How do I start?
The first thing to do is to take a look at our photos above to see how the circuit is constructed, and then have a go building it yourself! Hint: Use the circuit diagram when building it, it’s there for a reason.
The LED is connected to Digital Pin 8 of the Arduino via a resistor. A quick summary of the circuit can be seen below:
Pin 8 > 330 Ohm resistor > LED > Ground
Let’s run through what the code is doing
The following code is used to activate an LED using the Arduino Microcontroller. This part of the circuit is inside ‘void loop()’ therefore the steps mentioned above repeat forever or until told not to.
The pin 8 is set to ‘HIGH’ which allows the LED to be activated, ‘delay(2000)’ ensures the LED stays on for 2 seconds.
After 2 seconds the LED pin goes ‘LOW’, ‘delay(1000)’ ensures the LED is kept off for 1 second.
Keep in mind the delay function, will stop all operations for the length of time specified in milliseconds. delay(2000) is halting all processes for 2000 milliseconds or 2 seconds.
Check out the information given on Arduino documentation to learn more.
Now open the Arduino IDE and copy the code below
If you don’t know how to do this, check out our Arduino Sketch set up tutorials and youtube videos.
// This code will blink an LED, on for 2 seconds and off for 1 second, attached to pin 8 on the arduino.
int LED = 8; // Sets the pin the LED is attached to, this can be any of the digital outputs
void setup() {
pinMode(LED, OUTPUT); // Sets the LED to an output
}
void loop() {
digitalWrite(LED,HIGH); // Turns the LED to High
delay(2000); // 2 second delay
digitalWrite(LED,LOW); // Turns the LED to low
delay(1000); // 1 second delay
}
/*
created 02/2020
by Jamie Buick
graycode.ie
*/