Controlling an External LED

In this project, you'll learn how to connect and control an external LED.

Before you do this project, you'll first need to know how to use a breadboard, and how a LED works

	Parts needed: Arduino LED (any color) A 150 Ω resistor (brown-green-brown) or (brown-green-black-black) Wires Breadboard Software stuff you'll learn: int (variable declaration) = (variable assignment)
	To turn on and off a LED using the Arduino, we need to connect one leg of the LED to a digital I/O pin on the Arduino board. The pins labeled 2 to 13 on the Arduino board are the digital I/O pins.
1	Making the connections Connect the positive end (long leg) of the LED to pin 3 on the Arduino board. Connect the negative end (short leg) of the LED to one end of the 150 Ω resistor. Connect the other end of the resistor to GND on the Arduino.
2	Create a new program by selecting File from the menu, and then select New. You will see this new template.
3	Type in this program. The pinMode command tells the Arduino that you will be controlling pin 3 for OUTPUT since you connected the LED to pin 3. The digitalWrite command sends a HIGH or LOW signal to pin 3. The delay command makes the Arduino wait a bit. The number specified in the delay command is the number of milliseconds to wait. 1000 ms = 1 sec
4	Upload and run the program. You should see the external LED blink on for 1 second and then off for another second.
	How (not) to blow up a LED. If you have not read the document on how a LED works then you should read it before going any further, otherwise you'll end up with a lot of blown up LEDs.
Experiments

Copyright © 2015 Enoch Hwang