Up until this point, we have been assembling all our device circuits
on solderless breadboards. This is a wonderfully convenient way of prototyping. If you want to make something durable, you can assemble your circuit on a solder breadboard. I have one right here, and as you can see, it follows the shape of a solderless breadboard. You can thereafter swap all elements and solder all the needed outputs. You can then pickle the board by yourself, or even order one single board, as well as a set of them, at a plant. I now want to tell you about another interesting peculiarity that the Arduino platform has. Arduino’s many models, for example, the flagship Uno model, have standard terminals, i.e. a standard layout of pins with a standard distance between the pin
blocks responsible for power, which are the analog block and these
digital blocks. This allows us to use the so-called expansion cards, or shields, as we say in English. I am going to introduce you to the first shield now, which is called
Troyka-shield. There is a large array of those, as different producers manufacture them, but each shield has its own function. Further on, when we start to build a mobile robot, we will be using a motor shield, which is basically a board used
to control motors. You can also use the Ethernet-shield, which is a board that connects Arduino to a local network. There are also boards which establish radio connection, and so on and so
forth. It’s hard to name them all. What is the essence of working with a board? They have a counterpart with pins, which is conformant to Arduino’s
terminal. So the expansion card is simply placed on Arduino like this
[PAUSE]. [PAUSE] What do we need this Troyka-shield for? The truth is that many manufacturers produce components conformant to Arduino in the form of modules, which are small details with their components assembled on a small
board. Let me take this module as an example. This is the Hall sensor, aka the magnetic field sensor. Many sensors, modules, etc, use 3 pins when they operate: 2 of them are used for power, then there are the “plus” and the “minus”, and, finally,
the third one is for signals. Having found out that we often need to break up the circuit by sending power to various components and transmitting signals to Arduino, we have decided to assemble an expansion card like this. Why is it supposed to be so good? All its pins are marked with such triple pins, and the signal line is complemented with power and ground lines. The digital pins are located along the digital pin terminal, while the analog pins are organized in a separate row and marked from
A0 to A5. Also, every line is marked with GND, VCC and either D or GND or VCC. FSK is the signal, so that you don’t get confused when you connect
your sensors. Now I am going to introduce you to several modules, which are literally the twins of the Troyka-shield. They are called Troyka-modules, that’s what Amperka has decided to call them. I am going to tell you now why I like them. We are actually going to use some of them in our project now. In particular, the switch which already has a pull-up resistor inserted in the board. There is a light sensor, which also has a power divider on the board. We use a jargon expression for this – harnessing. All these resistors that complement the devices and facilitate their work – all of them we already have here. The thermometer, [PAUSE] the Hall sensor, aka the magnetic field sensor, the potentiometer and the piezo buzzer. All of them are of standard size, having 3 pins at the back. Their labelling you can find on the front: S is for signal, V is for
power, and G is for ground. [PAUSE] So that you could imagine the array of opportunities that the module system can give you, I can tell you that Amperka, along with other manufacturers from all over the world, make
their devices in the form of
modules, such as microphones, semi-segment displays, various bar graphs and sensors: range sensors, vapor detectors, humidity sensors, and all other types of sensors
that you could think of. As well as all various expansion cards, it’s hard to name all these devices
here. Thus, we can take a cable with 3 wires, marked with different colors, so that we could retrace where to connect ground and power. The black wire is always the minus of the ground, and it should be connected
to pin G. We should also look where we need to connect it on the reverse side. [PAUSE] For instance, [PAUSE] I have connected the potentiometer to A0 input, just as we did before. You can simply find some space on the body of your device for this module and forget this complex circuit on the board. We are now going to assemble the device, which is our main project for Week 2, and in it, we will already be using modules. In terms of programming, working with modules is no different from working with components placed on the board. The only difference is that with modules, it will be easier for you to assemble
your device.