I discovered arduino a few days ago while pursuing methods to carry out some project ideas of mine. Suffice to say, I'm a complete novice when it comes to this kind of thing. I've never used arduino before or really done anything much in the way of design/building. I have a solid knowledge of physics and electronics and can learn new things fast. I'm interested in a possible career in engineering and figured that here is as good a place to start as any. My project ideas are ambitious and I realize that it will be a good deal of time before I'll have a hope of completing them. For instance, I'm interested in building things from an automatic fetch machine for my dog to flying quadcopters that are programmed to follow a specific path to entire systems designed to complete tasks.
Any advice, tips, suggestions, and pointers would be deeply appreciated. What's the fastest way to learn the arduino programming language? What would be a good first project to try? Is there a particular model of the arduino microcontroller that is suited for beginners? What are some examples for uses of arduino that you've come up with/built? Please include anything else you find to be pertinent.
There are some getting started kits around on sparkfun and adafruit. I would start with one of those. There are also several books about programming with the arduino. I liked 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius. What projects you start with first really depends on how much you know about electronics already. If it is a bare minimum start out with something like a blink program to blink an LED and go from there.
Tools I would recommend to get started are
Arduino Uno
Breadboard
Wires for the breadboard
A handful of different colored LEDs
Resisters of varying amount. 1k-10k should work nice for starting out.
A servo motor
A DC motor
As for IC's the one I had the most fun with starting out is the shift register 74HC595. It is an 8 bit serial in parallel out register. Think of it as adding 8 more output pins to your arduino.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that should at least get you started.
I would add to that - make sure you get a genuine Uno to start with. That way you won't be wondering if any of your problems are due to some incompatibility in your hardware.
One thing to figure out is: are you generally a shield sort of person or a breadboard sort of person?
If you're a breadboard sort like me, you might prefer to get a nano or micro as your first arduino, as opposed to an uno. Micros and nanos plug straight into your breadboard, but with an uno you have to connect up to your breadboard with a spagetti of wires. I've even seen on sale flat boards where you attach an uno one one side and a breadboard on the other. Those make me chuckle to myself - why didn't they just buy a nano?
But the advantage of uno is that you can easilly add shields. Thats not so easy with nano or micro. Horses for courses.
Get several pnp, npn transistors, a couple of capacitors.. 1uf 0.1uf either ceramic or electrolytic.
And you're good to go for the basics, but... that really is the essentials kinda like salt, pepper, your basic condiments to make the meal complete, from this point on you really have to buy components for what you need rather than want because you'll end up stock piling components which is fine but storage space quickly vanishes lol.
Then you can think about potentiometers, regulators, diodes etc... there's a lot to get your head around but take it slow and try all the examples with Arduino blink, no delay, tone ..
A piezo speaker not essential but handy.
Bottom line... source your parts first, get spares if you can.
PaulRB:
One thing to figure out is: are you generally a shield sort of person or a breadboard sort of person?
I'm kind of both. That's why I bought some prototyping shields that included some solderless mini-breadboards with adhesive pads to stick them to the shields. THey are only about 4 or 5 dollars from China, and not much more in Canada or the US. They are great for testing things individially. I say that because there isn't a lot of room on the shields.for components, so one or two sensors and a few LEDs are about the limit.
I will probably be picking up some more, though, as I find myself reluctant to disassemble prototypes that are useful, but not useful enough to warrant a finished product, with the extra expense of a board, power supply, and so on.
MrJavaSipper, what I can tell you is that I haven't had this much fun in years!
