Experiment 1 Lab Manual

American International University- Bangladesh

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
EEE 4103: Microprocessor and Embedded Systems Laboratory

Title: Familiarization with microcontroller, study of blink test using and implementation of a
traffic control system using microcontrollers.

Introduction:

The objective of this experiment is to get familiarized with Microcontroller.

Learning to make the LED blink using Arduino and the delay functions
 Implementation of a traffic control system using Arduino..

Theory and Methodology:

Arduino is an open-source platform used for creating interactive electronics projects. Arduino
consists of both a programmable microcontroller and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated
Development Environment) that runs on your computer, used to write and upload computer
code to the microcontroller board. Arduino Uno also doesn’t need a hardware circuit
(programmer/ burner) to load a new code into the board. We can easily load a code into the
board just using a USB cable and the Arduino IDE (that uses an easier version of C++ to
write a code).

Arduino Family:
Arduino makes several different boards, each with different capabilities. In addition, part of
being open source hardware means that others can modify and produce derivatives of
Arduino boards that provide even more form factors and functionality. Here are a few options
that are well-suited to someone new to the world of Arduino:

Figures of different types of Arduino boards Configuration &

Features
Arduino Uno (R3)
The Uno is a great choice
for your first Arduino. It’s
got everything you need to
get started, and nothing you
don’t. It has 14 digital
input/output pins (of which
6 can be used as PWM
outputs), 6 analog inputs, a
USB connection, a power
jack, a reset button and
more. It contains everything
needed to support the
microcontroller; simply
connect it to a computer
with a USB cable or power
it with a AC-to-DC adapter
or battery to get started.

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Lilypad Arduino
LilyPad is a wearable e-
textile technology
developed by Leah
Buechley and cooperatively
designed by Leah and
SparkFun. Each LilyPad
was creatively designed
with large connecting pads
and a flat back to allow
them to be sewn into
clothing with conductive
thread. The LilyPad also
has its own family of input,
output, power, and sensor
boards that are also built
specifically for e-textiles.
They’re even washable.
The LilyPad is unique
because it is designed to be
sewn into clothing. Using
conductive thread, you can
wire it up to sewable
sensors, LEDs,and more.
To keep size down, it can
be programmed by using an
FTDI cable.
RedBoard
RedBoard can be
programmed over a USB
Mini-B cable using the
Arduino IDE. It’ll work on
Windows 8 without having
to change your security
settings (we used signed
drivers, unlike the UNO).
It’s more stable due to the
USB/FTDI chip used in it,
plus it’s completely flat on
the back, making it easier to
embed in your projects. Just
plug in the board, select
“Arduino UNO” from the
board menu and you’re
ready to upload code. You
can power the RedBoard
over USB or through the
barrel jack. The on-board
power regulator can handle
anything from 7 to 15VDC

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Arduino Mega (R3)
The Arduino Mega is like
the UNO’s big brother, it
is mostly used in projects
require digital i/o pins. It
has lots (54) of digital
input/output pins (14 can
be used as PWM
outputs), 16 analog
inputs, a USB
connection, a power jack,
and a reset button. It
contains everything
needed to support the
microcontroller; simply
connect it to a computer
with a USB cable or
power it with a AC-to-
DC adapter or battery to
get started. The Mega
2560 employs an ATMega
2560 as the main MCU,
which has 54 general I/Os
to enable you to interface
with many more devices.
The Mega also has more
ADC channels, and has
four hardware serial
interfaces (unlike the one
serial interface found on the
Uno).
Arduino Leonardo
The Leonardo is
Arduino’s first
development board to use
one microcontroller with
built-in USB. This means
that it can be cheaper and
simpler. Also, because
the board is handling
USB directly, code
libraries are available
which allow the board to
emulate a computer
keyboard, mouse, and
more. The Leonardo uses
the 32U4 as the main
microcontroller, which has
a USB interface built in.
Therefore, it doesn’t need a
secondary MCU to perform
the serial-to-USB
conversion. This cuts down
on the cost and enables you
to do unique things like
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emulate a joystick or a
keyboard instead of a
simple serial device. You
will learn how to use these
features in Chapter 6, “USB
and Serial
Communication.”
Unlike all the other
Arduino variants, which use
8-bit AVR MCUs, the Due
uses a 32-bit ARM Cortex
M3 SAM3X MCU. The
Due offers higher-precision
ADCs, selectable resolution
pulse-width modulation
(PWM), Digital-to-Analog
Converters (DACs), a USB
host connector, and an 84
MHz clock speed.
The Nano is designed to be
mounted right into a
breadboard socket. Its small
form factor makes it perfect
for use in more finished
projects.

Overview of the board (Arduino Uno R3):

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1. DC Power Jack and USB connector

Every Arduino board needs a way to be connected to a power source. The Arduino UNO can be
powered from a USB cable coming from your computer or a wall power supply that is terminated in a
barrel jack.

2. Pins (5V, 3.3V, GND, Analog, Digital, PWM, AREF):

The pins on your Arduino are the places where you connect wires to construct a circuit (probably in
conjuction with a breadboard and some wire. They usually have black plastic ‘headers’ that allow you

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to just plug a wire right into the board. The Arduino has several different kinds of pins, each of which
is labeled on the board and used for different functions.

• GND : Short for ‘Ground’. There are several GND pins on the Arduino, any of which can be
used to ground your circuit.
• 5V & 3.3V : As you might guess, the 5V pin supplies 5 volts of power, and the 3.3V pin
supplies 3.3 volts of power. Most of the simple components used with the Arduino run
happily off of 5 or 3.3 volts.
• Analog: The area of pins under the ‘Analog In’ label (A0 through A5 on the UNO) are
Analog Input pins. These pins can read the signal from an analog sensor (like a temperature
sensor) and convert it into a digital value that we can read.
• Digital : Across from the analog pins are the digital pins (0 through 13 on the UNO). These
pins can be used for both digital input (like telling if a button is pushed) and digital output
(like powering an LED).
• PWM : You may have noticed the tilde (~) next to some of the digital pins (3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and
11 on the UNO). These pins act as normal digital pins, but can also be used for something
called Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM, think of these pins as being able to simulate analog
output (like fading an LED in and out).
• AREF : Stands for Analog Reference. Most of the time you can leave this pin alone. It is
sometimes used to set an external reference voltage (between 0 and 5 Volts) as the upper limit
for the analog input pins.

3. Reset Button:
Just like the original Nintendo, the Arduino has a reset button . Pushing it will temporarily connect the
reset pin to ground and restart any code that is loaded on the Arduino. This can be very useful if your
code doesn’t repeat, but you want to test it multiple times. Unlike the original Nintendo however,
blowing on the Arduino doesn’t usually fix any problems.

4. Power LED indicator:

Just beneath and to the right of the word “UNO” on your circuit board, there’s a tiny LED next to the
word ‘ON’. This LED should light up whenever you plug your Arduino into a power source. If this
light doesn’t turn on, there’s a good chance something is wrong. Time to re-check your circuit.

5. TX RX LEDs:
TX is short for transmit, RX is short for receive. These markings appear quite a bit in electronics to
indicate the pins responsible for serial communication. In our case, there are two places on the
Arduino UNO where TX and RX appear – once by digital pins 0 and 1, and a second time next to the
TX and RX indicator LEDs. These LEDs will give us some nice visual indications whenever our
Arduino is receiving or transmitting data (like when we’re loading a new program onto the board).

6. Main IC:
The black thing with all the metal legs is an IC, or Integrated Circuit . Think of it as the brains of our
Arduino. The main IC on the Arduino is slightly different from board type to board type but is usually
from the ATmega line of IC’s from the ATMEL company. This can be important, as you may need to
know the IC type (along with your board type) before loading up a new program from the Arduino
software.

7. Voltage Regulator:
The voltage regulator is not actually something you can (or should) interact with on the Arduino. But
it is potentially useful to know that it is there and what it’s for. The voltage regulator does exactly
what it says – it controls the amount of voltage that is let into the Arduino board. Think of it as a kind
of gatekeeper; it will turn away an extra voltage that might harm the circuit. Of course, it has its
limits, so don’t hook up your Arduino to anything greater than 20 volts.

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Apparatus:

1) Arduino IDE (any version) Software

2) Arduino Uno (R3) board or
Arduino mega 2560 board

3) LED lights (RED,GREEN and

YELLOW) and three 200 ohms
resisters and jumper wires

Setting up the Arduino IDE:

1. At first go to the following official Arduino IDE download page to download the latest
version of Aduino IDE (before start downloading Aduino IDE, always keep in mind which
operating system you are using in your PC).
Link: [Link]

Now you will see a window like below showing the latest and previous version of Arduino
IDE: -

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2. Now select the previous version of current release option from that page and the
following window will come at your desktop.

2. Now select the option Windows Installer option from the previous window (considering
you are using a windows operating system).

3. Now select the JUST DOWNLOAD option from the previous window then the next
window will come up and then choose the Save File option, so that downloaded software will
save in a folder of your PC.

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4. When the download finishes, proceed with the installation and through the following
steps:-

click on Arduino-1.8.5-windows-> Run-> I Agree so that installation process take place.

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Choose the components to install and select Next.

Choose the installation directory (I suggest to keep the default one) and choose Install

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The process will extract and install all the required files to execute properly the Arduino
Software (IDE) and don’t forget to allow the driver installation process when you get a
warning from the operating system.

Now your Arduino IDE is ready to start for code writing.

Using Arduino IDE to write code

1. Open the Arduino Uno IDE 1.8.2 and a blank sketch will open. The following window will
come up on your PC: -

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2. Now write following code to a blank sketch for blink test.

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Here’s how the code works:

1. This is a multiline comment. Comments are important for documenting a code. Everything written
between these symbols will not be compiled or even seen by Arduino. Multiline comments start with
/* and end with */.

2. This is a single-line comment. When // is put on any line, the compiler ignores all text after that
symbol on the same line. This is great for annotating specific lines of code or for “commenting out”
a particular line of code.

3. This code is a variable declaration. A variable is a place in the Arduino’s memory that holds
information. Variables have different types. In this case, it’s of type int, which means it will hold an
integer. In this case, an integer variable called led is being set to the value of 13, the pin that the
LED is connected to on the Arduino Uno. Throughout the rest of the program, we can simply use led
whenever we want to control pin 13. Setting variables is useful because we can just change this one
line if we hook up a LED to a different I/O pin later on; the rest of the code will still
work as expected.

4. void setup() is one of two functions that must be included in every Arduino program. A function is
a piece of code that does a specific task. Code within the curly braces of the setup() function is
executed once at the start of the program. This is useful for one-time settings, such as setting the
direction of pins, initializing communication interfaces, and so on.

5. The Arduino’s digital pins can function as input or outputs. To configure their direction, use the
command pinMode(). This command takes two arguments. An argument gives commands
information on how they should operate. Arguments are placed inside the parentheses following a
command. The first argument to pinMode determines which pin is having its direction set. Because
the led variable was defined earlier in the program, the command sets the direction of pin 13. The
second argument sets the direction of the pin: INPUT or OUTPUT.

6. The second required function in all Arduino programs is void loop(). The contents of the loop
function repeat forever as long as the Arduino is on.

7. digitalWrite() is used to set the state of an output pin. It can set the pin to either 5V or 0V. When an
LED and resistor is connected to a pin, setting it to 5V will enable to light up the LED. The first
argument to digitalWrite() is the pin you want to control. The second argument is the value we want
to set it to, either HIGH (5V) or LOW (0V). The pin remains in this state until it is changed in the
code.

8. The delay() function accepts one argument: a delay time in milliseconds. When calling delay(), the
Arduino stops doing anything for the amount of time specified. In this case, the processor is delaying
the program for 1000ms, or 1 second. This results in the LED staying on for 1 second before the next
command is executed.

9. Here, digitalWrite() is used to turn the LED off, by setting the pin state to LOW.

10. Again, we can set the delay for 1 second to keep the LED in the off state before the loop repeats
and switches to the on state again.

CODE for Traffic Control system :

void setup() {
// pin connections for the LED lights

pinMode(8,OUTPUT);

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pinMode(10,OUTPUT);
pinMode(12,OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
// turning on voltage at output 8(for red LED)

digitalWrite(8,HIGH);
delay(3000); // red LED is on
// turning on voltage at output 8(for red LED)

digitalWrite(10,HIGH);
delay(1000); // yellow LED is on

//for turning off red and yellow and turning on green

digitalWrite(8,LOW);
digitalWrite(10,LOW);
digitalWrite(12,HIGH);
delay(3000);
digitalWrite(12,LOW); //green is off for blinking next

//to make green on and off for 3 times

delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,LOW);

delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,LOW);

delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(12,LOW);

//to turn yellow on once

digitalWrite(10,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(10,LOW);
}

3. After the writing the code you have to save the sketch, go to File->Save As->give a File
name(Traffic_control_light)-> Select Save.

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N.B. After saving your code a sketch file with the desired file name will be stored in a
folder with same file name.

[Link] you need to verify/compile your code to find out and correct the errors, go to Sketch-
>Verify/Compile.

5. After compiling is done you need to upload your code into the Arduino Uno board. To
upload the code connect you Arduino Uno R3 board to your PC with USB cable. Before
uploading the code select the board type and port at your Arduino IDE, go to

• Tools-> Board:”Arduino/Genuino Uno” -> Arduino/Genuino Uno.

• Tools->Ports-> COMx

After you have selected the board and port select the upload option at the Arduino IDE (see
the following figure) to upload the code.

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Familiarization with the Arduino Commands

In this section,
1. We will learn about some common Arduino commands that will help write code.
2. This section also focuses on the standard Library functions associated with the IDE.

a) ****pinMode(X, INPUT) or pinMode(X,OUTPUT) ****

this command will configure any pin at the Arduino board as either input/output.
b) ****digitalWrite(X, LOW) or digitalWrite(X, HIGH) ****
this command will provide a HIGH/LOW value to any digital output pin at the
Arduino board .

Setting up the Circuit The main task of our lab is to understand and implement a traffic
control system after understanding to blink a LED light.

Experimental Procedure:
You have all you need to start your Lab work.
1) Make the circuit first using the following connection system between all the elements

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2) Understand the normal operation of a traffic control system .

3) Write the code accordingly and see the output operation

How It Works:

In traffic system, red light turns on after green

light and yellow light is turned off, so firstly
when we need to stop the vehicles, red light is
used to turn on for 3 sec and then yellow light
is on for 1 sec . Both red and yellow lights are
off to turn green light on afterwards for 3 sec.

To turn on red light again, the green light

needs to blink for 0.5 secs for 3 times and then
yellow light is on for 1 sec and after turning off
yellow light, we can again see that red light is
on.

Thus the cycle goes on .

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4) Let us rewrite the code again for same operation and same circuit by defining the
delays.

#define RED_PIN 8
#define YELLOW_PIN 10
#define GREEN_PIN 12

int red_on = 3000;

int red_yellow_on = 1000;
int green_on = 3000;
int green_blink = 500;
int yellow_on = 1000;

void setup() {
//ports for connecting LEDs
pinMode(RED_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(YELLOW_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(GREEN_PIN, OUTPUT);

void loop() {
//turning on voltage at output red LED
digitalWrite(RED_PIN, HIGH);
//to make red LED on
delay(red_on);
//to turn yellow LED on
digitalWrite(YELLOW_PIN, HIGH);
delay(red_yellow_on);

//turning off RED_PIN and YELLOW_PIN, and turrning on greenLEd

digitalWrite(RED_PIN, LOW);
digitalWrite(YELLOW_PIN, LOW);
digitalWrite(GREEN_PIN, HIGH);
delay(green_on);
digitalWrite(GREEN_PIN, LOW);

//for turning green Led on and off for 3 times

for(int i = 0; i < 3; i = i+1)
{
delay(green_blink);
digitalWrite(GREEN_PIN, HIGH);
delay(green_blink);
digitalWrite(GREEN_PIN, LOW);
}
//for turning on yellow LED
digitalWrite(YELLOW_PIN, HIGH);
delay(yellow_on);
digitalWrite(YELLOW_PIN, LOW);

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Questions for report writing:

1) Include all codes and scripts into lab report following the writing template mentioned
in appendix A of Laboratory Sheet Experiment 1.

2) Include the proteus simulation of the blink program and traffic light system. you can
learn the simulation from the following link:

Arduino Microcontroller Project - Traffic Light System - YouTube

Reference(s):

1) [Link]
2) [Link]
3) Jeremy Blue; Exploring Arduino: Tools and Techniques for Engineering Wizardry

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