I wondered of any of you could help me please as i'm having trouble selecting what board i need.
I need two separate mini motors, a mini air pump (Both 6V) and two leds to be controlled separately with different timings.
What simple and cheep board can I use that will let me adjust the duration of the motor/Airpump independently and change the voltage to slow the output down.
The Pro Mini is great but I don't recommend it to people just starting out. It requires a separate programmer.
The UNO is the best to start with, although it's rather large for many projects. A Nano or Micro is very good. If you must have it cheap, then buy a clone on your favourite auction site.
Note that analogWrite() isn't true analog. It's PWM, but that will work to dim and LED or to control the speed of a motor.
You can directly drive LEDs (through a current-limiting resistor) but the Arduino can't put-out enough current to drive a motor so you'll need a transistor or MOSFET [u]driver circuit[/u] for each motor (and a 6V source).
I'm only 16 and i'm starting to take an interest in electronics, learning new stuff everyday!
I'll Have a look at some videos on YouTube but i think from your recommendations I'll use a arduino uno.
Thank you so much guys for all the help. Most appreciated!
Best all around: Nano
Cheapest: Pro Mini
For use with a shield: Uno
To emulate keyboard or mouse: Pro Micro
To emulate keyboard or mouse and use shields: Leonardo
More pins and memory: Mega
I recommend only using Pro Micro or Leonardo if you need the keyboard/mouse emulation features. Those boards are not as user friendly as the regular Arduinos.
Better description:
"The basic Arduino Uno has 1420 general purpose I/O pins," 6 of which can also do analog reads, and 6 others which can support hardware 'set & forget' PWM outputs.