Learn Arduino Using Maker UNO - Lesson 4

The biggest problem I faced when I wanted to learn Arduino was there are too many documents, learning guides, tutorials flooding around the internet and I had no idea which one to refer to.

Most of the learning guides that claim they were crafted for the beginners are just too surface while most of the time they only show you the schematics, give you the sample codes and tell you what to expect but they do not explain how it works. It is very frustrating for people like me who do not have C-programming background. Although I can achieve the expected results by following the schematic and codes given but I am pretty sure I can’t create my own project after I completed the lessons.

Another problem that I observed was most of the learning guides are created by the techies where things are assumed to be understood.

There is nothing special with the projects that I covered in this learning guide, I just added some notes and reminders on things that I did not understand. I try to simplify the technical part and I hope that at least the beginners benefit from this and enjoy learning with Arduino.

This beginner guide covers 7 lessons. Each lesson comes with several projects and one open-ended challenge.

Lesson 0 - Setting Up The Hardware & Software

Lesson 1 - Digital Output

Lesson 2 - Digital Input

Lesson 3 - Analog Output

Lesson 4 - Melody Tone

Lesson 5 - Analog Input

Lesson 6 - DC Motor

Lesson 7 - Ultrasonic Sensor

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Lesson 4 > Project 8: Compose Basic Tones

Step 1. Open a new sketch, write these codes into the sketch then upload to your board.

Step 2. Check your result. You should be able to hear thebasic tone of “Do Re Mi Fa SoLa Ti”

*********************************** End of Project 8 ************************************

Lesson 4 > Project 9: Compose “Happy Birthday” Melody

In this project, we need to compose the first line of the “Happy Birthday To You” song using Maker UNO Plus.

Step 1. Modify your previous code into this then upload to your board.

Step 2. Check your result.

*********************************** End of Project 9 ************************************

Lesson 4 > Project 10: Optimize Your Code

Instead of manually key in the tones’ frequency and duration line by line, we can optimize it by using a given sample code to shorten our previous code. This allows us to compose a longer melody effortlessly.

Step 1. Open a sample code. File > Examples > 02 Digital > toneMelody

Step 2. From the example given. Every note’s frequency is predefined from note B0 until DS8. What we need to do is to key in the notes we want and the note duration in sequence.

You can click the “pitches.h” tab to view the predefined notes’ frequency.

Step 3. Refer to the same music sheet again then key in the note and note duration accordingly.

Step 4. Check your result. You are supposed to get the result same as Project 9.

*********************************** End of Project 10 ************************************

Q: Program Maker UNO to play a complete “Happy Birthday to you” Coding Syntax melody when the on-board switch is pressed.

Proceed to Lesson 5 >>