I ordered an Arduino Projects kit from the Maker store and can't wait for it to get here. I've never done anything like it before and am looking forward to all the cool projects I'll be able to build on the evenings and weekends. I'm a little afraid my wife is going to lose me to the garage.
I'm a web designer/programmer by trade with javascript, java, PHP and shell experience so I'm thinking this should just come to me with no real problems. Also about 9 months ago I picked up a bunch of electronics parts and have been playing with 555 timers, LEDs, stepper motors, 4000 series logic gates and counters and he like but still have a ton to learn. I just felt playing with just discreet components was going to get a little old, but I am glad I did it.
Any advise anyone can give would be appreciated. I'm sure I'll be on here a lot asking questions.
I just felt playing with just discreet components was going to get a little old, but I am glad I did it.
This is a great place to start. In a relatively short period of time, you are going to move to a point where you need external hardware to make a project and you've already got an understanding of some of those discrete components.
On another forum someone asked a similar question, "what should I do to get started."
Seems like most people start with an LED and go from there. Set a small, or what you think is small , goal and go for it.
LEDs, Motors, and Random sensors are always fun to play with...
But one thing I thought about is instead of lighting up an LED by grounding one layer and powering one column (3 led's), instead if you ground one layer (call it plane X containing 9 LEDs) then power plane Y and plane Z (each also containing 9 LED's) then where the 3 planes meet there would be one LED that is grounded and getting powered twice. Using an AND gate you could make sure only that one turns on. This means instead of using 9 outputs for power (one for each column) you would only need 6. (3 for plane Y and 3 for plane Z.) Not a big deal for such a small cube, but if say I wanted to do an 8x8x8, then using their logic I'd need 64 outputs (8 X 8). Using mine I'd only need 16 (8 + 8).
Well it works in my head. Other than one quick sketch I haven't diagrammed it out yet. I'll work on it this week/weekend.
BTW, what do most people do after they create a project they want to keep? Would I just order something like a Mini and swap it out for the Duemilanove so I can keep it for prototyping?
BTW, what do most people do after they create a project they want to keep? Would I just order something like a Mini and swap it out for the Duemilanove so I can keep it for prototyping?
You could - another option would be to build a "standalone" Arduino (esentially the bare minimum needed for your application, using the ATMega, plus other external components - but you would need an AVR ISP programmer to set it up - which could be done with a regular Arduino, BTW).
You will love it. The language is pretty much a version of C, so if you're used to Java/JS you should have no problems. The core language is pretty standard, but you will want to peruse the Libraries section as well as the Playground.
Right now, I'm playing with the tvout library - requires two resistors, that's it... NTSC composite video out. I used it for a video "greeting card" for my wife, and am using it for an interface for several projects. LED's are cute, but for less money and code, I plug into a portable DVD player's screen for 16x12 text and 128x96 graphics including primitives. Very cool in my book! Even better when you are driving a bigscreen off your little 'duino... hehe. New version of the lib supports nearly twice the res... I may port a bunch of the OLDE TYME games over for giggles. I have (yes!) an ORIGINAL copy of DEC's PDP game programming book sitting on a shelf.. WUMPUS and others come to mind. I wonder if MORIA or LARN would fit...
The hardware is great, the language and IDE are great, and the community is very cool too. Some microcontroller websites are kind of unfriendly, you won't find that here.
Saw your vid card thread over in the other forum and loved it. I'll definitely have to give that a try down the road. And I didn't think it cheesy BTW. My wife and I are very close too. In fact like I said above she may lose me to the garage more than I have been in the past and it'll be tough. The night my kit showed up she was on a call so I headed over to mom-in-law's a few blocks away to help with something there. Got back about 6:30. We sat and talked for 30 mins then I said "K, i'm going to open my package and take a look." She says "I'm surprised you were able to wait THIS long." I checked it all out going over all the pieces and inspecting the arduino multiple times in detail reading all the silk screening. After about 30 minutes she says "You're looking at that think like I look at jewelry. I think I may get jealous." ;D It's all good though. She has some projects she's been stalling on and says this will give her a kick to get some of them done.
If it's OK I may hit you up later with Q's on vid display stuff. Well I'll post to the forums but would hope you could help.
No problem at all. Though I'm glad to help, you'll also find that in general, folks are very helpful around here- so don't necessarily hold a question back from the group... chances are, others want to ask the same question, and answering it in a forum makes it findable by others looking for info.
The only stupid question is the one you didn't ask, so they say..
One note about the library- it needs to be on a 5v 16Mhz arduino for the timing and voltages to be proper. That's the standard arduino, so you'll be fine. The library wouldn't work on a different freq or voltage out, most likely.
By the way, it's easy enough to use a laptop with an arduino.. just set a TV tray up or whatever and you can tinker and spend time at the same time. Wife likes her American Idol and all that, so you can sit and fiddle while blocking out the screeching cacophony.... and the TV too..
Ya, i was working on the couch on my lap hooked up to my Hackintosh. (Netbook running Mac OS.) Got my first "Hello World" running. (Really just SOS in Morris Code.) My work area is a mess so i'll have to clean it up before I can assemble the protoshield (Saturday hopefully) but once that's together i'm looking forward to getting moving on some projects.
Just over a week in and got my first cube up and running. I just downloaded the ledcube lib and someones sketch from the forums here and used it for my first test. The LEDs seem a bit dim when an entire level is lit up. I'll have to figure out if that's due to software or if I need to use different resistors. But over all I'm very happy with it so far. Kind of glad it's not perfect yet. Gives me a chance to trouble shoot it. (I live fixing problems.)
Spent yesterday fiddling with some high-brightness LED's, a pair of sunglasses, and some really basic code to make a Purkinje (?sp) stimulator, aka Dream Machine. Reverse of a strobe, you flicker a light at 4-20Hz in front of closed eyes and you get very complex pattern hallucinations. Has to do with the way the visual cortex operates. With the arduino, it's nothing at all to write a program which varies duration of the cycle and flicker, uses PWM to control brightness, or even drive a RGB LED on 3 PWM channels to give fine grain spectrum control. The most basic version- one LED and a resistor.. and the project is DONE except for the code.
Neverending fun from these little buggers...by the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the above project can cause some people to have seizures....
, goal and go for it.