Oh gosh, ive finally stumbled open a nice forum to question.
Sorry if i sound n00bish. I have so many great ideas for robotics and im interested in electrical engineering, so i bought the arduino duemilanove board. Bear in mind im 14 years old. I want to learn how to use it, but its so overwhelming, i dont know where to start! Can anyone help me in deciding. I dont know how to go about learning its language. I have checked out the arduino site. The only thing i can do is get the led to blink.
hehe thanks im not that noobish hehe. Yea i have a built in led, and i know a bit how to make it blink and i tinkered with timing. anything else?
I heard about these shields? do you think i need one for a robotic project?
Upload the examples found in 'File->Scetchbook->Examples', especially those under digital and analog. Then read the code until you understand it. And twak around a bit.
That'll give you a solid start
If there is something that you do not manage to get you head around you can investigate for an answer here: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage And ofcourse always ask here.
Well then you are ready for your first project,
try somethingsimple with one or two inputs and one or two outputs, like trying to light up LEDs by pressing a pushbutton.
This is only to learn the environment, I usually do this when I have a new hardware environment.
From here it is only your imagination that stops you, come back to the forum when you have specific questions for your new project.
There are several sites with tutorials on using the arduino. I would go through them until you feel comfortable writing code yourself. www.adafruit.comand arduino.cc both have tutorials. Don't buy anything until you know how to use what you have.
Get hold of one of the prototyping shield kits. It'll make things much easier to play around with components and it's good soldering practice putting it together.
Then get hold of a bunch of old components - rheostats, LDRs, LEDs, capacitors etc and start using them to do stuff, e.g. measure the output from the rheostat and show it in the serial out.
