melinthropy

For Christmas, I asked my husband to get me an Arduino starter kit (specifically, this one from Hacktronics ) along with the book Getting Started with Arduino .  What is the Arduino?  Arduino is basically a little electronic board with input/output capability (meaning it can read from sensors – input, and control things – output) that has a tiny computer on it (an AVR microcontroller) that you can program from your computer.  Here it is:

Some cool things about it are the USB port — you can upload programs, power the board, and receive communications from the board all using USB.  (Or you can use an AC adapter for power). Also, the Arduino app you can use to interface from your computer runs great from my MacBook.  And, I love how everything on the board is just so small and cute.

The book Getting Started with Arduino is excellent.  It is written for someone with no particular electronics or programming experience, and despite that, it manages to walk through several little projects which anyone could do and which should demystify the whole thing.  The examples seem simple, and the book is pretty small, but in the end, it really does give you a starting point, and it points out web resources if you want to go into detail on, say, some particular type of sensor.  There are plenty more involved projects online for further reference.

As to why I’m interested, I have a top-secret project in mind, which I’ll reveal if it ever gets off the ground.  And then you can think, “wow, that’s lame.”  But it would be even worse if I revealed my lame project idea and then it didn’t even work.  Anyways, I have this idea for a project, and I thought it should use a microcontroller.  I was originally thinking I could use my Motorola 68HC11 from college, so I pulled it out of the box.  I paid over $100 for it in 1998, so surely I could put it to good use, right?  Here it is on its evaluation board:

The MCU itself is the square chip on the lower left.  Immediately, I realized that (1) it requires serial cables, (2) it requires something to power it (+12V, -12V, +5V and ground), (3) the software I have for interfacing to it is on floppy disks and runs on DOS, and (4) I have almost completely forgotten assembly language, and really, everything about this board.  And it has been discontinued by Motorola, so if I ever wanted to make something else, I’d have to start over anyways.

So, after these realizations, I went searching for something new, and the Arduino seemed to be the way to go for a hobbyist.  I am very happy with my Arduino kit, and I’ll be sure to post about my project if it ever works.

BTW, a couple great resources for Arduino projects:  http://www.embedds.com/ posts a new project every day.  I haven’t tried any of them yet, but I hope to soon.  The projects sound very interesting, like this one for an Arduino Theremin .  And of course there is Make Magazine but the blog is a little more prolific than I can actually keep up with.

[Update: I forgot to mention that the hacktronics arduino starter kit didn't quite have all the components used in the examples in the Getting Started with Arduino book.  In particular, it didn't have a pushbutton switch or a light-dependent resistor.]