Arduino For Dummies

The quick, easy way to leap into the fascinating world of physical computing

This is no ordinary circuit board. Arduino allows anyone, whether you’re an artist, designer, programmer or hobbyist, to learn about and play with electronics. Through this book you learn how to build a variety of circuits that can sense or control things in the real world. Maybe you’ll prototype your own product or create a piece of interactive artwork? This book equips you with everything you’ll need to build your own Arduino project, but what you make is up to you! If you’re ready to bring your ideas into the real world or are curious about the possibilities, this book is for you?

• Learn by doing ? start building circuits and programming your Arduino with a few easy to follow examples – right away!
• Easy does it ? work through Arduino sketches line by line in plain English, to learn of how a they work and how to write your own
• Solder on! ? Only ever used a breadboard in the kitchen? Don’t know your soldering iron from a curling iron? No problem, you’ll be prototyping in no time
• Kitted out ? discover new and interesting hardware to make your Arduino into anything from a mobile phone to a geiger counter!
• Become an Arduino savant ? learn all about functions, arrays, libraries, shields and other tools of the trade to take your Arduino project to the next level.
• Get social ? teach your Arduino to communicate with software running on a computer to link the physical world with the virtual world

It’s hardware, it’s software, it’s fun! Start building the next cool gizmo with Arduino and Arduino For Dummies.

Q & A with John Nussey, author of Arduino for Dummies

What is the best way for new Arduino users to get started?

I’d say the best way get started with Arduino is to find a workshop near you and see where it takes you. Workshops really accelerate your learning and put you in an environment with like-minded people. I’ve met all kinds of interesting people through workshops. Sometimes they’ll open your eyes to completely new “scenes” that you wouldn’t know about otherwise, and other time, you’ll find people that might be excited about exactly the same things as you.

What is your all-time favorite Arduino project that you’ve either worked on or heard about from someone else?

My own favourite project is the Pen Nib Dress that I made with Steven Tai. It’s my favourite purely because it’s so beautiful to look at. It’s maybe a little impractical (weighing about 5 kg. or just over 11 lbs.) for the poor model who had to wear it but that’s the way it is with prototypes!

Why do you think Arduino has become such a popular device, especially for tech hobbyists?

Arduino is cheap and easy to use, but I don’t think that either of these is the main reason that it’s so popular. The community around it is what’s so remarkable and this is something that you see on the Arduino forums. If they were entirely populated by one group of people, whether it were artists, designers, programmers, engineers or hobbyists, then it wouldn’t work, but there seems to be an excellent ecosystem of people on the forum pages to both ask new and challenging questions as well as to answer them.

How do you think Arduino has influenced interactive design projects?

Arduino has made it possible to quickly and easily get a lot of concepts into the real world. Students can build prototypes that actually work for their final shows and design studios can build the interactive elements of a project themselves without needing an entire technical company to partner with. This allows people to make their ideas a reality, which makes it easier to convey them to a client and also to see if they work the way you expect. I believe that prototyping is an essential process and skill to have in the design industry today and that through this process you will understand more about your project or idea than any number of sketches, renderings or simulations can teach you.

Any advice for someone who may be interested in Arduino, but not sure what it’s all about?

Get Googling! It’s all out there on the net: talks, workshops, resources, kits, and more. Once you’ve seen a few other projects, you’ll have an idea of what’s possible and what’s interesting to you, then you can think about your own projects and how Arduino can help you solve a problem or maybe just create something interesting.

What should people expect when they open a copy of Arduino For Dummies?

Arduino For Dummies is written for not-technical people that are interested in learning more about technology. The first part of the book gets you familiar with Arduino and what it involves, then there are some simple examples to teach you the fundamentals that you’ll need to know before you go further. Later on there’s a bit of inspiration to get you thinking about the kind of projects that you can build, a bit of practical advice to get your prototyping skills up to scratch, and then the book dives into a few more advanced uses to give you an idea of what’s possible with this fantastic little board!

Table of Contents

Part I: Getting to Know Arduino
Chapter 1: What Is Arduino and Where Did It Come From?
Chapter 2: Finding Your Board and Your Way Around It
Chapter 3: Downloading and Installing Arduino
Chapter 4: Blinking an LED

Part II: Getting Physical with Arduino
Chapter 5: Tools of the Trade
Chapter 6: A Primer on Electricity and Circuitry
Chapter 7: Basic Sketches: Inputs, Outputs, and Communication
Chapter 8: More Basic Sketches: Motion and Sound

Part III: Building on the Basics
Chapter 9: Learning by Example
Chapter 10: Soldering On
Chapter 11: Getting Clever with Code
Chapter 12: Common Sense with Common Sensors

Part IV: Unlocking Your Arduino’s Potential
Chapter 13: Becoming a Specialist with Shields and Libraries
Chapter 14: Sensing More Inputs and Controlling More Outputs
Chapter 15: Multiplying Your Outputs with I2C

Part V: Sussing Out Software
Chapter 16: Getting to Know Processing
Chapter 17: Processing the Physical World

Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 18: Ten Places to Learn More about Arduino
Chapter 19: Ten Great Shops to Know
Chapter 20: Ten Places to Find Parts and Components