Product Showcase: Arduino UNO R4 WiFi

hi there spark fans Rob Reynolds here I think it's a fair bet to say that for many of us our introduction to microcontrollers and possibly even decoding came via the Arduino platform Arena has been helping people learn and create stem and steam projects since 2005. well quite a lot has changed over the past 18 years and so too has the Arduino today I want to take a closer look at one of their newest boards the Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi now there are a lot of differences between this and the previous R3 but there are some similarities too and the first you'll probably notice is that it retains the same form factor what that means is that most if not all of your R3 Shields are going to work just fine with your R4 now let's take a look at some of the differences that give this board more speed memory and connectivity options than its predecessors board runs a 32-bit ra 41m1 cortex M4 microcontroller from Renaissance with an esp32 S3 Mini co-processor not only for increased computational power memory and speed but also for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity it has an improved power section allowing input up to 24 volts through the VIN pin it can be used as an HID device to emulate a mouse or keyboard it has a can bus op amp RTC 12-bit DAC and a fully addressable 12x8 LED Matrix that's 96 onboard red LEDs it offers runtime errors Diagnostics plus it has a USBC programming port and a quick connector to easily add any of our SparkFun quick breakout boards one important thing to note is that this quick connector utilizes the Uno secondary I squared C bus which uses the wire 1 object instead of the wire object just a heads up there so to show off some of what the new Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi has to offer let's start with a sweet LED Matrix Arduino has written a demo sketch for this so I'm just going to use theirs it's a Tetris Graphics demo so while you won't actually be playing Tetris on this just know that with the right sketch and a few buttons you actually could now this is the sketch that comes pre-loaded on the board so by simply powering it up or if you're already powered by hitting the reset button you should be able to see the tetris animation and then once it finishes that it's going to go straight into the normal blink LED sketch you can of course create your own images or animations on the LED Matrix you could create a frame simply by creating a two-dimensional array of bytes so eight bracketed lines of zeros and ones however this can be fairly time and memory intensive it's preferable just to create a string of 32-bit integers Arduino has a tutorial on how to create these step by step but they also have an LED Matrix tool more of a GUI where you click the squares you want to have lit up and the tool creates the unsigned long variables that you can then just drop into your code I've used the tool and here I'm just alternating a large heart and a medium heart to demonstrate that I have given my creation life now one of the other great additions to the R4 is its Wireless capabilities and there are a few demos for that as well so I want to look at a basic one I just want to Simply Be able to connect to the R4 via Wi-Fi have it build a simple web page that I can interact with and allow me to control my Arduino R4 remotely once again I'm going to tap the arduino's own resources as they've got a good number of options to get you off and running with multiple Wi-Fi network examples I'm going to use their simple web server example to be able to connect to my Arduino wirelessly and then control it with a remote input now this example requires an existing Wi-Fi network and password and they suggest that you put that in a separate header file so that your sensitive information is not right there in the body of your main sketch and I think that's just good practice now once you upload the sketch if you look at your serial monitor you'll see it trying to find the existing Network and connecting to it once it's connected it will display its own IP address and then you can connect to that using any web browser in fact I'm going to use the one on my phone connecting then via your web browser you'll be able to control your Arduino from afar whether the built-in led the LED Matrix or anything you may have connected to your R4 Motors displays whatever the basic sketch simply turns the onboard LED on and off but I want to step further and added some of what we learned with the LED Matrix to turn on a happy face I adjusted the text on the web server as well to reflect that now for me that's the best way to learn you take something you already know and then try to combine it with whatever you're currently learning so there's just a brief look at some of what the new Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi is capable of Arduino has more examples online and we also have examples that go along with our Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi quick kit so there are plenty of resources to help you keep moving forward check out the new Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi and our quick kit that goes along with it over at sparkfun.com and until next time stay safe be kind and happy hacking and here's a smiley face for you foreign hi there spark fans Rob Reynolds here I think it's a fair bet bless you the new Arduino R4 Wi-Fi Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi that was an excellent silent sneeze though that was awesome you know R4 Uno Uno R4 are a quick kit that goes with the Arduino Uno or for Wi-Fi Fair bet to say that for most of us our introduction will not say many that might be most I'll just go with many the new Arduino Uno R4 Wi-Fi Arduino [Music]

Channel: SparkFun Electronics

Views: 10,817

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Id: id08lBaULHc

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023