[Arduino] Hardware Summary

Background

Arduino Mega 2560 is the recommended board for 3D printers and robotics projects compared to Arduino Uno. Nothing is more awkward than ending up finding that your program can’t fit into your board’s memory, which happened in our project - Wearable Dance Party, where we used Arduino Uno.

The main reason why I bought this board is that I want to finish this project myself to come up with a complete version of the flashing jacket. But first, I need to learn some hardware knowledge.

Arduino Mega 2560

Overview

Power

1. USB connection(5V).

2. External power supply.
   • AC-to-AD adapter or battery
   • 6-20V while 7-12V is recommended. (The 5V pin may supply less than 5 volts and the board might be unstable when < 7V. And the voltage regulator may overheat and damage the board when > 12V.)
3. Power pins:
   • Vin: Voltage in, i.e. you can supply voltage through this pin when using a external battery(7-12V).
   • 5V: Outputs a regulated 5V from the regulator on the board when powered through any of the 3 valid ways.
   • 3.3V: Outputs a 3.3V supply generated by the on-board regulator. Maximum current draw is 50 mA.
   • GND: Ground pins.
   • IOREF: Provides the voltage reference with which the microcontroller operates.

Memory

Get an insight of the memory architecture of the board you are using is extremely important to your project, avoid the dilemma in advance.

1. 256KB flash memory for storing code(of which 8KB is used for the bootloader).

2. 8KB SRAM.

3. 4KB EEPROM(which can be read and written with the EEPROM library).

Microcontroller(High performance, low power.)

1. Voltage: 4.5 - 5.5V

2. Architecture: RISC
   • 135 Powerful Instructions
   • 32 ⨉ 8-bit General Purpose Registers

3. Frequency: 0 - 16MHz

4. Peripheral Features
   • Two 8-bit Timer/Counters with Separate Prescaler and Compare Mode.
   • Four 16-bit Timer/Counter with Separate Prescaler, Compare- and Capture Mode.
   • Real Time Counter with Separate Oscillator
   • Four 8-bit PWM Channels
5. Operating temperature: -40℃ - 85℃

Input and Output

1. 54 digital pins: each of which can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(), digitalWreite() and digitalRead() functions.
2. Operate at 5V. A maximum of 40mA is the value that must not be exceeded to avoid permanent damage to the microcontroller.
3. Provide or receive 20mA as recommended operating condition and has an internal pull-up resistor(disconnected by default) of 20-50kΩ.