(some history of them for fun)
I bought a Experimenters Kit from HiTechnic awhile ago. It lets you connect a LEGO NXT to a breadboard.
So, now I'm redoing those same projects, but using the Netduino instead. Rather fun, since I have my circuits and components all laid out... I just need to learn the Netduino side.
So... one of the projects has a potentiometer that you use to control a bank of LEDs. Depending the value, one of 6 LED's turn on.
At first, the pot reading was all over the place. When turned all the way down, it read from 0 to 1023. In the loop, it kept bouncing. When you turn it up the slightest bit, it reads 1023 all the time.
So I came to the forum to figure out what I was doing wrong. First thing I did, was a search on "analog"... and I found a post talking about the AREF needing to be connected to 3.3v
Ahhh... thanks so much. Wiring the 3.3V header to the AREF header works. I still have so much to learn about hardware. Thanks for the lesson!
I did that, and now it works fine.
My question is... what is AREF, and why does it need to be connected to 3.3v. And in what cases do I need to connect that?