Let's Get Started!

Starting off: buying the Arduino.

Inspiration

I had seen some people creating projects with Arduinos such as robots and even handheld game consoles and thought I would like to have a go myself. However, having never built anything electronics wise, I wasn’t really sure where to start.

What is an Arduino?

An Arduino is made up of both a microcontroller (or programmable circuit board) and the software that comes with the microcontroller, the Arduino IDE (where you program the Arduino). Arduinos are popular with electronics beginners (like me!) due to running off quite an easy programming language to learn: c++.

They also don’t need separate pieces of hardware to load new code onto the microcontroller, just a USB cable. There are three main types of Arduino: the uno, the micro and the mega 2560. With many other types being modifications of these three. They are all quite similar with the main differences being size, amount of storage, amount of digital I/O and analogue pins.

What I bought:

I bought this kit off Amazon using some birthday money I had been given recently (link here: The most complete starter kit for Arduino).I bought the “most complete starter kit” with the Arduino Mega 2560. I bought this kit mostly because of the Mega 2560 as it would allow me to create projects which require more memory and I/O pins. I thought this would be a good one to learn the basics with and also to move onto more complex projects. I also bought this kit due to its large amount of different parts it comes with. It isn’t the cheapest kit on Amazon but I think that it is the best value as you get a better Arduino, more components and a nicer case. The kit includes an IR remote, a few small displays, buttons, LEDs, motors, a breadboard (to hold electronic components) and more!

I currently have only made a few small projects such as having an LED turn on and having some of the sensors (such as using the temperature and humidity module to show the temperature on my computer). More posts coming soon as I complete more projects!