And, is it dangerous or potentially damaging to my arduino or other electrical components that are hooked up as well with my Arduino?
I wired up the project and uploaded the code for it. Everything functioned as expected, but I was curious as to why the capacitors are necessary in this project, and as well in general? Are they important in any way? I took them out, and the project still responded the same way without the capacitors as it did with the capacitors.
Thanks in advanced.
(Sorry if this post is in the wrong spot or something like that. This is my first post and Im still getting use to the arduino community page.
And, is it dangerous or potentially damaging to my arduino or other electrical components that are hooked up as well with my Arduino?
In general, it is a good idea to learn electronics basics before building electronic circuits. (as boring as that might sound). Your question clearly indicates you have little electronics experience or you would know that
capacitors (like a 100uF) are used to stabilize the dc voltage by acting as filters to filter out ripple on the power
supply line. Virtually every dc electronic circuit with few exceptions has at least one filter cap somewhere in the
circuit. Anyone who has seen more than one schematic would know that. I understand you are a newbie, but for
your own good I recommend learning something about electronics before proceeding to build and use electronic
circuits. That 100uF capacitor could be 1 F and it would still not be dangerous (unless you short it to GND), because
it is an energy storage device and only carries the voltage present on the circuit, (like 5V or whatever). In general,
more is better, meaning 1000uF would actually be preferable to 100uF , but for your project I don't see any benefit
in anything greater than 470uF. Beyond that it is just a waste of money.