2016-08-10

Educaboard

The easy Education Board for the World of Arduino

You know the feeling! You are about to start to learn something completely new. But instead of being able to focus on the new stuff you are spending your time on both the new and old stuff and can't really figure out where the problem is. The Educaboard takes away the frustration of connecting the peripheral devices and having to find out whether your problem is a hardware or software problem. With the Educaboard  you can devote your entire learning experience to the software side.

The Educaboard is a motherboard that can be fitted with an Arduino Nano and connected to peripheral devices such as push buttons, an LCD, an analog voltage, LEDs and a GPS receiver for education purposes.

The Educaboard was conceived by Jens Ole, OZ9ZZ, and Bo, OZ2M. Even though we are radio amateurs we are normal people too. So even if you are not a radio amateur but still wants to learn Arduino programming and would like to use an Educaboard please read on.

The Educaboard

The Educaboard has been designed with cost, ease of access, e.g. from eBay, in finding the peripheral devices and learning how to write code for a microcontroller in mind. The Educaboard is made on a single sided Eurocard PCB with optional print on the top side.

With the Educaboard you can easily learn how to

• Read a switch
• Set an output to high or low, e.g. for controlling a Light Emitting Diode, LED
• Write to a Liquid Crystal Display, LCD
• Send and receive serial data, e.g. to and from a GPS receiver
• Read an analog voltage into a digital word
• Generate a PWM signal
• Generate a sound in a speaker
• Read the status of a rotary encoder

The above possibilities are all very relevant in most real projects.

With the Educaboard you will need external devices if you want to learn how to

• Communicate with a device via the SPI bus, three/four wire bus
• Communicate with a device via the I2C bus, two wire bus

Parts/shopping list

Below is a list of all the parts you will need to get your Educaboard up and running. Most of the components are easy to get a hold of.

Parts/shopping list for the Educaboard.

Assembly instructions

First you must prepare the uBlox NEO-6M GPS so the 1 PPS signal is connected to the male SIL. It is important that the wire is connected to the underside of the SIL otherwise it will take up to much space when mating with the female SIL.

uBlox NEO-6M and 1 PPS wire routing.

Download the PCB support files before you start the assembly. Then mount the components in the this order:

• Resistors, R
• Capacitors, C
• Diodes, D and Z
• Socket, all the SILs and DILs but wait with the ones for the Arduino Nano and the LCD
• Push buttons and rotary encoder, K
• Semiconductors and modules, A, T, VR and IC
• Mount, also using the four M3 bolts, but do not yet solder the SILs for the LCD, one on the PCB and the other one on the LCD. When properly aligned solder the SILs
• Mount but do not yet solder the SILs for the Arduino Nano, two on the PCB and two on the Arduino. When properly aligned solder the SILs
• Mount, also using one M3 bolt, but do not yet solder the SILs for the GPS, one on the PCB and the other one on the GPS. When properly aligned solder the SILs
• Speaker, use a drop of glue or double sides self adhesive tape

You may have to change the value of R14 if the speaker is to weak/loud for you.

Connected devices

The Arduino Nano 3.0 is connected in the following way to the USB, GPS, push buttons, rotary encoder, speaker, LEDs, LCD, trimpot and temperature sensor if using a 1:1 cross connect.

Arduino Nano 3.0.

Device connections to the Arduino Nano 3.0 with a 1:1 cross connect.

For a detailed description of the cross connect please see section below.

Cross connect

The cross connect is a 16 pin DIP socket. This allows you to change the peripheral devices connections to the Arduino Nano depending your requirement for specific connections such as analog input, interrupt and PWM pins etc.

Cross connections if using a 1:1 connection on the 16 pin DIP.

Software

You may download this software to test that all your connections and peripheral devices using a 1:1 cross connect works as intended. If this does not work you will have to troubleshoot your assembly prior to beginning your Arduino learning experience.

Learning to code

Fortunately there are a million ways to learn how to write code for an Arduino. Likewise there are a million webpage tutorials and Youtube tutorial videos. It is not important of you look for Arduino Nano 3.0 or Arduino Uno.

If you do not have an Arduino mentor at hand here is a suggested curriculum:

• Welcome and motivation
  • "Hello world" on LED and LCD
  • Changing the welcome message
  • LED blink
  • Changing the led blink frequency
• Introduction
  • Reading push buttons and controlling a LED
  • Fundamental understanding of breaking down a process
    • Flow charts
    • Libraries (.c and .h)
  • Arduino setup() and loop() vs C main() functions. The latter may be omitted
  • Understanding variables
    • Integers
    • Boolean
    • Chars
    • Arrays
    • Pointers
    • Global and local variables
• Input and output
  • Understanding active high/low and pull-up/pull down
  • Interpreting input data
  • Formatting output data
  • Writing to a LCD
• Control loops
  • If then
  • For next loops
  • While loops
  • Repeat until loops
• Functions
  • Variables
  • No values returned, return value, return values
• Analog voltages
  • Reading an analog voltage
  • Pulse Width Modulation and analog output
• Serial data
  • Receiving serial data
  • Interpreting received data
  • Sending serial data
• Interrupts
  • Timer interrupts
  • External interrupts

References

Arduino home page

Arduino Nano 3.0 home page

Arduino IDE

Arduino Language Reference

Bo, OZ2M, www.rudius.net/oz2m