Arduino Inventor's Guide: Learn Electronics by Making 10 Awesome Projects
To LindsAy diAmond For your aMazInG LeadersHIp and GuIdance to tHe entIre teaM at sparkFun And To ALL The FuTure Tinkerers And invenTors we insPire
AbouT s PArkFun eLecTronics SparkFun is an online retailer that produces and sells the widgets and parts that end up in a lot of maker projects prototypes and even the International Space Station Nathan Seidle started the company after blowing a circuit board in 2003 while he was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Boulder At the time circuit boards were really hard to get you had to fax your credit card to another country and hope that you got your hardware in six to eight weeks Nathan felt he could do better and he did SparkFun com was born and it now sells over 3,000 different parts of all shapes and sizes for your digital electronic needs From a basic Arduino to GPS modules you can find them and all of the documentation you need to get up and running at SparkFun SparkFun’s Department of Education develops runs professional development curricula and programs for educators of all kinds The department is at the forefront of a number of computer science and maker initiatives that are making headway in the classroom You can learn more about SparkFun and the Department of Education at https www sparkfun com and http www sparkfuneducation com AbouT The AuThors Brian Huang and Derek Runberg were both teachers at one point Brian was a high school physics teacher with an affinity for robots and Derek was a middle school technology teacher obsessed with pushing the limits of middle school students They’ve taken very different paths to get where they are now including how they learned programming and electronics their teaching philosophies and their viewpoints on how students learn so they are a bit of an odd couple They hope that this book will serve you well as you set off on your adventure into the world of inventing AbouT The TechnicAL reviewer to provide the maker community with materials he wished he had when he was first getting started in electronics and technology He is also a certified scuba instructor Daniel Hienzsch is the founder of Rheingold Heavy which delivers educational content and materials to electronics enthusiasts and students He previously worked in IT for 20 years including 10 years as the IT director for an investment bank Dan is passionate about education and Rheingold Heavy is his effort
A noTe From briAn Although I am a formally trained engineer I went to school to study electrical engineering my education focused a lot on theory simulations and modeling and I was never taught how to solder machine or really build things After graduating from college I worked as an engineer during the week and found myself volunteering at the Science Museum of Minnesota on the weekends It was at the museum where I discovered my love of teaching I was given the opportunity to inspire children to be curious ask questions and wonder about the world My experiences in the museum set me on a course to change careers pursue a master’s in education and become a high school physics teacher Derek and I complement each other’s experi ence and background This book is a culmination of both of our experiences in teaching and in learning how best to use Arduino in the classroom As Derek puts it the Arduino is simply another material that we use in our projects The faculty and students at NYU’s Integrated Telecommunications Program ITP have long known this The way you interact with electron ics changes immediately when you enclose or cover them Even something as simple as using a ping pong ball to diffuse an LED immediately affects your interaction with the project The way the light diffuses and blends through materials teases your emotions in a way that you wouldn’t get with just an LED in a breadboard to make We’ve put a lot of thought learning into how electronics and programming accessible for anyone We hope that these projects will help to unleash your inner inventor A noTe From derek Unlike Brian I have no formal background in elec tronics or com puter programming I am completely self-taught I learned Arduino so that I could give my students access to a technology they could control and build with I was a middle school technology teacher asked to dream up a shop class for the 21st century Electronics was part of that vision and over a three-year process Arduino and later the Processing language took center stage in my classroom I learned electronics and programming so that I could teach it in my class Many of these projects come directly from my classroom experience teaching Arduino My students learned computer science and electronics out of necessity in order to develop their ideas rather than have a teacher telling them because you need to I hope that my contribution to this book honors my students and puts electronics and programming into a format that sparks your imagination
