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
MakerS as innovaTors Inventing Arduino Many inventions begin when someone sees that there is a need to be filled or a problem to be solved What was the challenge that led to the Arduino Students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy needed to design products and inventions Creating the computer brain to run these inventions was taking too much time and money What if there was an inexpensive way to make the brain ahead of time so students could move more quickly Massimo Banzi below and David Cuartielles worked with others to build a computer brain They named it Arduino after an early king of Italy 6
Arduino It’s easy to get started creating your own Arduino projects Web site http arduino cc We are here to get you started with an Arduino So read on do something awesome and show your friends 7
