Digital Signals

Digital signals can only accept the values ​​1 or 0 or high or low. So you only use countable elements such as fingers. Hence the term digital, which goes back to the Latin digitus, the finger. To understand how digital signals work and where we work with them, we need to understand building a sketch in Arduino.


Drive Digital Actuators

The digital interfaces of the senseBox MCU have 4 connections: A Ground(GND), a power supply (5V) and two digital pins with which you can control the actors!

To control a digital actuator - for example, an LED - you need two commands: The first is in the setup(), the second in the loop(). In the setup-function the command pinMode(1, OUTPUT); determines that pin 1 has something connected to it, which should be used as output (or OUTPUT). The 1 can be replaced by any other pin number, depending on which Arduino pin you have connected the actuator. The second function in the loop()-function is digitalWrite (1, HIGH);. Thus, the actuator connected to pin 1 is supplied with power, i.e. switched on. The counterpart to this command would be digital´Write(1, LOW); to stop the power supply again. Again, the 1 is replaceable by any other pin number. The sketch should look like this:

void setup(){
    pinMode(1,OUTPUT); //Declare the pin on which the LED 
                       // is connected as output
}
void loop(){
    digitalWrite(1,HIGH); // Turn on the LED
}

Reading Digital Sensors

The same pins we used to drive digital actuators can also be used to register input signals. Digital inputs can assume two states just like digital outputs; HIGH or LOW. For incoming signals to be processed, they must be stored in variables.

To store digital signals, a Boolean variable (also called boolean),which can take only two values, is particularly suitable. In order to read out a digital sensor, two commands are needed, similar to the control of digital sensors. In the loop()-function the command pinMode(1, INPUT); sets pin 1 of the senseBox MCU as input.In the setup()-function the command testVariable = digitalRead(1); a sensor connected to pin 1 is read out and the value stored in the previously created test variable. Just like driving digital actuators, 1 stands for the pin used and can be replaced by any other digital pin. The sketch should look like this:

boolean testVariable = 0;          // declare a new variable of thype boolean

void setup() {
  pinMode(1,INPUT);
}
void loop() {
  testVariable = digitalRead (1); // write the read value into the variable
}

The content of the created variable can be displayed in the serial monitor.

Made with ♥ by the senseBox team at ifgi, WWU Münster All content is published under CC BY-SA 4.0

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