My wife gave me the Arduino Starter Kit for Father's Day. I've successfully uploaded, run and modified the "Blink" sketch as described in the Projects Book that came with the kit and now want to turn the Arduino off.
What's the correct procedure for de-energizing the Arduino?
Thank you!
Just disconnect the power, or if it's being powered by the USB cable pull the USB plug out. There is no special procedure, what makes you think there is?
(deleted)
If you want the Arduino to "not do stuff" when it is connected to power, just upload the BareMinimum sketch.
File->New
or
File->Examples->01.Basics->BareMinimum
(It will still be working just as hard but it won't LOOK like it's working.)
Thanks very much for answering my question. Regarding my reason for asking it, after serving in the U.S. Navy ("If you don't know what it does or how it works, don't touch it") and working for 20+ years with Murphy's Law in the software development environment ("Anything that can go wrong, will"), I'm extremely cautious when it comes to undocumented procedures.
Thank you again!
gpb
Thank you gpb14916 for your insight into military life :o
When you shut down a PC there are all sorts of things that the software needs to do to tidy things up before the power goes off. The hardware of a PC does not care if the power goes off immediately, but the software has things to do before shutting down. When you turn off your Arduino the only software on there is the software you put on it, so the only way there would be a shut down procedure would be if you had designed software that needed a special procedure to shut it down. Generally software on a micro-controller does not require a special shut down procedure, but if one day yours does you will know about it because you will have designed it that way.