Arduino Inventor's Guide: Learn Electronics by Making 10 Awesome Projects
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
inTro ducTion Welcome to The Arduino Inventor’s Guide This book will get you started working with electronics programming and making cool things Anyone can be an inventor and this guide will walk you through a series of projects that combine common materials with the powerful Arduino to help inspire you to start making your own inventions What Is thIs Book aBout At the heart of this book is the Arduino https www arduino cc an open source microcontroller board that you can program to control LEDs measure temperature react to light interface to GPS satellites and do much more Arduino is also the name of the programming language and development environment that we will use throughout this book Arduino is the ultimate tool for makers looking to add control to their projects A quick search online for Arduino projects returns millions of hits There are thousands of projects and ideas available on sites like Instructables hackster io and YouTube That shows just how many makers out there are using Arduino At SparkFun Electronics we encourage people to experiment play and tinker with common household items by altering and integrating electronics components This is sometimes known as hacking This book will teach you some core electronics and cod ing skills and we hope it will inspire you to build something new and unique with materials you find around your house Why arduIno There are dozens of different microcontrollers and development platforms out there so why are we creating another set of projects for Arduino The answer lies in the simple fact that Arduino was not originally created for makers engineers or hobbyists but for design students in Ivrea Italy as a learning platform to help them make their projects function without needing years of electrical engineering courses or tons of math and theory It was designed to shorten the time from xviii inTroducTion
nothing to awesome that is from idea to physical product for nontechnical people Arduino did its job so well that the maker community and hobby ists picked up the platform and ran with it This is due to a number of factors low price good documentation open source hardware but we think the core reason Arduino is so popular is that it is easy to learn on Arduino is a gateway for anyone into making inventing and prototyping projects The projects in this book are designed for someone who wants to learn and is driven by the initial spirit of Arduino to bring an idea to fruition hoW Is thIs Book dIfferent from others A lot of programming books read like reference manuals jumping right away into coding or electrical concepts before providing con text and collecting dust on your bookshelf until you need to look up a command or concept you’ve forgotten This book is not like that It aims to teach new concepts through fun interesting and practical projects The projects progress in com plexity and difficulty incrementally from Project 1 to Project 10 and they will help answer the age-old questions Why am I learning this Why is it important And why should I care We assume you’re reading this book because you’re eager to learn something new or looking for materials to share with others Whether you’re an interested novice a teacher a librarian or a par ent this book is a hands-on guide for people who want to learn and is not meant as a reference manual to sit on your bookshelf You don’t need any experience with electronics or program ming to get started with Arduino We assume you know nothing at the start and that you may be a little apprehensive about diving in That’s okay This book progresses steadily from introductory material to more complicated and challenging projects We also know that there are plenty of people out there with experience looking for something new maybe a new spin on an old topic such as a fresh look at blinking LEDs Many of these projects can be used as starting points for you to hack and develop further or build out of better materials for a more polished and durable finish In the end this book is for someone who is proactive a problem solver who jumps in with both feet xix inTroducTion
