Introduction

Arduino is a single-board microcontroller, intended to make the application of interactive objects or environments more accessible. The hardware consists of an open-source hardware board designed around an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, or a 32-bit Atmel ARM. Current models feature an USB interface, 6 analog input pins, as well as 14 digital I/O pins which allow to attach various extension boards.

Introduced in 2005, it was designed to give students an inexpensive and easy way to program interactive objects. It comes with a simple integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on regular personal computers and allows to write programs for Arduino using C or C++.

The current prices of Arduino boards run around $30 and those of related "clones" as low as $9. Arduino boards can be purchased pre-assembled or as do-it-yourself kits. Hardware design information is available for those who would like to assemble an Arduino by hand. It was estimated in mid-2011 that over 300,000 official Arduinos had been commercially produced, and in 2013 that 700,000 official boards were in users' hands.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino