A few months ago some website let me know that the arduino was on sale along with a book: Getting Started with Arduino. I read the first few chapters of the book and looked very intently at the arduino, but that’s as far as I got for several months.
Then, for some reason earlier this week I wanted to start messing with it. I knew I would need some more junk.
Some searching on the internet led me to believe that what I wanted were the things that fell out of boxes at the factory, were found under big machines and returned by other people. I figured that if I bought in bulk, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about buying the right thing. It turns out that someone sells just what I needed (actually, a lot of people like messing with this stuff, so it’s pretty easy to buy).
Anyway, a little explanation: the Arduino is that blue thing in the top picture with the USB cable coming out of it. It’s a microcontroler, a little computer that is good at interacting with the rest of the world. You hook it up to stuff and it either does things, or sends data to something else. I know that’s not a great explanation. Here are some examples: a touchpad, a display board, a laser controlled wireless automatic cat food dispenser.
I’ve got an idea that I want to try with this, but I’m not ready to share it yet.