First Arduino Project

Finally got the chance to break out this Arduino Starter Kit tonight! Opening it up, there’s an immediate satisfaction in how perfectly everything is packaged. Boxes within boxes.

There’s an assortment of stuff (and a lot of the components are all in one plastic pouch), but most things already look pretty familiar to me. I was reading up a little on beginner tutorials, and have some expectations in mind.

Something that didn’t quite register with me, until I saw everything in person: most of this stuff is really small! I knew the Arduino board itself was pretty small, but some of the other components (like the push buttons) were much smaller than I expected.

First project: hooking up an LED to a button.

Next project: getting two buttons on the breadboard. I got things wired up in series, and this is the follow-up exercise: getting the buttons working in parallel. In series meant that you had to press both buttons to get the light to turn on; parallel meant that pressing either button on its own would light up the LED.

I’m still working out the logic a bit in my head, but hopefully it’ll sink in. I’m not clear I understand where the resistor goes (I’ve seen it placed near the power/start, as well as placed near the end/ground). But these basic little exercises have been quite satisfying.

One complaint I have (and was prepared for, given some of the reviews I read): the wires and jumpers aren’t really color coordinated. Especially with the jumpers, there’s an assortment of blue and orange and green… but I’d love a few more red/black options. Having a more consistent color on everything would make grokking things a little easier IMO, as opposed to just throwing down arbitrary colors.

At some point, I expect I’ll be stripping my own wires by hand. But for now I’d love a more coordinated set of red/black/green jumpers.

Related:
Waiting to Get Started