Arduino projects

Blink

This example shows the simplest thing you can do with an Arduino or Genuino to see physical output: it blinks an LED.

Hardware Required

• Arduino or Genuino Board
• LED
• 220 ohm resistor

Circuit

To build the circuit, connect one end of the resistor to Arduino pin 13. Connect the long leg of the LED (the positive leg, called the anode) to the other end of the resistor. Connect the short leg of the LED (the negative leg, called the cathode) to the Arduino GND, as shown in the diagram and the schematic below.
Most Arduino boards already have an LED attached to pin 13 on the board itself. If you run this example with no hardware attached, you should see that LED blink.
The value of the resistor in series with the LED may be of a different value than 220 ohm; the LED will lit up also with values up to 1K ohm.

Schematic

Code

After you build the circuit plug your Arduino or Genuino board into your computer, start the Arduino Software (IDE) and enter the code below. You may also load it from the menu File/Examples/01.Basics/Blink . The first thing you do is to initialize pin 13 as an output pin with the line
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
In the main loop, you turn the LED on with the line:
digitalWrite(13, HIGH);
This supplies 5 volts to pin 13. That creates a voltage difference across the pins of the LED, and lights it up. Then you turn it off with the line:
digitalWrite(13, LOW);
That takes pin 13 back to 0 volts, and turns the LED off. In between the on and the off, you want enough time for a person to see the change, so the delay() commands tell the board to do nothing for 1000 milliseconds, or one second. When you use the delay() command, nothing else happens for that amount of time. Once you’ve understood the basic examples, check out the BlinkWithoutDelay example to learn how to create a delay while doing other things.
Once you’ve understood this example, check out the DigitalReadSerial example to learn how read a switch connected to the board.

/*
Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly. Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the UNO, MEGA and ZERO
it is attached to digital pin 13, on MKR1000 on pin 6. LED_BUILTIN takes care
of use the correct LED pin whatever is the board used.
If you want to know what pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino model, check
the Technical Specs of your board  at https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products
This example code is in the public domain.
modified 8 May 2014
by Scott Fitzgerald
modified 2 Sep 2016
by Arturo Guadalupi
*/
// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
}

[Get Code]

See Also

• setup()
• loop()
• pinMode()
• digitalWrite()
• delay()
• AnalogReadSerial – Read a potentiometer, print its state out to the Arduino Serial Monitor.
• BareMinimum – The bare minimum of code needed to start an Arduino sketch.
• DigitalReadSerial – Read a switch, print the state out to the Arduino Serial Monitor.
• Fade – Demonstrates the use of analog output to fade an LED.
• ReadAnalogVoltage – Reads an analog input and prints the voltage to the serial monitor.

Blink Without Delay

Sometimes you need to do two things at once. For example you might want to blink an LED while reading a button press. In this case, you can’t use delay(), because Arduino pauses your program during the delay(). If the button is pressed while Arduino is paused waiting for the delay() to pass, your program will miss the button press.
This sketch demonstrates how to blink an LED without using delay(). It turns on the LED on and then makes note of the time. Then, each time through loop(), it checks to see if the desired blink time has passed. If it has, it toggles the LED on or off and makes note of the new time. In this way the LED blinks continuously while the sketch execution never lags on a single instruction.
An analogy would be warming up a pizza in your microwave, and also waiting some important email. You put the pizza in the microwave and set it for 10 minutes. The analogy to using delay() would be to sit in front of the microwave watching the timer count down from 10 minutes until the timer reaches zero. If the important email arrives during this time you will miss it.
What you would do in real life would be to turn on the pizza, and then check your email, and then maybe do something else (that doesn’t take too long!) and every so often you will come back to the microwave to see if the timer has reached zero, indicating that your pizza is done.
In this tutorial you will learn how to set up a similar timer.

Hardware Required

• Arduino or Genuino Board
• LED
• 220 ohm resistor

Circuit

To build the circuit, connect one end of the resistor to pin 13 of the board. Connect the long leg of the LED (the positive leg, called the anode) to the other end of the resistor. Connect the short leg of the LED (the negative leg, called the cathode) to the board GND, as shown in the diagram above and the schematic below.
Most Arduino and Genuino boards already have an LED attached to pin 13 on the board itself. If you run this example with no hardware attached, you should see that LED blink.

Schematic

click the image to enlarge

image developed using Fritzing. For more circuit examples, see the Fritzing project page

After you build the circuit plug your board into your computer, start the Arduino Software (IDE), and enter the code below.

Code

The code below uses the millis() function, a command that returns the number of milliseconds since the board started running its current sketch, to blink an LED.

/* Blink without Delay Turns on and off a light emitting diode (LED) connected to a digital
pin, without using the delay() function.  This means that other code
can run at the same time without being interrupted by the LED code.
The circuit:
* LED attached from pin 13 to ground.
* Note: on most Arduinos, there is already an LED on the board
that’s attached to pin 13, so no hardware is needed for this example.
created 2005
by David A. Mellis
modified 8 Feb 2010
by Paul Stoffregen
modified 11 Nov 2013
by Scott Fitzgerald
This example code is in the public domain.
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BlinkWithoutDelay
*/
// constants won’t change. Used here to set a pin number :
const int ledPin =  13;      // the number of the LED pin
// Variables will change :
int ledState = LOW;             // ledState used to set the LED
// Generally, you should use “unsigned long” for variables that hold time
// The value will quickly become too large for an int to store
unsigned long previousMillis = 0;        // will store last time LED was updated
// constants won’t change :
const long interval = 1000;           // interval at which to blink (milliseconds)
void setup() {
// set the digital pin as output:
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
// here is where you’d put code that needs to be running all the time.
// check to see if it’s time to blink the LED; that is, if the
// difference between the current time and last time you blinked
// the LED is bigger than the interval at which you want to
// blink the LED.
unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
if (currentMillis – previousMillis >= interval) {
// save the last time you blinked the LED
previousMillis = currentMillis;
// if the LED is off turn it on and vice-versa:
if (ledState == LOW) {
ledState = HIGH;
} else {
ledState = LOW;
}
// set the LED with the ledState of the variable:
digitalWrite(ledPin, ledState);
}
}