My intention is to have fun with the Arduino. I'll pay someone for anything serious. That said, I'm still enjoying myself.
I have limited knowledge of electronics and understand coding basics.
What should I focus on understanding initially? Making lights blink does nothing for me. Understanding data types seems like a crucial building block that books blow through. I am immersed in books and the forum/google at the moment.
Advice?
I think a little more background would probably help. Have you any programming experience? any electronics experience? What aspects are you interested in - we know music, but if al you want to do is use an arduino for music we could do with knowing that.
Ugh I was trying so hard to adhere to the guidelines of the forum. I have updated the original post.
Limited electronics experience
Basic understanding of code and good with math.
I'm interested in the programming end initially.
You need to learn some C/C++, some Arduino specific stuff and some electronics. You'll need to decide for yourself which comes first.
You can look through the examples that come with the IDE and experiment with them and whenever you come across a programming piece that you don't understand, look it up. Even if blinky lights aren't your thing, they're handy for making trivial programs for learning purposes.
If you have the patience, I'd suggest working through the first few chapters of a C book or tutorial first. It's stand alone and it'll make picking up the Arduino stuff easier.
The LED examples are actually a really good learning exercise. There is plenty that you can learn from them. An important aspect of that, is that there is already one LED on the Arduino, so you don't need any additional hardware to work with it.
I agree with the others, learn C and work through the examples, I would also pay attention to use of the millis() fuctionality as so may get hung up on using delay and then have to convert to using millis.
countrypaul:
pay attention to use of the millis() fuctionality
And guess what 
The simplest way to do that is to do the thing you eschew: blink some lights independently of each other, responding to switches.
It helps to have a goal in mind, as in some finished project you want to build that you currently don't know how to achieve. You've said no to LEDs, but what would you like to do?
Hi Harvillo,
I would like that you are helping me a little bit. You might think "What? me the beginner
helping right now?"
Yes! There are no better experts like beginners for a certain aspect: rating the ease of understanding of a tutorial.
So please have a look inside at the tutorial linked below. I'm not the author of this tutorial but anyway I would like
to know if this toturial is easy to understand.
I'm interested in your honest opinion. Even if you would say "boring to me"
The website has quite a lot of subsectionsMy suggestions is to look here about electronics
Tutorial 1: Building a Circuit on Breadboard
and here about programming Arduinos
Arduino Programming Course
thank you very much
best regards Stefan
Study The Reference (language reference)
When you find code examples here you'll have a better idea of what is going on then.
In a way, you can still do a lot with Serial Monitor.
Sooner or later, you'll have to take advantage of the I/O (GPIO) [at least an input pushbutton, as there is an on-board LED (Pin 13)] as that is what microcontrollers are made for.
Math ? There is a BigNumber library, which is a lot of fun.
It does not use any normal variable type, like 'int' or 'float' or 'long', so it does not help to learn 'C' or 'C++'.
Not really math, but also fun is a Finite State Machine. If you like math, you probably like it. It is a way to make a program.
The basic Arduino boards have no DSP, but there is a lot possible with Teensy boards.
vilmabergmann:
And guess what
Karma++ for elegant use of "eschew".
Thank you all!
I'm also a beginner and want to start new learning, so suggest me from where can I start ? suggest me i have strong grip on C++ Language. greenuptown
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