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Something that is confusing me on the Arduino is the Analog Inputs. Can they be used as normal I/O Digital or only I Analog?

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2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

On most microcontrollers that have special functions for their I/O, like analog in, but also PWM, UART or I2C, these pins can also be used as General I/O (digital). The Atmel AVR is no exception. You'll have to check the datasheet to see which register(s) enable/disable the special functions.

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This is a detail of the pinout of the ATMega328, which is apparently used in the Arduino Uno (thanks bjthom). You can see that pin24, which is used as ADC1 input, also is used as port PC1 (bit 1 of port C).

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It may be worth noting that the Arduino Uno R3 (the most recent board) uses the ATmega328. –  bjthom May 17 '12 at 14:54
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The simple answer is yes, they can be used as digital I/O as well. Within the framework of the Arduino core libraries, I'm pretty sure you can just treat them as digital 14 through digital 19. So to set "A0" as an output and drive it low you would do:

pinMode(14, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(14, LOW);
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Analog pins can also be referred to as Ax in sketches, where x is the input number. –  lhballoti May 17 '12 at 15:01

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