User manual

CHAPTER 1 - OVERVIEW

1. Introduction to the chapter

Thank you for choosing the OLIMEXINO-328 board from Olimex! This document provides a

user’s guide for the Olimex Arudino-like OLIMEXINO-328. As an overview, this chapter gives the

introduction to Arduino, the scope of this document and lists the features of the board. The

document’s organization is then detailed.

1.1 Introduction to Arduino

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform, designed to make the process of using

electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open

design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR processor and on-board I/O support. The software

consists of a standard programming language and the boot loader that runs on the board.

Arduino hardware is programmed using a Wiring-based language (syntax + libraries), similar to C+

+ with some simplifications and modifications, and a processing-based IDE.

The project began in Ivrea, Italy in 2005 to make a device for controlling student-built interaction

design projects less expensively than other prototyping systems available at the time. As of

February 2010 more than 120,000 Arduino boards had been shipped. Founders Massimo Banzi and

David Cuartielles named the project after Arduino, a local bar. The name is an Italian masculine

first name, meaning "strong friend". The English pronunciation is "Hardwin", a namesake of

Arduino of Ivrea.

More information can be found at the creators web page http://arduino.cc/ and in the Arduino Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino. To make the story short - Arduino is easy for the beginners

with minimal Electronics knowledge, while not restricting the professionals, as they can program it

in C++ or a mix of Arduino/C++ language.

There are thousands of projects which make the startup easy as there is almost no

field Arduino enthusiasts have not explored already.

1.2 Improvements over the original Arduino design

We entered the Arduino field 5 years after the design was introduced, allowing us to see and skip

most of the errors the Arduino inventors made. We were able to read feedback from current

customers and to implement what they wanted to see in the original Arduino.

There are a number of improvements over the original Arduino design that we have

implemented in OLIMEXINO-328:

1. We allowed the board to work at different frequencies with easy exchange of the quartz crystal.

2. The original Arduino used a linear power supply. This limited the input voltage range. We

designed a switching power supply to accept input voltages from 9 to 30V DC, making it possible

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