Arduino Projects For Dummies

Chapter 2

Setting Up Your Workspace and Tools

In This Chapter

Setting up the project building workspace

Choosing the right tools for the job

Selecting your Arduino or Arduino kit

Setting up your Arduino

Getting your workspace ready is the first step in building your Arduino project. You can do the first couple of projects in this book just about anywhere, but for anything a little more involved, you want to create a dedicated work area that has your necessary tools at hand.

In this chapter, I explain how to create a good workspace with the right set of tools for the projects in this book. The project chapters assume that you have the basic workspace and tools ready to go, so I only list the parts you need to build each of the projects. After you get focused on a project, interrupting your work to get some basic tool that you’ve overlooked is a drag. But if you have most (or all) of the basics of your workspace covered, you won’t have to stop what you are doing to go get a hand tool or run to the hardware store. You also learn how to set up your Arduino software and get your Arduino ...