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So what are the chances of a new 'duino product that supports CANBus on the board vs having to buy a $50 shield? I could REALLY use CANBUS connectivity and would prefer to use my netduino over the Fez (which supports it on the board). Come on Walker - help a guy out!

I'm playing with some breadboarding projects.

(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



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?

AREF is "Analog REFerence" and since the Atmel doesn't have an analog reference built in you need to use it to give it an 'understanding' (as I understand AREF) so it can have a baseline to read analog inputs.

It's only needed when you are using a 3.3V device that has an analog input (for example, my Maxbotix sonar).