A Christmas gift

An Arduino Uno board

I will try to have a few posts about some of the gifts I received for Christmas but I want to start out with a gift I recommend to anyone with an interest in making electronics do things. This is opposed to writing programs for a computer that just displays things on a screen or the Internet (not that there is anything wrong with that). I'm talking about being able to write programs for a system that gets information from the outside world through sensors (like reading temperature, humidity, pressure or light) or making things move (with motors) or turning on switches.

I got an Arduino kit. The Arduino is a small, inexpensive computer board (costs about $30 - pictured here) with an extensive community where you can share ideas about hooking up various sensors, transducers and actuators and controlling them with small programs stored on the Arduino. The software for controlling the board is free and runs on any Windows, Macintosh or Linux computer. The schematics for the boards and the firmware (the instructions for running the board itself) are free and open source, too. You could build your own boards if you wanted but it's much easier, quicker and less expensive to get a ready-made board.

I got the Inventor's Kit from Sparkfun Electronics which includes an Arduino board, a small solderless breadboard (for building your own circuits) and a number of sensors (temperature and light), motors (a DC motor and a servo motor) and other interface components (switches, buttons and potentiometers). There are also a number of components to allow for hooking those devices up to the Arduino's inputs and outputs. It comes with book detailing fourteen experiments to familiarize yourself with the Arduino and the various components. You might ask, "Why would someone who has a degree n Electronics Engineering need or want to get a beginners kit like this?"

For one thing, it's been a long time since I've really done any electronic work. I've mostly been doing Software Engineering for the past 15 years or so. So, I'm out of practice. Another reason for doing this is that I wanted parts that would work with these boards. Not all motors or sensors can work with the voltages and currents available with all boards. This kit is "guaranteed" so to speak. I don't have to worry about looking for and buying the right components right away. I can just start trying things. And now that I've got a nice oscilloscope (see my post, Birthday gifts - part 1), I can see what's going on electrically with the board and the surrounding parts. I'm finally building up a lice little lab. It only took me 60 years to do it. You are never too old to get started on something new.