Beginning Arduino Programming

Common Components

While there are so many different electronic components, to discuss them all would fill a book larger than this one, so we are going to only look at a few of the very common components here. The idea is to get a sense of what these components look like and generally what kinds of things they do. That way, when you see them discussed or drawn up in a schematic, you'll have an idea of what you're looking at.

Resistors

A resistor limits, or resists, the flow of electricity. They are often useful in a circuit that would not ordinarily place much resistance on the total load, like our LED. In this way, the resistor uses up the current by producing a small amount of heat. Fixed resistors have two wires, have no polarity (so they can ...