Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2: 25 Simple Electronics Projects for Beginners

Arduino Project Handbook, Volume 2: 25 Simple Electronics Projects for Beginners — page 3
introduction Welcome to Arduino Project Handbook Volume 2 If you haven’t read the first volume don’t worry each project in this book is completely independent and designed to gently introduce you to the world of building with Arduino We’ll cover some of the important aspects of getting started with Arduino here and in the next chapter so if you’ve read Volume 1 you can either skim through as a refresher or skip ahead to dive straight into the new projects This book uses the Arduino Uno a small inexpensive computer that can be programmed to control endless devices and creations You’ll soon use the Arduino to control a whole host of projects like a musical keyboard temperature-controlled fan digital thermometer fingerprint entry system and many others The Arduino board is composed of two main elements the hardware or microcontroller which is the brain of the board and the software that you’ll use to send your program to the microcontroller The software called the Arduino integrated development environment IDE is available free for download and I’ll show you how to use it to set up a simple project in the primer About this book What inspired me to write this book The internet is bursting with tutorials videos and articles covering the Arduino and potential projects but many lack detailed visuals or the code required to build these projects This book is intended to help you build simple proj ects that will inspire you to create your own inventions as you apply the skills and techniques that you’ll learn Each project includes a description of what it will do the items you’ll need pictures of the setup simple step-by-step instructions with tables for quick connection references a circuit diagram see Figure 1 and the necessary code so you don’t have to worry about learning to program before you begin The early projects provide simple explanations of what’s happening in the code to help you understand the process of programming enough to make your own modifications if you want to If you don’t want to type that much code out the sketches are available to download at https www nostarch com arduinohandbook2 x introduction NOTE In this book you’ll create your projects on a bread board This is the best way to learn about how circuits work because the connec tions are not permanent if you make a mistake you can just unplug the wire or component and try again