Arduino Starter Kit - Project 1 - Get to know your tools

Get to know your tools

The components in the kit. See technical specification.

This easy project uses the Arduino UNO as its source of power for its source of voltage.(5V). I will try this with a power supply that  provides the 5V. Unsure about this as a lot of pundits say I will have to smooth the voltage with a regulator and capacitor. I could blow the components but they are not the most expensive. 

I did test the power supply as described in Understanding DC Power Supplies by 

ITP Physical Computing.  The advice given is

If the voltage showing on your multimeter is more than half a volt or a volt off its rating, then you most likely have what is called an unregulated power supply

The power supply I used read 5.1V but I do not know if the supply is regulated. This was also a useful introduction on how to use a multimeter.

It was interesting to find out how a barrel jack worked as well.

The Get to know your tools Youtube video complements project 1.

Building

• Strangely I thought the supplied jumpers would be somehow related to the power codings on the board. They are colour coded by length. This is a good case for cutting lengths to follow colour coding rules for the circuit.
• Its really fiddly to place the components onto the breadboard. 
• Do not know whether to cut the resistor wires to fit snugly on the breadboard.

Breadboard and Schema through Fritzing

This is by first attempt at Fritzing. It took me a long time to generate these pretty rough diagrams but I will keep working at it.

Results

The circuit worked and the LED lit as predicted.

• Voltage drop across diode 2.2V
• Voltage drop across resistor 3.15V
• Voltage drop across circuit 5.19V

Arduino Project book version

I wired up the version as was in the book. This was much easier to do as there was no jack connector on the board and the 5V supply on the UNO was used.

Project 1 Series Switches

Series Switch in operation

Breadboard Circuit 

Schematics 

Autodesk Circuits

I also found  prototyping  software for board simulation, it is called AutoDesk circuits. I simulated the board above with the board above with two serial switches. A small introduction is given on YouTube.