The Arduino Leonardo Board
The Leonardo board differs from all preceding boards in that the ATmega32u4 has built-in USB communication, eliminating the need for a secondary processor. This allows the Leonardo to appear to a connected computer as a mouse and keyboard, in addition to a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port.
Technical specifications of the Arduino Leonardo board
- Microcontroller ATmega32u4
- Operating Voltage: 5V
- Recommended Input Voltage : from 7 to 12V
- Limits of Input Voltage : between 6 and 20V
- Digital I/O Pins: 20
- PWM Channels: 7
- Analog Input Channels: 12
- DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
- DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA
- Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega32u4) of which 4 KB used by bootloader
- SRAM 2.5 KB (ATmega32u4)
- EEPROM 1 KB (ATmega32u4)
- Clock Speed 16 MHz
Why Arduino ?
- Arduino is Inexpensive
- Arduino is Cross-platform
- Arduino offers a simple, clear programming environment
- Open source and extensible software
- Open source and extensible hardware

Need help choosing the right Arduino? Check out our guide!
Programming Arduino
The open-source IDE can be downloaded for free (currently for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux). Some tutorials are available on the official Arduino web site. These tutorials help you to write your first program with Arduino boards.