Getting Started with Arduino

Preface

A few years ago I was given a very interesting challenge: teach designers the bare minimum in electronics so that they could build interactive prototypes of the objects they were designing.

I started following a subconscious instinct to teach electronics the same way I was taught in school. Later on I realised that it simply wasn't working as well as I would like, and started to remember sitting in a class, bored like hell, listening to all that theory being thrown at me without any practical application for it.

In reality, when I was in school I already knew electronics in a very empirical way: very little theory, but a lot of hands-on experience.

I started thinking about the process by which I really learned electronics:

• I took apart any electronic device I could put my hands on.

• I slowly learned what all those components were.

• I began to tinker with them, changing some of the connections inside of them and seeing what happened to the device: usually something between an explosion and a puff of smoke.

• I started building some kits sold by electronics magazines.

• I combined devices I had hacked, and repurposed kits and other circuits that I found in magazines to make them do new things.

As a little kid, I was always fascinated by discovering how things work; therefore, I used to take them apart. This passion grew as I targeted any unused object in the house and then took it apart into small bits. Eventually, people brought all sorts of devices for me to dissect. My biggest projects ...