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Asteroid Team Meeting #3 - February 8, 2016
Attended: Kevin, Nathan, Gordon, Brian
Reminders
- Eagle tutorials due by February 15.
Updates
- Continuing Arduino and Eagle tutorials
- Finished gantt chart
Problems
* None
Meeting Dates
Discussions
1. What is an embedded system? - The integration of sensors, actuators and intelligence into a system - Allows the system to produce more capable and robust performance 2. What is a microcontroller? - A microcontroller is esentially a small computer on a single circuit board - Usually contains a processor, memory and programmable I/O 3. SPI, ADC, UART, I2C - I2C stands for inter-integrated circuit and is a serial computer bus - Used for attaching lower-speed peripheral I2C to microcontrollers - UART is a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter - Translates data between serial/parallel forms. - It is used for serial communications over a computer or serial device port. - Analog to digital converter (ADC) is a device that converts a physical quantity (voltage) to a digital form - Enables the conversion of a physical quantity to a digital number - Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus is a synchronous serial communication interface specification - Used for short distance communication, primarily in embedded systems 4. How do you think this information will relate to this lab? - They are all communication protocols - These capabilities are integrated into the embedded system
Arduino Assignments
1. What is Arduino? - An “Arduino” is a microcontroller platform - Allows you to write programs to interact with the world via sensors - Provides I/O pins that can be interfaced and communication ports 2. What is an Arduino Uno? - It is a very commonly used model 3. What kind of programming language does the Arduino IDE support? - C/C++/Python and many others 4. What are the two functions that are present in an Arduino program? - The "setup()" and "loop()" function are essential 5. How is it different from a regular microcontroller? - It wraps programming into a easy to use package - Open source, inexpensive, simple IDE, cross platform 6. Why do people use the Arduino? - Simple and accessible user experience - Advantages include easy-to-use software for beginners - Disadvantages include limitation of MCU (Atmel AVR)
Tasks Completed Today
Follow-up
- Finish Arduino tutorials
- Add BOM
Hours
Meeting was from 10:30 - 11:30