Arduino Starter Kit

This post will address the success and failures of learning electronics through the Arduino Starter Kit. It is amazingly well produced with a well written project book although the font is quite small for my old eyes.

I have found a book on-line that contains all the projects and is a copy of the project book

Initially I put together the wooden base without much problem and setup  the Arduino IDE. The Arduino guide is very useful and complements the Arduino project book very well.  The project book refers to old versions of windows software but the online guide is up to date and the download and windows installation is complete with all required drivers.

All of the links in the project book referred to the old style link arduino.org and not arduino.cc. Most are wrong. Here is a list of those that I have found.

• Trouble
• IDE
• Tutorial
• Examples this is the reference for the Arduino language

I found on the Foundations and More page a link to on the Tutorials homepage  to 

ITP Physical Computing a site that is very useful for finding basic useful information on all aspects of electronics with very interesting videos as well. Some really interesting things to read are:

• Microcontrollers: The Basics
• Lab: Setting Up A Breadboard

The Youtube Arduino Starter Kit tutorials are a useful complement to the project book

Complementary vimeo on the basics of Arduino LEDs, switches, resistors and pull ups.

Techniques

• How to use a breadboard and Sparkfun
• How to strip a wire
• Cutting Jumper wires