Arduino Uno Specs: Easily understand your Arduino Uno. Learn about all internal modules and use each of them the right way. Plus FIVE unused features!

Arduino Uno Specs: What exactly can your Arduino Uno do?

• How many digital I/O pins are there?
  
• How many PWM pins are there?
  
• How many Analog inputs are there?
• How fast is it?
• How is it powered?
• Can you use both Vin and USB at the same time?
• How many timers are there?
• What Arduino Uno Serial interfaces are available?
• Are there any commonly unused modules? - Yes: Comparator and Timer2 Asynchronous input, 32kHz crystal use, the internal oscillator.
• Arduino interrupt - how many there are and how to use them.
  
• What dimensions does the Arduino Uno have?

Links from this page

1. The comparator module.
2. Timer 2 asynchronous input.
3. Timer 1: 32kHz crystal clock.
4. Internal oscillator.
5. More than Two external interrupt pins.
   

Arduino Uno Specs: Arduino Internals

Parameter	Value
Microcontroller	ATmega328P
USB Voltage Supply (VDD)	5V0 [1]
External power (Vin/power jack)	7V ~ 12V
Connector	USB-B
Clock	16MHz
Mips	16MIPS
Flash (~0.5k for bootloader)	31.5kByte
SRAM	2kByte
EEPROM	1kByte
Total I/O pins	20 18 [2]
Digital I/O only pins	14 12 [2][3]
Analogue pins (also digital I/O)	6 [3]
Digital I/O pins PWM capable	6 [3]
Timers - 8 bit (T0, T2)	2 [4]
Timers - 16 bit (T1)	1
USART (i.e. RS232) for USB	1 USART [5]
I2C	1 I2C
SPI	1 SPI
ADC	10 bit SAR
Analogue Comparator	1
Current per pin (Abs. max)	40mA [6]
Total Current (Abs. max) ATMega328p	200mA [6]
Temperature range	-40ºC ~ 85ºC[7]

        [1]  All pins except the reset pin which can withstand 13V for High-Volt-Programming.
        [2]  2 digital I/O are dedicated to the USB interface.
        [3]  I/O pins are multi-functional. Analogue & PWM pins are also digital capable pins.
        [4]  Timer 2 can accept an asynchronous input signal, and can use a 32kHz crystal.
        [5]  The USART is dedicated to communication over the USB interface (pins 0 &1).
        [6]  ATmega328p datasheet chapter 29 electrical Characteristics.
        [7]  This is for the ATMega328p and not necessarily for the whole board!

Arduino Uno Specs : Memory

The Arduino Uno has three types of memory.

• Flash
  
• SRAM
• EEPROM
  

Flash is the memory that permanently stores your programs i.e. it retains information when the power is off. It is also erasable which gives you the ability change its contents i.e. you can download your programs into Flash just by re-writing the Flash (all done for you in the Arduino IDE).

About 0.5k of the flash is dedicated to the bootloader operation which allows the Arduino IDE to upload programs the Arduino Uno. So you lose a small amount of Flash for the convenience of push button Flash programming.

SRAM is Static Random Access Memory. This is where all your variables are stored i.e. when you need a counter, its value must change over time - this is the memory that is used. When you power off the Arduino Uno the values store are lost.

EEPROM is Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory. This is a bridge between the Flash and the SRAM. You can update EEPROM and when powered off the values are retained. The difference between Flash and EEPROM is that while both wear out over time, EEPROM lasts far longer. EEPROM is used for storing information that may change, but not often, and is used to setup a system e.g. calibration values or current colour etc.

Flash lasts for:          10,000 writes.
EEPROM lasts for:    100,000 writes.

Arduino Uno Specs : I/O Pins

The Arduino Uno has 20 I/O pins but on the board but only 18 are available as 2 are used for the USB interface. You can see that there are 14 digital I/O labelled P0 to P13. There are also 6 analogue pins labelled A0 to A5. Together these make up the 20 I/O pins.

Sometimes there is confusion when an analogue pin is used as a digital I/O pin, but the analogue pins are all capable of being used as digital pins as well as analogue inputs. So in fact there are:

    20 18 digital I/O pins (when A0 ~ A5 are used as digital I/O).

You can use only 18 digital I/O as pins 0 and 1 Serial Tx and Rx are dedicated to the USB serial communications interface.

When you want to use a PWM output pin, there are 6 available, then you need to use one of the 12 digital I/O and use it as a PWM output. On the Arduino board the pins that can be used as PWM are labelled '~'.

If you used each pin as assigned to its unique function then you end up with

Digital I/O	14 (2 out of 8 are dedicated for Rx & Tx for USB) Of these 6 of them can be used as PWM.
ADC input	6 (these can be  set to digital I/O as well but labelled A0-A5)
Total	18 (should be 20 but 2 are used for Rx,Tx)

   
It's up to you to choose how you use these pins as they are multi functional.

Also don't forget that some pins have even more underlying functions. Some major functions are:

• I2C interface: A4 and A5 are used as SDA and SCL.
• SPI interface: 13, 12, 11, 10 are used as SCK, MISO, MOSI, SS.
  
• Tx and Rx: Serial communications to USB pins 0 and 1.

You can't really use the Tx and Rx pins for anything else as they are connected to the other chip on the Arduino board (ATMega16U) which handles the USB interface and allows the ATmrega328p to be programmed via the USB cable.

If you really need an SPI interface or I2C interface but can not use the dedicated pins then you can use a software version for each that can be used on any digital pins. Of course operation will be slower as it does not use the dedicated internal hardware.

Also don't forget pin 13 is attached via a resistor to an LED.

Arduino Uno Specs : Power Supplies

USB Power (5V) Supply

The Arduino Uno requires a 5V supply which allows a high frequency of operation - 16MHz - (See Supply voltage de-rating in this page).

There are three voltage sources for the Arduino

• USB power
• Power Jack DC voltage
  
• Vin
  

In all cases the aim is to get a 5V supply running on the board.

You can supply the on board 5V regulator from either the power jack or  the Vin pin and in both cases the voltage range should be: 7V ~ 12V.

When you use a USB connection (with no voltage at Vin) then the USB 5V supply is used directly on the board i.e. it's completely powered via the USB interface.

You can either power the Arduino Uno through the USB interface via the USB-B connector or supply your own voltage to Vin. You can also apply Vin while still using the USB interface (Vin/power jack overrides the USB voltage - a diode disables the USB voltage).

USB Power (5V) Advantage

When you use the USB interface as a power source it is super convenient since you don't have to have an external power source. This is the best way to start using the Arduino Uno as it is the simplest - all you need is a PC, a USB and the Arduino board - then you can start programming!

USB Power (5V) Disadvantages

Voltage level

The disadvantage in using the USB as a power source is that the voltage can be a little low (especially when using a cheap powered hub which won't have a great specification). It means, if you make measurements with the ADC the accuracy won't be good. If you change the USB port in use you could also get a different reading!

Current available

The current available from the USB interface is limited to a maximum of 500mA (USB spec). In rare cases you might want more current e.g. driving power hungry shields, and it this case apply 7V to the Vin input of the board. When you do this the internal 5V regulator is activated and can supply more current.

You can apply from 7V to 12V to the Vin/power jack input, but as your current usage goes up, so does the power dissipated in the 5V regulator. That means the regulator could heat up too much so to stop that, reduce the Vin voltage to the minimum (7V) and reduce the current used by your circuits.

The other reason for using Vin is to get a more accurate 5V voltage. You might want to use an external voltage applied to Vin as the internal regulator specification will be better than the USB voltage spec, so you can make better measurements using the ADC.

Arduino Uno Specs : Output Voltages

As already discussed, the Arduino Uno requires a 5V voltage supply which is usually provided by the USB port directly. You can use this voltage to power your projects from the 5V pin.

If you power the board from 7V ~ 12V (Vin or power jack) then you activate the internal 5V voltage regulator (so you can plug in a wall brick for power and allow the Arduino Uno to be standalone without needing the USB connection).

Also on board is another regulator: The 3V3 regulator that you can use specifically for connected chips that can only use up to 3.3Volts. However be careful of level translation between the 5V arduino Uno and the attached device. You may need level translation FETs (or a board with these FETs and resistors on between the chip and the Uno).

Arduino Uno Specs : ADC

The Arduino ADC is a 10 bit successive approximation analogue to digital converter. It will make a reading in 104us.

There are 6 pins that you can use as analogue inputs - each one is read using a multiplexer to direct the analogue signal at the pin to the input of the ADC module.

You usually setup the ADC to use the main power supply as a voltage reference (5V) but you can feed in your own reference to the AREF pin. This is especially useful if you need to get accurate analogue readings as you can feed in a reference of known accuracy (whereas the main power supply may vary - making your reading inaccurate).

Alternatively, you can use the internal 1V1 bandgap reference to get a better reading, but the initial accuracy of this module is 10%. You can find out how to calibrate it here for far higher initial accuracy.

Arduino ADC oversampling

There is a very special technique using oversampling and averaging that allows you to increase the effective number of ADC bits. The advantage is that you get more ADC bits for free, while the disadvantage is that it takes more time to get a reading.

Arduino Uno Specs : Timers / PWM

There are three timers in the Arduino Uno and they also generate PWM signals. Here are nine things you need to know about Arduino Uno/Nano PWM pins.

Timers 0 and 2 are 8 bits long, while Timer 1 is 16 bits long. The longer timer can therefore count higher or can be thought of as having a higher PWM resolution.

The timers within the Arduino Uno (actually the ATMega328P) are actually complex counters that can count up or down. They also have associated comparison registers that activate when a specific timer value is reached. This allows generation of PWM signals using the timer output.

Each timer can have two PWM outputs since there are two comparison registers per timer. These are labeled "Output Compare <timer number> <A|B>.

So the two PWM outputs for timer 0 are:

    OC0A - A PWM output using Timer 0
    OC0B - A PWM output using Timer 0

Since there are three timers we also have

    OC1A - A PWM output using Timer 1
    OC1B - A PWM output using Timer 1
    OC2A - A PWM output using Timer 2
    OC2B - A PWM output using Timer 2

So we have a total of 6 PWM outputs as expected (when looking at the Arduino pinout).

The Arduino analogWrite function sets up a PWM signal which is a digital signal with varying MS ratio. By filtering the output with a capacitor you can obtain a continuously variable analogue output voltage (0V to 5V).

You can only use the dedicated PWM pins (3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 ) for analogWrite since these are the dedicated timer compare outputs as described above.

One small but interesting piece of information is that all timer frequencies for PWM are 490Hz except for those associated with timer 0 which use a frequency of 980Hz.

The reason is that Timer 0 has an extra function in the Arduino architecture and that is to actually measure time. The functions millis() and delay() require a timekeeping ability accurate to 1ms and 1.0/980 = 1.0204ms - which is approximately 1ms.

Asynchronous Timer 2

Another under used feature is the asynchronous input of Timer 2. This bypasses the internal stabilisation circuitry that other inputs use (hence the term asynchronous). It sounds like a bad idea but is actually very useful.

Since goes through a prescaler on the input it can be used to measure (or count) very high frequency signals.

The Timer 2 prescaler block is a 10 bit counter so the input frequency can be divided down by a maximum of pow(2,10) = 1024.

The circuitry of the asynchronous counter/Timer 2 input is not shut down during sleep so you can still count/time even while the chip is in shut down.

The device can wake up from a timer overflow or output compare which means the chip can count while asleep!

External 32kHz crystal on Timer 2

If you connect a 32kHz crystal across the TOSC1 and TOSC2 pins (with two suitable load capacitors) then you can have an accurate clock watch type real time clock operation.

Instead of buying a DS1307 real time clock you can implement the same functionality simply by writing a bit of code!

Arduino Uno Specs : Internal oscillator

The Arduino Uno has an internal RC oscillator (8MHz) calibrated to ±10%. You can calibrate this to ±1% yourself since there are adjustment registers in the chip.

It means you could create projects without an external crystal saving some pins for stand alone operation.

Arduino Uno Specs : I2C

The I2C interface is one of the most useful interfaces because many chips employ this I2C interface allowing connection of only two wires to multiple chips.You can add lots of ICs without having tons of wiring and running out of microcontroller pins.

Adding multiple I2C chips to the same 2 wires is limited by only the capacitance added by each device. In practice this means chips on a single PCB are fine and will work well.

The I2C protocol allows communication in both directions between the master controller and slave devices so you can have very complex systems e.g. gathering data from an ADC and sending data to a display; all on same two wires.

On the Arduino Uno the two I2C pins are A4 and A5 - these pins are also routed to the two pins beyond pin 13 closest to the reset button. There's no clear reason why - other than it brings all the serial interfaces to the same side of the board i.e. SPI and UART.

On the Arduino Uno, typically the I2C interface runs at 400kHz but you can increase this by changing the value of a clock register associated with the I2C module - this is not often necessary and depends on your project requirements.

Arduino Uno Specs : SPI

The other, very useful interface, is the Serial Peripheral Interface which is really just a serial input/output module that has clock and data and select signals. Unlike the I2C interface the data lines are not bi-directional, rather there are separate lines for data-in and data-out.

The only similarity that SPI has to I2C is that it is a serial interface. It is not bi-directional and is not multi-drop. The advantage is that is far faster (10MHz c.f. 3.4MHz - I2C). However I2C is usually used at 400kHz.

This is the main interface used to program a raw Arduino chip. You can find out how to use an Arduino as a ICSP (In Circuit Serial Programmer) here [advanced]. On the Arduino Uno board there are two 6 pin headers and these both contain an SPI signal set and they allow the on board microcontrollers to be programmed (without a bootloader).

The 6-pin header nearest the reset button is for programming the AT chip responsible for the USB interface while the other one programs the bootloader into the ATMega328p - the main processor in the Arduino.

The data lines are conveniently labelled:

•     MISO and
•     MOSI.
  

    Master In, Slave Out
and
    Master Out, and Slave In.

The other important signal is the Slave Select pin, MISO and MOSI are only active if the SS signal is active. This is the mechanism that allows multiple SPI chips to use the same MISO and MOSI bus (each chip will use a different SS signal - the alternative is to daisy chain).

The big advantage the SPI has over I2C is that it is far faster ~ 10MHz.

Again, like the I2C interface, there are many chips that use the SPI interface.

Arduino Uno Specs : USART

On the Arduino Uno the USART is dedicated to the USB communications so you can't use it for anything else. However if you use an ATMega328p in stand alone mode (i.e. not an Arduno Uno but a chip on a solderless breadboard) you could then use the UART pins.

In this case the USART module can be configured for different numbers of bits and can even implement a multi-processor communication system.

You can find out how to program a stand alone chip here [advanced].

Arduino Uno Specs : Comparator

The analog comparator is never talked about in Arduino projects. It seems to be seen as a bit of a redundant, uninteresting module - maybe it's not.

It is a high speed analogue voltage comparison system that is far faster than using the ADC and waiting around for ~100us for a result. In fact the comparator reaction time is 500ns [Table 30-1 datasheet ATMega328p].

Note: The analog comparator can make a comparison in 500ns.

Additionally the inputs to the comparator can be taken from any of the existing analogue inputs. As well as this, it can output an interrupt for fast processor reaction to comparator events.

The analog comparison voltage is taken from pins AIN0 and AIN1 but these can also be bypassed to take a voltage from the internal band gap reference and also from the analog inputs.

• AIN0 is on Arduino pin 6 - the same pin as OC0A (See timers above).
  
• AIN1 is on Arduino pin 7
  
• ACO : The raw comparator output can start an input capture on T1.
• ICP1 : The processed comparator output can start an input capture on T1.

Since the analogue comparator inputs are entirely separate from the ADC pins you could switch between then to make fast comparisons while at the same time still utilising the ADC.

So if you need to make a voltage comparison very fast, this is the module to use.

Arduino Interrupts

There are two external interrupts INT0 and INT1 but did you know there are many more and that you can use them on virtually any pin!

Find out all about Arduino Uno interrupts.

They are useful if you want to make your program react instantly to an external event e.g. an emergency shut down switch.

You can also use Arduino Timer Interrupts to create specific time period interrupts. These are a bit more difficult to set up but they let you time actions for precisely repeatable periods. This is useful for example for display refresh or repeated ADC sampling.

Arduino Uno Specs : Dimensions

Arduino Uno Dimensions

    Board Length    : ~70mm (does not include connectors sticking out!).
    Board Width     : ~53mm.
    Board Length with longest connector (USB) : ~75mm.
    Height (board+ UBS-B):~12mm The USB-B connector is the highest component.
    Board Thickness:~1mm

[ direct measurements from board in the hand : This is a clone but should be representative; look at eagle files online for source of pcb and hence target dimensions.]

Arduino Uno Dimensions tell you how big the board is in terms of millimeters but you can't really tell how small it is. So here's a picture of my dusty, trusty Arduino Uno R3 (clone) in my hand:

However, you may think it is small but I have been using a Nano for breadboard projects for a long time because it is about a 1/4 the size (or smaller) and has the same functionality as the Arduino Uno (and it plugs directly into a solderless breadboard). It actually has two more analogue pins brought out to external pins as well!

[ Again these are direct measurements from board in the hand ]

Here's an image showing the size of the Arduino Nano:

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