Arduino Engineering Kit - FAQ

Hello all,

The Engineering Kit is out now, and available in our store.
We have gathered together the most frequently asked question about the Arduino Engineering Kit below.

This kit is intended for whom? Do users need an engineering background?
The kit has primarily been designed for: students learning about engineering at a university or vocational school, instructors teaching engineering and related courses, makers with an interest or background in engineering. Users don’t necessarily need to have engineering background to operate the projects, since all MATLAB and Simulink programs are included. However, for users that wish to extend and evolve the provided programs it will be helpful to understand the underlying engineering concepts.

Why are MATLAB and Simulink used instead of Arduino IDE?
MATLAB and Simulink are built for engineers and make the complex math and engineering calculations in the kit’s projects easier and more intuitive. They are pervasive across industries and many engineers will use them in their future jobs.

Will the kit be sold worldwide?
Yes, but the content will only be available in English. We may consider adding other languages in the future.

Are MATLAB and Simulink included or do I have to pay extra?
MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, and ten other add-on products are included in the kit at no extra cost. The Arduino Engineering Kit includes a one-year license of these products for one individual. The license is not restricted to only students.

What engineering concepts are covered?
The kit covers system modeling, controls, image processing, robotics, signal processing, among many others. Concepts are not covered at an advanced level.

What if the included license is not sufficient? Suppose several individuals who will be sharing a kit need access for longer than one year. What should we do to get more licenses?
MathWorks has various options for supplementing the included license. They will assist you in determining what is appropriate for your situation. Please visit Arduino Engineering Kit - MATLAB & Simulink to learn more.

If I have an existing MATLAB license, can I use just that?
Yes, but you must use the latest release (R2018a) and have access to the following products: MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow®, Control System Toolbox™️, Curve Fitting Toolbox™️, DSP System Toolbox™️, Image Processing Toolbox™️, Instrument Control Toolbox™️, Optimization Toolbox™️, Signal Processing Toolbox™️, Symbolic Math Toolbox™️, Simscape™️, and Simscape Multibody™️. If your school has a campus license (university or primary/secondary), you should have these required products.

To buy your kit today visit:
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-engineering-kit

Hi,

I am having an issue in section 2 with using Matlab:

https://create.arduino.cc/edu/courses/mod/book/view.php?id=83&chapterid=92

This is the section where we communicate with matlab and the MKR1000.

In section 2.2.2.2 "CONNECTING MATLAB TO ARDUINO", it has us create a new arduino instance on the matlab server and we can kill or re-create that instance at will.

ISSUE: Now read the section where the LiPo battery is connected. It claims you need to simply clear the old arduino instance and re-create it but that is not true. It does not happen that way. You need to power cycle and re-download the entire board again to continue.

I think this is a bug...

I think I might be onto the root cause?

I am looking through the error logs. Near the end when it is showing how the software is compiling I find this interesting set of commands right before the crash:

Sketch uses 28504 bytes (10%) of program storage space. Maximum is 262144 bytes.
Uploading...
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
PORTS {COM1, } / {COM1, } => {}
An error occurred while uploading the sketch

The issue is that my board is talking through COM7 and this appears to always be trying COM1 for some reason. I am not sure why this is happening so I am going to perform a successful dataload next and then see if the log is producing this code but using COM7.

Quick Update: No logs when a build is successful. Not a bad idea I suppose but it thwarts this path to finding out root cause. More to come later.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us,

I'm Sravya from Arduino Technical Support Team. It seems that your board is changing port and you have to repeat the process again.

We request you to try pressing the reset button and continue with the instructions in 2.2.2.2 Connecting Matlab To Arduino section.

However,we want to know what you meant by "need power cycle"? Is it connecting the battery to the battery connector on the board?

Have a nice day!

Best regards,

Hi!

I will try the reset button later this afternoon (~5 hours) and report back.

I meant "power cycle" to mean:

[1] Turn off LiPo battery
[2] Unplug Lipo Battery
[3] Unplug USB cable

Then I have to restore power by:

[1] plugging in USB first
[2] Plug in LiPo battery
[3] Turn on LiPo battery

Then I can re-program my board.

Maybe this reset method will save me that time.

I just wanted to give a quick update: The reset button is something that you should get used to when doing this engineering kit. For some reason the ports will change on the MKR board and this has been the problem for me. Fortunately, after discussions with both Matlab and the Arduino team, I have learned that simply double pushing the reset button on the MKR board and re-trying to download appears to have great success. This becomes very clear when you are in Chapter 3 and you are pushing new motor controls to the board and having to do the double reset in between these steps because the MKR board has now jumped to a new COM port on your computer.

Tharless, I just wanted to thank you for posting your issue and updates on here. I hope you post more so others like me can learn from you. :slight_smile:

Hello Valentina Chinnici,
Thank you and the Arduino team for the Engineering Kit.
I am a little old fashioned and like a printable pdf (adobe) version of the course, while going through the lessons.
I sent a text to the technical support email to ask if Arduino was interested and have not received a response.
When I signed up on 08-31-2018 I could not find a pdf format document for the course.
You may have something like that somewhere on your web site, but I looked everywhere and could not find it and no link to anything like it on the Forum (as of when I searched on 09-01-2018).
So, as I went through the course material over the last 24 days I compiled a printable, adobe (pdf) version and call it the Arduino Engineering Kit MATLAB Simulink Manual.
It has all the full color figures, equations, course content, data sheets, and some other essential things from your web site. (I also corrected a few minor errors in the equations and some typo's I noticed.)

I did change the format to Times New Roman font to make it easier to read when printed.
The only other changes were:

  1. Add a cover page (showing the kit),
  2. A Table of contents (for each section of what turned out to be a 420 page manual),
  3. Numbered the sections in each chapter (with the same order as presented in the course chapters),
  4. Made 3 appendices (to get Arduino newbies started quicker and include all the datasheets),
  5. Changed some colors and the font to make it more pleasing to my eyes, and
  6. Changed each scope figure with a black background by inverting it to a white background to save toner for printing.

I want to give it at no cost, free to anyone who purchases the Engineers Kit, to Arduino as a way of saying thank you for such a great kit at such a great price.
However, before uploading it to the forum, I would like to upload it to you for your review and approval.
Do you have a link for that?
Is anyone else in the forum interested?
It is only 29MB in total.
Can upload each chapter individually also.

Thank you again.
Best regards,
Joe

1 Like

In section 3 we need to download sketches to test the hardware.
These are saved as a .zip format but cannot be extracted.
The files are said to be "invalid".
I have tried adding them as a ZIP Library via the IDE to no avail. Version 1.8.5.
The file title looks to be in the correct format. Motor_test.zip
Scanned it with Sophos anti virus. No problems there. Contains 3 files 1.08 MB.
Tried to extract on a different computer (Windows 7 & Windows 8). No help.

Am I missing something obvious here?

Hi Philip_Weir,
Try another Zip utility like 7_Zip File manager.
Don't know if that is the problem.
But sometimes Windows will not allow un-zipping certain files from the internet.
Another trick is to email the zip file to yourself, then see if Windows will unzip it.
Good luck.
Joe

Philip_Weir,
I verified that the 7_Zip file manager worked to unzip the files in Section 3.
Windows was blocking them on my windows 7 computer and on an older Windows XP computer.

Link to Z_zip is www.7-zip.org

Once unzipped you should see the following files (my drive:\folder for this is F:\01 Arduino Eng\code)

From Blink.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Blink
Blink.ino
sketch.json

From Fade.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Fade
Fade.ino
sketch.json

From Hall_sensor_test.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Hall_sensor_test
Hall_sensor_test.ino
sketch.json

From IMU_test.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\IMU_test
IMU_test.ino
sketch.json

From Motor_test.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Motor_test
Motor_test.ino
sketch.json

From Motor_test_encoder.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Motor_test_encoder
Motor_test_encoder.ino
sketch.json

From Servo_test.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\Servo_test
Servo_test.ino
sketch.json

From UltrasonicRF_test.zip

F:\01 Arduino Eng Kit\code\UltrasonicRF_test
sketch.json
UltrasonicRF_test.ino

Hope that helps.
Joe

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your help. That sorted out the issue.
I had considered downloading another version of software but up until now
there has never been any issues with other zip files so I thought the problem lay elsewhere.

Phil.

Phil, You are welcome. I think Windows blocked them because they originated in a country other than the US.

Hi Joe,

Any chance someone can view that .pdf? I like the idea of it and I even have some minor gripes on part 6 that I might be able to suggest a revision for. Anyways, just a request to see if I can view it for now. Thanks!

Todd

Hi Todd,

As Blaise Pascal wrote, I would make this response brief if only I had time to do that.

Initially the reason I put the pdf manual together was to give it to purchasers of the kit to help out in my small way. So, I am happy to provide it to you privately, as I expect that since you have been going through the kit, you purchased it.

I do not want to make this complicated, but considering the following, we need a way to exchange the document that satisfies your desire to review the pdf, satisfies Arduino's copyright requirements, and some other concerns Arduino customer support has informed me of.

I received an email from Carlos Rodriguez, Arduino Customer Support, asking me to hold off on sharing the pdf in a public way and that only to licensed Arduino Engineering Kit purchasers.

Arduino Customer support is concerned with

  1. the newness of the course, i.e. puting it in the public prmaturely, errors in the course will quickly make the document obsolete,
  2. access to the course materials by those who have not purchased the kit,
  3. unethical entities who will copy the course and sell an unauthorized version of the kit & course,
  4. other concerns.

Nonetheless, I expect that for only $245, if someone unethical wants to copy the kit and course, it is easy enough to simply buy it and do what any decent and honest person would not do.

That being the case, Carlos did not specifically ask that they review it first and I do not see any harm in a collaboration on our part to eliminate any errata going through the kit course, if done privately only among a small group of ethical individuals verified to have purchased the kit. It seems that will only help out with most of Carlos' concerns.

Nonetheless, since this forum is public, I do not know how to give you my private email so that I can exchange it privately to you. I would rather not put my email in the public forum, etc.

If a forum moderator (or you) can provide guidance on this, so that I am providing it to you privately, somehow verify that you have a valid license, and make sure Arduino customer support is okay with it, I'll send it to you in total, right away. After all I am not the author, just the lowly scribner.

Best regards,
Joe

where are the instructions/videos explaining how to assemble the projects? I've seen several posts referring to them, but have seen no URLs or references in the materials included in the kits.

Hello,

To register your kit with the code on the box in AEK Platform check the link: create.arduino.cc/edu/reg.

To login to the AEK Platform and view the course content visit: create.arduino.cc/edu/courses

Thanks. While this shows the instructions for Matlab and using the Arduino, I've not been able to find the instructions for building the three physical engineering projects themselves.

Hello,

The AEK course content consists of 6 chapters, the first three chapters are intended to get started with Arduino, Matlab and Simulink and the last three chapters provides you the instructions to build the three projects.