial gases company in Buffalo, New York. His interests, deeply rooted in DIY and open source hardware, include developing gadgets that aid behavior modification. He has published two books with his brother, and in his spare time, he likes to contribute to build things that improve quality of life. You can find his project portfolio at http://saiyamanoor.com .