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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Physical computing allows us to build interactive physical systems by using software & hardware in order to sense and respond to the real world. C Programming for Arduino will show you how to harness powerful capabilities like sensing, feedbacks, programming and even wiring and developing your own autonomous systems.
C Programming for Arduino contains everything you need to directly start wiring and coding your own electronic project. You'll learn C and how to code several types of firmware for your Arduino, and then move on to design small typical systems to understand how handling buttons, leds, LCD, network modules and much more.
After running through C/C++ for the Arduino, you'll learn how to control your software by using real buttons and distance sensors and even discover how you can use your Arduino with the Processing framework so that they work in unison. Advanced coverage includes using Wi-Fi networks and batteries to make your Arduino-based hardware more mobile and flexible without wires. If you want to learn how to build your own electronic devices with powerful open-source technology, then this book is for you.
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Seitenzahl: 585
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
C Programming for Arduino
C Programming for Arduino
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: May 2013
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Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Julien Bayle
Reviewers
Darwin Grosse
Pradumn Joshi
Phillip Mayhew
Glenn D. Reuther
Steve Spence
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Edward Gordon
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Lead Technical Editor
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Technical Editors
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About the Author
Julien Bayle completed his Master's degree in Biology and Computer Sciences in 2000. After several years working with pure IT system design, he founded Design the Media in early 2010 in order to provide his own courses, training, and tools for art fields. As a digital artist, he has designed some huge new media art installations, such as the permanent exhibition of La Maison des Cinématographies de la Méditerranée (Château de la Buzine) in Marseille, France, in 2011. He has also worked as a new media technology consultant for some private and public entities. As a live AV performer, he plays his cold electronic music right from New York to Marseille where he actually lives. The Arduino framework is one of his first electronic hardware studies since early 2005, and he also designed the famous protodeck controller with various open source frameworks. As an Art and Technology teacher also certified by Ableton in 2010, he teaches a lot of courses related to the digital audio workstation Ableton Live, the real-time graphical programming framework Max 6, and Processing and Arduino.
As a minimalist digital artist, he works at the crossroads between sound, visual, and data. He explores the relationship between sounds and visuals through his immersive AV installations, his live performances, and his released music. His work, often described as "complex, intriguing, and relevant", tries to break classical codes to bring his audience a new vision of our world through his pure digital and real-time-generated stimuli.
He's deeply involved in the open source community and loves to share and provide workshops and masterclasses online and on-site too. His personal website is http://julienbayle.net.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my sweet wife Angela and our daughter Alice for having been my unconditional supporters. Special thanks to our son Max, who was born between the writing of Chapter 11 and Chapter 12!
I would also like to thank my two great friends Laurent Boghossian and Denis Laffont because they were there for me all through the course of this huge project with their advices, jokes, and unconditional support.
I would like to extend many thanks to two very nice persons and friends whom I asked to review this book for me: Glenn D. Reuther and Darwin Grosse.
I thank the following great programmers who coded some libraries that have been used in this book: Marcello Romani (the SimpleTimer library), Juan Hernandez (the ShiftOutX library), Thomas Ouellet Fredericks (the Bounce library), Tim Barrass (the Mozzi library), David A. Mellis from MIT (the PCM library), Michael Margolis and Bill Perry (the glcd-arduino library), and Markku Rossi (Arduino Twitter Library with OAuth Support).
I want to thank the creators of the following powerful frameworks used in this book besides the Arduino framework itself: Max 6, Processing, and Fritzing.
Lastly, I'd like to hug Massimo Banzi and Arduino's project team for having initiated this great project and inspired us so much.
About the Reviewers
Darwin Grosse is the Director of Education and Services with Cycling '74, the developer of the Max media programming system. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver, and teaches sonic art, programming, and hardware interface in the Emerging Digital Practices department.
Pradumn Joshi is currently pursuing his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from NIT Surat. He is an avid elocutionist and debate enthusiast, and is also interested in economics, freelance writing, and Western music. His area of technical expertise lies in open source hardware development and embedded systems.
Phillip Mayhew is a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. He is the Founder and Managing Principal of Rextency Technologies LLC based in Statesville, North Carolina. His primary expertise is in software application performance testing and monitoring.
Glenn D. Reuther's own personal journey and fascination began with music technology during the 1970s with private lessons in "Electronic Music Theory and Acoustic Physics". He then attended Five Towns College of Music in NY and has been a home studio operator since 1981, playing multiple instruments and designing a few devices for his studio configuration.
Since then, he has spent several years with Grumman Aerospace as a Ground and Flight Test Instrumentation Technician, before moving through to the IT field. Beginning with an education in Computer Operations and Programming, he went on to work as network and system engineer having both Microsoft and Novell certifications. After over 10 years at the University of Virginia as Sr. Systems Engineer, he spends much of his spare time working with the current state of music technology. His website is http://lico.drupalgardens.com.
He is also the author of "One Complete Revelation", a photo journal of his nine-month trek throughout Europe during the early 90s.
I would like to thank the author for his friendship, and I would also like to thank my wonderful wife Alice and son Glenn for their patience, understanding, and support during the editing process of this book.
Steve Spence has been a veteran of the IT industry for more than 20 years, specializing in network design and security. Currently he designs microcontroller-based process controls and database-driven websites. He lives off grid and teaches solar and wind power generation workshops. He's a former firefighter and rescue squad member, and a current Ham Radio operator.
In the past, he's been a technical reviewer of various books on alternative fuels (From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank, Joshua Tickell) and authored DIY alternative energy guides.
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Preface
Our futuristic world is full of smart and connected devices. Do-it-yourself communities have always been fascinated by the fact that each one could design and build its own smart system, dedicated or not, for specific tasks. From small controllers switching on the lights when someone is detected to a smart sofa sending e-mails when we sit on them, cheap electronics projects have become more and more easy to create and, for contributing to this, we all have to thank the team, who initiated the Arduino project around 2005 in Ivrea, Italy.
Arduino's platform is one of the most used open source hardware in the world. It provides a powerful microcontroller on a small printed circuit board with a very small form factor. Arduino users can download the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and code their own program using the C/C++ language and the Arduino Core library that provides a lot of helpful functions and features.
With C Programming for Arduino, users will learn enough of C/C++ to be able to design their own hardware based on Arduino. This is an all-in-one book containing all the required theory illustrated with concrete examples. Readers will also learn about some of the main interaction design and real-time multimedia frameworks such as Processing and the Max 6 graphical programming framework.
C Programming for Arduino will teach you the famous "learning-by-making" way of work that I try to follow in all of my courses from Max 6 to Processing and Ableton Live.
Lastly, C Programming for Arduino will open new fields of knowledge by looking at the input and output concept, communication and networking, sound synthesis, and reactive systems design. Readers will learn the necessary skills to be able to continue their journey by looking at the modern world differently, not only as a user but also as a real maker.
For more details, you can visit my website for the book at http://cprogrammingforarduino.com/.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Let's Plug Things, is your first contact with Arduino and microcontroller programming. We will learn how to install the Arduino Integrated Development Environment on our computer and how to wire and test the development toolchain to prepare the further study.
Chapter 2, First Contact with C, covers the relation between the software and the hardware. We will introduce the C language, understand how we can compile it, and then learn how to upload our programs on the Arduino Board. We will also learn all the steps required to transform a pure idea into firmware for Arduino.
Chapter 3, C Basics—Making You Stronger, enters directly into the C language. By learning basics, we learn how to read and write C programs, discovering the datatype, basic structures, and programming blocks.
Chapter 4, Improving Programming with Functions, Math, and Timing, provides the first few keys to improve our C code, especially by using functions. We learn how to produce reusable and efficient programming structures.
Chapter 5, Sensing with Digital Inputs, introduces digital inputs to Arduino. We will learn how to use them and understand their inputs and outputs. We will also see how Arduino uses electricity and pulses to communicate with everything.
Chapter 6, Sensing the World—Feeling with Analog Inputs, describes the analog inputs of Arduino through different concrete examples and compares them to digital pins. Max 6 frameworks are introduced in this chapter as one of the ideal companions for Arduino.
Chapter 7, Talking over Serial, introduces the communication concept, especially by teaching about Serial communication. We will learn how to use the Serial communication console as a powerful debugging tool.
Chapter 8, Designing Visual Output Feedback, talks about the outputs of Arduino and how we can use them to design visual feedback systems by using LEDs and their systems. It introduces the powerful PWM concept and talks about LCD displays too.
Chapter 9, Making Things Move and Creating Sounds, shows how we can use the Arduino's outputs for movement-related projects. We talk about motors and movement and also about air vibration and sound design. We describe some basics about digital sound, MIDI, and the OSC protocol, and have fun with a very nice PCM library providing the feature of reading digitally encoded sound files from Arduino itself.
Chapter 10, Some Advanced Techniques, delivers many advanced concepts, from data storage on EEPROM units, and communication between multiple Arduino boards, to the use of GPS modules. We will also learn how to use our Arduino board with batteries, play with LCD displays, and use the VGA shield to plug the microcontroller to a typical computer screen.
Chapter 11, Networking, introduces the network concepts we need to understand in order to use our Arduino on Ethernet, wired or wireless networks. We will also use a powerful library that provides us a way to tweet messages directly by pushing a button on our Arduino, without using any computer.
Chapter 12, Playing with the Max 6 Framework, teaches some tips and techniques we can use with the Max 6 graphical programming framework. We will completely describe the use of the Serial object and how to parse and select data coming from Arduino to the computer. We will design a small sound-level meter using both real LEDs and Max 6 and finish by designing a Pitch shift sound effect controlled by our own hand and a distance sensor.
Chapter 13, Improving Your C Programming and Creating Libraries, is the most advanced chapter of the book. It describes some advanced C concepts that can be used to make our code reusable, more efficient, and optimized, through some nice and interesting real-world examples.
Appendix provides us with details of data types in C programming language, operator precedence in C and C++, important Math functions, Taylor series for calculation optimizations, an ASCII table, instructions for installing a library, and a list of components' distributors.
Appendix can be downloaded from http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/7584OS_Appendix.pdf.
What you need for this book
If you want to take benefits of each example in this book, the following software is required:
Some other libraries are also used in this book. Every time they are needed, the example description explains where to download them from and how to install them on our computer.
Who this book is for
This book is for people who want to master do-it-yourself electronic hardware making with Arduino boards. It teaches everything we need to know to program firmware using C and how to connect the Arduino to the physical world, in great depth. From interactive-design art school students to pure hobbyists, from interactive installation designers to people wanting to learn electronics by entering a huge and growing community of physical computing programmers, this book will help everyone interested in learning new ways used to design smart objects, talking objects, efficient devices, and autonomous or connected reactive gears.
This book opens new vistas of learning-by-making, which will change readers' lives.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Let's Plug Things
Arduino is all about plugging things. We are going to do that in a couple of minutes after we have learned a bit more about microcontrollers in general and especially the big and amazing Arduino family. This chapter is going to teach you how to be totally ready to code, wire, and test things with your new hardware friend. Yes, this will happen soon, very soon; now let's dive in!
What is a microcontroller?
A microcontroller is an integrated circuit (IC) containing all main parts of a typical computer, which are as follows:
The processor is the brain, the part where all decisions are taken and which can calculate.
Memories are often both spaces where both the core inner-self program and the user elements are running (generally called Read Only Memory (ROM) and Random Access Memory (RAM)).
I define peripherals by the self-peripherals contained in a global board; these are very different types of integrated circuits with a main purpose: to support the processor and to extend its capabilities.
Inputs and outputs are the ways of communication between the world (around the microcontroller) and the microcontroller itself.
The very first single-chip processor was built and proposed by Intel Corporation in 1971 under the name Intel 4004. It was a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU).
Since the 70s, things have evolved a lot and we have a lot of processors around us. Look around, you'll see your phone, your computer, and your screen. Processors or microprocessors drive almost everything.
Compared to microprocessors, microcontrollers provide a way to reduce power consumption, size, and cost. Indeed, microprocessors, even if they are faster than processors embedded in microcontrollers, require a lot of peripherals to be able to work. The high-level of integration provided by a microcontroller makes it the friend of embedded systems that are car engine controller, remote controller of your TV, desktop equipment including your nice printer, home appliances, games of children, mobile phones, and I could continue…
There are many families of microcontrollers that I cannot write about in this book, not to quote PICs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIC_microcontroller) and Parallax SX microcontroller lines. I also want to quote a particular music hardware development open source project: MIDIbox (PIC-, then STM32-based, check http://www.ucapps.de). This is a very strong and robust framework, very tweakable. The Protodeck controller (http://julienbayle.net/protodeck) is based on MIDIbox.
Now that you have understood you have a whole computer in your hands, let's specifically describe Arduino boards!
Presenting the big Arduino family
Arduino is an open source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) singleboard-based microcontroller. It is a very popular platform forked from the Wiring platform (http://www.wiring.org.co/) and firstly designed to popularize the use of electronics in interaction design university students' projects.
My Arduino MEGA in my hand
It is based on the Atmel AVR processor (http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/avr/default.aspx) and provides many inputs and outputs in only one self-sufficient piece of hardware. The official website for the project is http://www.arduino.cc.
The project was started in Italy in 2005 by founders Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles. Today it is one of the most beautiful examples of the open source concept, brought to the hardware world and being often used only in the software world.
We talk about Arduino family because today we can count around 15 boards 'Arduino-based', which is a funny meta-term to define different type of board designs all made using an Atmel AVR processor. The main differences between those boards are the:
Some Arduino boards are a bit more powerful, considering calculation speed, some other have more memory, some have a lot of inputs/outputs (check the huge Arduino Mega), some are intended to be integrated in more complex projects and have a very small form factor with very few inputs and outputs… as I used to tell my students each one can find his friend in the Arduino family. There are also boards that include peripherals like Ethernet Connectors or even Bluetooth modules, including antennas.
The magic behind this family is the fact we can use the same Integrated Development Environment (IDE) on our computers with any of those boards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment). Some bits need to be correctly setup but this is the very same software and language we'll use:
Some notable Arduino family members: Uno R3, LilyPad, Arduino Ethernet, Arduino Mega, Arduino Nano, Arduino Pro, and a prototyping shield
A very nice but non-exhaustive reference page about this can be found at http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware.
I especially want you to check the following models:
Throughout this book I'll use an Arduino Mega and Arduino Uno too; but don't be afraid, when you've mastered Arduino programming, you'll be able to use any of them!
About hardware prototyping
We can program and build software quite easily today using a lot of open source frameworks for which you can find a lot of helpful communities on the Web. I'm thinking about Processing (Java-based, check http://processing.org), and openFrameworks (C++-based, check http://www.openframeworks.cc), but there are many others that sometimes use very different paradigms like graphical programming languages such as Pure Data (http://puredata.info), Max 6 (http://cycling74.com/products/max/), or vvvv (http://vvvv.org) for Windows.
Because we, the makers, are totally involved in do-it-yourself practices, we all want and need to build and design our own tools and it often means hardware and electronics tools. We want to extend our computers with sensors, blinking lights, and even create standalone gears.
Even for testing very basic things like blinking a light emitting diode (LED), it involves many elements from supplying power to chipset low-level programming, from resistors value calculations to voltage-driven quartz clock setup. All those steps just gives headache to students and even motivated ones can be put off making just a first test.
Arduino appeared and changed everything in the landscape by proposing an inexpensive and all-included solution (we have to pay $30 for the Arduino Uno R3), a cross-platform toolchain running on Windows, OS X, and Linux, a very easy high-level C language and library that can also tweak the low-level bits, and a totally extensible open source framework.
Indeed, with an all-included small and cute board, an USB cable, and your computer, you can learn electronics, program embedded hardware using C language, and blink your LED.
Hardware prototyping became (almost) as easy as software prototyping because of the high level of integration between the software and the hardware provided by the whole framework.
One of the most important things to understand here is the prototyping cycle.
One easy hardware prototyping steps list
From our idea to our final render, we usually have to follow these steps.
If we want to make that LED blink, we have to define several blinking characteristics for instance. It will help to precisely define the project, which is a key to success.
Then we'll have to sketch a schematic with our Arduino board and our LED; it will dig the question, "How are they connected together?"
The firmware programming using C language can directly be started after we have sketched the circuit because, as we'll see later, it is directly related to the hardware. This is one of the strong powers of Arduino development. You remember? The board design has been designed only to make us think about our project and not to confuse us with very low-level abstract learning bits.
The upload step is a very important one. It can provide us a lot of information especially in case of further troubleshooting. We'll learn that this step doesn't require more than a couple of clicks once the board is correctly wired to our computer.
Then, the subcycle test and fix will occur. We'll learn by making, by testing, and it means by failing too. It is an important part of the process and it will teach you a lot. I have to confess something important here: at the time when I first began my bonome project (http://julienbayle.net/bonome), an RGB monome clone device, I spent two hours fixing a reverse wired LED matrix. Now, I know them very well because I failed one day.
The last step is the coolest one. I mentioned it because we have to keep in our mind the final target, the one that will make us happy in the end; it is a secret to succeed!
Understanding Arduino software architecture
In order to understand how to make our nice Arduino board work exactly as we want it to, we have to understand the global software architecture and the toolchain that we'll be using quite soon.
Take your Arduino board in hand. You'll see a rectangle-shaped IC with the word ATMEL written on the top; this is the processor.
This processor is the place that will contain the entire program that we'll write and that will make things happen.
When we buy (check Appendix G, List of Components' Distributors, and this link: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Buy) an Arduino, the processor, also named chipset, is preburnt. It has been programmed by careful people in order to make our life easier. The program already contained in the chipset is called the bootloader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting). Basically, it takes care of the very first moment of awakening of the processor life when you supply it some power. But its major role is the load of our firmware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware), I mean, our precious compiled program.
Let's have a look at a small diagram for better understanding:
I like to define it by saying that the bootloader is the hardware's software and the firmware is the user's software. Indeed, it also has some significance because memory spaces in the chipset are not equal for write operations (within a specific hardware which we'll discuss in the future sections of this book). Using a programmer, we cannot overwrite the bootloader (which is safer at this point of our reading) but only the firmware. This will be more than enough even for advanced purposed, as you'll see all along the book.
Not all Arduino boards' bootloaders are equivalent. Indeed, they have been made to be very specific to the hardware part, which provides us more abstraction of the hardware; we can focus on higher levels of design because the bootloader provides us services such as firmware upload via USB and serial monitoring.
Let's now download some required software:
Processing is used in this book but isn't necessary to program and use Arduino boards.
Tip
What is the Arduino's toolchain?
Usually, we call Arduino's toolchain a set of software tools required to handle all steps from the C code we are typing in the Arduino IDE on our computer to the firmware uploaded on the board. Indeed, the C code you type has to be prepared before the compilation step with avr-gcc and avr-g++ compilers. Once the resulting object's files are linked by some other programs of the toolchain, into usually only one file, you are done. This can later be uploaded to the board. There are other ways to use Arduino boards and we'll introduce that in the last chapter of this book.
Installing Arduino development environment (IDE)
Let's find the compressed file downloaded from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software in the previous part and let's decompress it on our computer.
Whatever the platform, the IDE works equally and even if I'll describe some specific bits of three different platforms, I'll only describe the use of the IDE and show screenshots from OS X.
Installing the IDE
There isn't a typical installation of the IDE because it runs into the Java Virtual Machine. This means you only have to download it, to decompress it somewhere on your system, and then launch it and JAVA will execute the program. It is possible to use only the CLI (command-line interface, the famous g33ks window in which you can type the command directly to the system) to build your binaries instead of the graphical interface, but at this point, I don't recommend this.
Usually, Windows and OS X come with Java installed. If that isn't the case, please install it from the java.com website page at http://www.java.com/en/download/.
On Linux, the process really depends on the distribution you are using, so I suggest to check the page http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/Linux and if you want to check and install all the environment and dependencies from sources, you can also check the page http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Linux/All.
How to launch the environment?
In Windows, let's click on the .exe file included in the uncompressed folder. On OS X, let's click on the global self-contained package with the pretty Arduino logo. On Linux, you'll have to start the Arduino script from the GUI or by typing in the CLI.
You have to know that using the IDE you can do everything we will make in this book.
What does the IDE look like?
The IDE provides a graphical interface in which you can write your code, debug it, compile it, and upload it, basically.
The famous Blink code example opened in the Arduino IDE
There are six icons from left to right that we have to know very well because we'll use them every time:
Each menu item in the top bar provides more options we will discover progressively all throughout this book.
However, the Tools menu deserves closer attention:
The Tools menu
The preferences dialog is also a part we have to learn about right now. As usual, the preferences dialog is a place where we don't really need to go often but only for changing global parameters of the IDE. You can choose the sketchbook location and the Editor language in this dialog. You can also change a couple of bits like automatic check-up of IDE updates at start up or Editor font size.
The sketchbook concept will make our life easier. Indeed, the sketchbook is a folder where, basically, all your sketches will go. On my personal point of view, it is very precious to use it like this because it really organizes things for you and you can retrieve your pieces of code easier. Follow me there; you'll thank me later.
When we start a sketch from scratch, we basically type the code, verify it, upload it, and save it. By saving it, the first time, the IDE creates a folder in which it will put all the files related to our current sketch. By clicking on the sketch file inside this folder, the Arduino IDE will open and the related code will be displayed in the edit/typing part of the window.
We are almost done!
Let's install the drivers of the Arduino USB interface on our system.
Installing Arduino drivers
Arduino boards provide an USB interface. Before we plug the USB cable and link the board to our computer, we have to install specific drivers in the latter.
There is a huge difference between Windows and OS X here; basically, OS X doesn't require any specific drivers for Arduino Uno or even Mega 2560. If you are using older boards, you'd have to download the latest version of drivers on the FTDI website, double-click the package, then follow instructions, and finally, restart your computer.
Let's describe how it works on Windows-based systems, I mean, Windows 7, Vista, and XP.
Installing drivers for Arduino Uno R3
It is important to follow the steps mentioned next to be able to use the Arduino Uno R3 and some other boards. Please check the Arduino website for up-to-date references.
Installing drivers for Arduino Duemilanove, Nano, or Diecimilla
When you connect the board, Windows should initiate the driver installation process (if you haven't used the computer with an Arduino board before).
On Windows Vista, the driver should be automatically downloaded and installed. (Really, it works!)
On Windows XP, the Add New Hardware wizard will open:
You can check that the drivers have been installed by opening Windows Device Manager (in the Hardware tab of the System control panel). Look for a USB Serial Port in the Ports section; that's the Arduino board.
Now, our computer can recognize our Arduino board. Let's move to the physical world a bit to join together the tangible and intangible worlds.
