My Arduino arrived!

December 22, 2007
Tags: hardware

I've always had an interest in input and output devices beyond those typically available on desktop and laptop computers. But I've been limited by my electronics knowledge to build much stuff myself. My understanding of computing is pretty solid down to a certain point but when it comes to electrons and building circuits I'm a little lost. So, I was very excited to recently discover the Arduino open hardware and software platform. It's a small board with an Atmel AVR processor, USB interface, power socket, and input and output pins. There's an open source programming environment based on the Processing IDE with a C-like language (based on Wiring). The Arduino looks like an excellent place for beginners like me to learn microcontroller programming and electronics. I'm making my way through Dan O'Sullivan and Tom Igoe's excellent Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers and I'll post my experiments here as I start building stuff!

(I bought the Arduino Starter Pack from Adafruit Industries.)