Hi, new Arduino owner here, I bought the official Genuino Starter Kit which includes an Uno, breadboard, little wooden platform to mount both, etc.
I have just spent my first couple of hours putting the kit together and running the Blink sketch to make sure the device works. I then added another LED and connected it to Digital Pin 2 and was able to blink that one as well, so everything is dandy...
... except that I had a really frustrating time with some of the red jumper wires in the kit. They simply would not go into the holes in the breadboard. They bent and mashed intstead of sliding in. Components such as LED, switch, resistors worked fine, and I found that some wires seemed to be just slightly lighter gauge and worked OK, but some (these red ones) seemed to be the wrong weight. Are jumper wires not all alike? Is there some reason why some are heavier? Or is it a problem with the breadboard?
Other than this, I am delighted with the kit and really looking forward to building a few practise projects with Uno before I sink my teeth into my real objective (a USB controller based on the Leonardo board).
A far as I can tell the breadboard was slightly misregistered during assembly, that is, the plastic shell is shifted by a tiny amount so that the openings in the plastic don't line up precisely with the mini sockets underneath it. When I look closely at it under a good light (with a magnifying glass) it's fairly obvious that the two layers are not registered properly, the holes in the metallic bottom layer are all shifted wrt the openings in the plastic layer above.
I have tried to get a picture of this but the lighting and magnification required make it a tricky exercise with my simple little camera.
I am not sure how to fix this, but it is frustrating: trying to do a basic beginner exercise with the supplied potentiometer, I'm unable to get the pot's little legs to make reliable contact with the breadboard; they won't really fit into the partially-obscured openings, and I get only intermittent contact if I press down on it. Trying to get it to seat down firmly just bends the legs.
I have to insert jumper wires at about a 45 degree angle to get them into the holes in the lower layer, and even then they often bend rather than insert.
I have ordered a spare breadboard and am hoping that the next one will be properly aligned. Is there any way to fix this one? I don't think I can proceed with any of the tutorials until I have a breadboard which accepts standard pin sizes.