ARDUINO PROJECTS BOOK

Everyone, every day, uses technology. Most of us leave programming to engineers because we think coding and electronics are complicated and difficult; actually, they can be fun and exciting activities. Thanks to Arduino, designers, artists, hobbyists and students of all ages are learning to create things that light up, move, and respond to people, animals, plants, and the rest of the world. Over the years Arduino has been used as the “brain” in thousands of projects, one more creative than the last. A worldwide community of makers has gathered around this open-source platform, moving from personal computing to personal fabrication, and contributing to a new world of participation, cooperation and sharing. Arduino is open and simple. It’s founded on lessons we’ve learned teaching our own classes: if you start with the assumption that learning to make digital technologies is simple and accessible, you can make it so. Suddenly electronics and code become creative tools that anyone can use – like brushes and paint. This book walks you through the basics in a hands-on way, with creative projects you build by learning. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll have a palette of software and circuits that you can use to create something beautiful, and make someone smile with what you invent.

You are surrounded by dozens of them every day: they are embedded in timers, thermostats, toys, remote controls, microwave ovens, even some toothbrushes. They just do one specific task, and if you hardly notice them – which is often the case – it’s because they are doing it well. They have been programmed to sense and control activity using sensors and actuators. Sensors listen to the physical world. They convert energy that you give off when you press buttons, or wave your arms, or shout, into electrical signals. Buttons and knobs are sensors that you touch with your fingers, but there are many other kinds of sensors. Actuators take action in the physical world. They convert electrical energy back into physical energy, like light and heat and movement. Microcontrollers listen to sensors and talk to actuators. They decide what to do based on a program that you write. Microcontrollers and the electronics you attach to them are just the skeleton of your projects, though. You’ll need to bring skills you probably already have to put some flesh on the bones. For example, in one of the projects we suggest, you’ll make an arrow and attach it to a motor, and put them both in a box with a knob, so you can make a meter to tell people whether you’re busy or not. In another, you’ll put some lights and a tilt switch on a cardboard frame to make an hourglass. Arduino can make your projects responsive, but only you can make them beautiful. We’ll provide some suggestions along the way as to how you might do that. Arduino was designed to help you get things done. To make that happen, we kept the background material on programming and electronics to a minimum. If you decide you want to know more about these aspects, there are lots of good guides available. We’ll provide a couple of references, and you can find more online at: arduino.cc/starterkit

Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under a CC BY-SA license, while software is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially from the official website or through authorized distributors.