What I learnt building with Arduino

In my earlier post, I talked about beginning my journey in hardware and why I chose this. It's a very short read, so check it out here. https://aidia.blog/post/7

To begin my journey into hardware, I decided to delve into microcontrollers and like most beginners, I started with an Arduino board (not a microntroller btw).

What is a Microcontroller?

A microcontroller is a compact "computer-on-a-chip" designed to handle a specific embedded task. It has a processor core (CPU), memory (RAM/ROM) and programmable input/output (I/O) peripherals integrated into a single chip. A microcontroller operate by continuously monitoring input, processing data based on pre-defined instructions and producing output or controlling output devices such as monitors or screens. It is designed to be cost-effective, specialized and battery-efficient.

What is an Arduino board?

An Arduino board is a microcontroller development board, not just a microntroller (like I pointed out earlier). It's designed to be a beginner-friendly platform (including a physical circuit board and IDE software) that houses a microcontroller e.g. the Arduino Uno board houses the ATmega328P processor, making it easy to program and use for electronic projects.

I started by building a simple circuit to blink an LED. This wasn't just some regular youtube "how-to" replica. I built this like an engineer by selecting components based on values, drawing the circuit diagram and using the documentation to write the code for this. I believed this to be the best way to learn.