So I know the answer is probably yes when looked at from advanced or large-scale projects, but in the scope of this type of use I will describe is more how I would like to know the answer that's leaning more to the yes or to the no.
If I'm following a tutorial that basically comes with or identifies every single part you need to buy that is 100% Arduino compatible and you're not using any additional voltage other than the 9 volt battery Barrel Jack that comes with a starter kit, so when using the USB cord and the 9 volt battery on a Uno R3, if I make a mistake where I put the positive and negative of something backwards or a resistor the facing the wrong way or even maybe just forgetting to put a resistor in the connection is it possible to short out or fry the Arduino main board from this type of oversight or possibly The Shield that's plugged into the Uno or breadboard that's in between the two.
I just noticed a few times that some parts don't have a front and back or in and out and some parts do as well as the pins are so small that sometimes it's hard to notice your one hole adjacent to the one you should have used.
So when doing beginner tutorials, on the level of starter kit type of content using mostly the kind of components that are used in the built-in examples is it very hard to Brick the main board or sensor compared to stuff you put in the breadboard, how OCD do I have to be making sure I confirm whether or not a part is Direction sensitive or not?
Also I bought a breadboard that came with a battery holder that you can load in 3 AA batteries and it has the wires coming out of it that go nicely into the positive and negative part of the breadboard if I was to sauder those pins onto the red and black wire of the barrel Jack power on the Uno would there be any issue or do you have to use 9 volt battery exclusively in that power connector?
I'm just asking this because I'm basically swimming and rechargeable AA batteries and 9 volts are not that cheap to be burning through by comparison.
3x AA gives you (nominally) 4.5V - that's not sufficient to feed the barrel jack.
This is because the barrel jack input goes through a voltage regulator trying to give a 5V output - which it can't do when it's only got 4.5V coming in!
Rechargeables will be 1.2V - so just use six to give you 7.2V.
Or power from USB.
Powering from USB is probably safer - as it won't give you as much current under fault conditions.
Rechargeable batteries can give very high currents - all the better to burn your Arduino with!
Thanks for that it's very helpful, one thing I have noticed is resistors are sometimes being used to convert voltage into a digital number at least that's how I think it's being done like the tutorial for the temperature sensor and photocell.
Also I've noticed that sometimes some tutorials are using resistors to simply just slow things down or make them not as bright where other than the desired effect adding the resistor did nothing in terms of preventing a meltdown of the system.
Being at this built-in basic example stage of skill is there any tips or hints that you can give for how to watch out for or see a pattern with knowing the difference between using a resistor for altering the desired effect versus using one to prevent something exploding in your device?
I would suggest in place of buying parts and looking for an application to use them do it in the reverse and pick an application and purchase the needed parts. Get a copy of the Arduino Cookbook and skim it from cover to cover, then pick pertinente parts and study them. Study some basic electronic books and watch some tutorials, so you can understand the basics. Also learn the language of electronics, schematics not fritzing.
9V smoke alarm type of batteries are a very expensive power source for arduino and will fail in a few minutes depending on the project. Purchase a inexpensive lab power supply, they can be gotten for less then $50 US and have both voltage adjustment and adjustable current limit.
