Getting Started with the Arduino

In order to use the Arduino, I must first learn it. Luckily, Make Magazine and the cofounder of Arduino put out a nifty book entitled Getting Started with the Arduino. And someone was also nice enough to put a parts package together on Amazon, containing everything you'll need to go through the book.

A nifty starter pack

The first exercise went by so fast I forgot to take a picture. It was basically the "Hello World" of the circuit world: make an LED blink once per second. Exercise 2 would be nearly just as simple, as long as you're not color deficient. I understand that resistors are color coded because they were too tiny to print numbers on, but trying to differentiate between brown, red, and green paint on a 2mm surface under lamp light at night (and on a beige table no less) is no easy task for a red/green colorblind like myself. But I made it work. I'll have to get a second opinion on the rest of my resistors, and keep them sorted and labeled. 

Anyway, Exercise 2 implements a pushbutton for the light, which stays on as long as the button is held. Welcome to your keychain penlight. Mystery solved. 

Light off...

Light on!

That's all for now! Join us next time, when we look into the guts of the Vitamaster itself.