Arduino Internals guides you to the heart of the Arduino board. Author聽Dale Wheat shares his intimate knowledge of the Arduino board鈥攊ts secrets, its strengths and possible alternatives to its constituent parts are laid open to scrutiny in this book.聽You'll learn聽to build new, improved Arduino boards and peripherals, while conforming to the Arduino reference design. Arduino Internals begins by聽reviewing聽the current Arduino hardware and software landscape. In particular,聽it offers a clear聽analysis of聽how the ATmega8 board works and when and where to use its derivatives.聽The chapter on the "hardware heart" is vital for the rest of the book and聽should be studied in some detail. Furthermore,聽Arduino Internals聽offers important information about the CPU running the Arduino board, the memory contained within it and the peripherals mounted on it. To be able to write software聽that runs聽optimally on what is a fairly small embedded board, one聽must understand聽how the different parts interact. Later in the book,聽you'll learn聽how to replace certain parts with more powerful alternatives and how to design Arduino peripherals and shields. Since Arduino Internals聽addresses both sides of the Arduino hardware-software boundary, the author analyzes the compiler toolchain and again provides suggestions on聽how to replace it with something more聽suitable for聽your own purposes. You'll also learn about how libraries enable you聽to change the way Arduino and software interact,聽and how to write your own library implementing algorithms聽you've devised yourself. Arduino Internals also suggests alternative programming environments, since many Arduino hackers have a background language other than C or Java. Of course, it is possible to optimize the way in which hardware and software interact鈥攁n entire chapter is dedicated to this field. Arduino Internals doesn't just focus on the different parts of Arduino architecture, but also on the ways in which example projects can take advantage of the new and improved Arduino board. Wheat employs example projects聽to exemplify the hacks and algorithms taught throughout the book. Arduino projects straddling the hardware-software boundary often require collaboration between people of different talents and skills which cannot be taken for granted. For this reason, Arduino Internals contains a whole chapter dedicated to collaboration and open source cooperation to make those tools and skills explicit. One of the crowning achievements of an Arduino hacker is to design a shield or peripheral residing on the Arduino board, which is the focus of the following chapter.聽A later chapter takes specialization further by聽examining Arduino protocols and communications, a field immediately relevant to shields and the communication between peripherals and the board. Finally, Arduino Internals integrates different skills and design techniques by presenting several projects that聽challenge you to put your聽newly-acquired聽skills to the test! Please note: the print version of this title is black & white; the eBook is full color.