21st Century Skills InnovatIon LIbrary Contents open Source Chapter 1 Meet the arduino Chapter 2 Powering Inventions with 8 Chapter 3 Getting to Know your arduino 12 Chapter 4 How to Communicate with your arduino 4 16 Glossary Find Out More Index about the authors 30 31 32 32
MakerS as innovaTors Chapter 1 Meet the Arduino H ave you ever wanted to make a robot Would you like to create an interactive light show Do you want to turn your idea for an amazing invention into reality Then the Arduino microcontroller is for you A microcontroller is a simple computer that passes information between hardware and software Let’s say you have trouble waking up in the morning You could use an Arduino to sense when the sun comes up When the Arduino senses light it triggers a speaker to make noise In this example the hardware is a light sensor An Arduino is roughly the size of a credit card 4
Arduino Controlling a light is just one of the many things an Arduino can be programmed to do and a speaker The software is the instructions sent to the Arduino that tell it to take input from the sensor and send output to the speaker The Arduino makes it easier for makers to turn ideas into working products This book will introduce the basics of the Arduino As you read it will be help ful if you have access to the Internet and the Arduino 5
