My introduction into the world of #Arduino AND electronics.

If you are starting out in Electronics, a hobbyist or you know nothing about Electronics but want to start getting into it. I cannot recommend enough that you try the Arduino starter board and equipment/components with the book Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi, Co-founder of Arduino. There is even a website to help you Makezine.com  to accompany the book. This gives you a great introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform.

Its very low cost to start and there is a great community of support here at DesignSpark.

Once you have all of your equipment you can speedily start creating great projects. By following step by step the instructions in the book, you will soon start to understand more as it clearly explains everything that you are doing.  The great thing is you create at your own pace and that you can make your own designs along the way using various components by expanding the circuits that you are shown.

Programming it is easy as the book and the website give the codes/sketches and you learn what it all means as you go. Its as easy as pie. 

You get to learn how to...

• Light an LED
• Use a pushbutton to control the LED
• Control light with Pulse with Modulation
• Use analogue input
• And much more.

I knew absolutely nothing about electronics before trying out #Arduino and to be honest I never had any intention of doing so but I am so glad that Design Spark gave me the challenge to try this out, as now I am really into it. Thanks Guys :)

The only suggestion I would have is that, as I knew nothing about electronics, would be to have colour pictures available on the site or in the book showing the various items required. It would have been an advantage. However as I said in my blogs here, and here, Google helped me in that instance.

I hope you try this out, or get the kids on it, it was great fun. A great Christmas present.