Recommend Book and Platform to teach from....

Hi,

I teach basic electronics at a high school to a class that ranges from 4 or 5 to about 10 students.

I'm totally new to Arduino/Raspberrypi etc, and am impressed with what I've read so far about arduino, especially
impressed with the open platform aspect.

I would like to find a good book and or video series to take myself/and class through LED pwm , servo , micro motors etc , simple things to start with.

I'm not looking forward to having to reconfigure settings in my computer to accomadate some of the arduino software that I have noticed in some youtube tutorial set ups, I'm hoping the newer platforms like leonardo can simply be downloaded and interfaced.

Anyway , what might be a good place to get started, Iike I said I'm hoping to avoid a bunch of tedious settings changes, cause I'd be doing it on several pc's.....would leonardo be a good starter, if so is there a book out yet that I could use along with it ?

Thanks much...

Look for the books of Simon Monk they are well written in a style that students might like.
Also a good book is - Arduino Workshop, 2nd Edition | No Starch Press -

(just my opinion)

You might try mine also.

It was written assuming students had done a little programming already.

Simon Monk's books are good.

I've reviewed a few beginning Arduino books, and I find most of them suffer from the same fault- they start with the Blink sketch and its use of delay(), and then try to teach everything using delay(). You then end up with a program that is not scalable to more events, because nearly everything stops during a delay() event.

Take a look at the example sketches "Blink Without Delay" and "Debounce" that come with the Arduino IDE. Essentially, the program keeps track of how long it has been since a given input or output has changed state, and uses that to determine if it is time to switch an output, or to debounce an input.

Personally, I like the Nano, or some other Arduino variant that can plug into a protoboard. You can't plug a shield right into it, but it is a lot easier to use with custom circuits. Get a large, long protoboard to go with it.

Thanks much for the responses,

I'll try the books you've mentioned, but would greatly appreciate a platform to work with that won't take a bunch of pc configuring to get it to interface .

I would also hope there is a fairly new release (Leonardo or whatever is the current) that is accompanied by a companion manual or set of tutorials to walk us through from 'SCRATCH'.

I found a Chinese ebay seller that promised a series of complete tutorials after purchase of an arduino kit ( I think it was Leonardo), but have to laugh knowing the communication I've experienced with them is laughably poor.

Summation:

I'm looking for some sort of complete Arduino Kit with available tutorials that will be sufficient to walk myself and class through
basic Arduino applications. Kit and the books or tutorials that will directly apply to the kit you recommed.
Please don't assume I know what you're talking about when you mention sheilds , please give me product numbers/models / links where applicable.

You might want to try Terry at yourduino.com, link at the bottom of this page.
He lives in Vermont and seems quite supportive of teachers.

http://yourduino.com/sunshop2/
and
http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/ArduinoHowTo

CrossRoads:
You might want to try Terry at yourduino.com, link at the bottom of this page.
He lives in Vermont and seems quite supportive of teachers.

YourDuino
and
http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/ArduinoHowTo

Thanks , I was starting to buy your book this am , but unfortunately the kids nor I have done any programming to date, so I'll get it after we've had some experience, it looks to be written in a style that we will be able to grasp.

polymorph:
Simon Monk's books are good.

I've reviewed a few beginning Arduino books, and I find most of them suffer from the same fault- they start with the Blink sketch and its use of delay(), and then try to teach everything using delay(). You then end up with a program that is not scalable to more events, because nearly everything stops during a delay() event.

Interesting note, thanks, scalable is what I'm hoping for and I've also seen some flashing LED projects that don't let you control the off time, which is just as important to me as the on time. On 1 second off 3 etc...

CrossRoads:
You might want to try Terry at yourduino.com, link at the bottom of this page.
He lives in Vermont and seems quite supportive of teachers.

YourDuino
and
http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/ArduinoHowTo

Someone mentioned this Monk book :
Programming Arduino Getting Started with Sketches

I'll go ahead and get it to help me with your book, but what would be an appropriate hardware / platform compatable with both?

Again , one that won't make me have to go into reconfiguring a bunch of my PC settings, just hopefully download and go ...
I'd like to start with something in the newer release category as oppossed to something designed several years ago if poss.

Uno is the best place to start.
You have to download/install the IDE no matter what, and possibly the driver for the USB interface. I use FTDI chips for the interface for my cards, the driver for that is in one of the IDE folders as well. Uno's use an Atmel chip programmed as a USB interface chip, it might be autodetected. I've not actually connected one to my laptop. May vary as to the OS on your PCs as well.

Stratovarius,
This is Terry... Let me know how I can help..

Take a look at the How-To examples on the ArduinoInfo.Info WIKI HERE:

A specific set of hardware and software examples that have been used by over 1000 University students includes these:

Hardware Kit: HERE:

How-To specific to that kit: HERE:

About the Arduino software: You will have to install the free Arduino Software. Thousands of schools have done this, but it would be good if you can get the cooperation of your IT support. Some more about Starter Sets and Installation is HERE:

Let me know how we can help. We can do some Education Discount also..

I'm only about halfway through Arduino for Teens, but I'm liking it so far.

Terry - We home school and I am interested in having my 8th grader and 10th grader learn about Arduino and work on a project or two this next school year. They just completed a 1 semester course using Alice programming.

What do you recommend?

Thank you,
Heidi