Simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable to get started. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. The Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560 ( datasheet).