296 Team Meeting - February 5, 2016

Attended:

Ordered List ItemWhat is an embedded system?
- Computer system that mixes electrical and mechanical hardware
What is a microcontroller?
- Intergrated circuit (IC: Processor core, memory, programmable input/output, memory)
- “Intelligence” of a system
SPI, ADC, UART, I2C
1. What do they stand for?
  - SPI: Serial Peripheral Interface Bus
  - ADC: Analog to Digital Converter
  - UART: Univerasal Asynchronous receiver/transmitter
  - I2C: Inter Integrated Circuits
2. What are they?
  - SPI: Four wire seial bus4
  - ADC: Converts voltage to digital number to represent amplitude
  - UART: Used for communications over a computer or peripheral device
  - I2C: Serial computer bus communication system that transfers data between computer or computer component, multi-master and multi-slave, single-ended
3. What are they useful for?
  - SPI: Good for short distance communication in embedded system
  - ADC: Digital signals propagate better than analog signals (easy to detect noise)
  - UART: Computer hardware that translates between parallel and serial data
  - I2C: Bi-directional 2-wire bus
4. How are they all related?
  - All needed for a circuit to work efficiently and communicate with the circuit
How do you think this information will relate to this lab?
- We will be working with a lot of this device or with its concepts

What is Arduino?
- Open-source prototype platform with software and hardware
What is an Arduino Uno?
- A microcontroller (ATmega328)
What kind of programming language does the Arduino IDE support?
- Uses C and C++
What are the two functions that are present in an Arduino program?
- Main and loop
How is it different from a regular microcontroller
- It is part of PCB and it's easy to code without HDL
Why do people use the Arduino
1. What are some advantages?
  - Overall it is easy to use and access
  - Open Sourced
2. What are some disadvantages?
  - Needs power supply unlike traditional microcontroller