Chapter 6. The Arduino Leonardo

Up to now, I’ve pretended there is only one type of Arduino board, the Arduino Uno. In fact, there are a number of different Arduino boards, which you can see by visiting the “Products” section of the Arduino website.

In this chapter I want to discuss the Leonardo, because it’s rather unique.

How Is This Arduino Different from All Other Arduinos?

As you might remember from Chapter 3, the heart of the Arduino Uno is a microcontroller called the ATmega328. What I didn’t tell you then was that there is actually a second microcontroller on the Uno, an ATmega16U2, which is responsible for handling the USB interface. You may have noticed this next to the USB connector. The reason I haven’t mentioned this chip before ...

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