Arduino’s come in many shapes, sizes, and processing capabilities.   The circuit boards are produced by many different manufacturing companies and can be designed to carry out many different operations.  Every Arduino will have Input and output pins, and will have an on-board oscillator that will produce a clock signal that makes the board capable of carrying out instructions. These instructors are written in C++, which is a computer programming language. 

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     Regardless of the manufacturer of a circuit board, they will all have an Atmel microprocessor as the heart of all operations. Each board having an Atmel processor means that they all can be programmed from one standard piece of software - the Arduino IDE. This software will be discussed in the section 'Integrated Development Enviroment(IDE)' on the 'Getting Started with Arduino' page. 

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The cables needed to connect one of these boards to a development computer should be provided with the arduino board, and should have a standard USB connector on one end. Almost all of the cables should be interchangeable, provided it is the right cable for the Arduino USB port, so even if the Arduino did not come with a cable, all that needs to be done is to find one that will fit the connector correctly.

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