Intermittence

First: It’s still cool. Unlike so many other things in which I become interested, this continues to fascinate me after seven full days. Excellent!

Second: I still haven’t done anything practical with it. However, I’m learning. Watch:

Nifty, huh?

Along with the Arduino Diecimila board, I purchased a Protoshield Kit from Sparkfun, to ease development. It comes as a small bag of parts which must be assembled, and it’s been years since I did any component soldering. As you can see, however, I managed to not destroy it:

The alligator clips and built-in LEDs and switches on the Protoshield all replicate the circuit in the previous blog entry, so you can see the convenience that the board offers.

As for the soldering…well, let’s just say that I still have a lot to learn. I avoided making any cold joints, but I definitely poured too much solder on a few of the connections. Also, some good advice was ignored and as a result some of the headers are a bit crooked. The bottom mates up just fine with the top of the Arduino, but the headers on top of the shield are close enough that I had to wiggle the breadboard into place.

More to come!

As mentioned previously, I purchased an Arduino microcontroller, and it arrived today!

Within minutes, I had the built-in LED blinking. A few moment later, it was blinking SOS in Morse code. Then the little breadboard got hooked up, and I had an LED pulsing away. A few minutes later the first big LED had a friend, pulsing the opposite way. Then came a switch, which forced both LEDs bright until it was turned off, at which point the pulsing resumed. Now, the frequency of pulses for one of the LEDs varies depending on the position of the switch. Check it out:

Programming it is (so far) incredibly simple, and I’m learning more about circuits and things like pull-up resistors with each passing moment. This thing is an amazing piece of technology. Read the rest of this entry »

I just placed an order with SparkFun for some Arduino electronic microcontroller developer equipment, and I’m really excited about it.

Years and years (and years) ago, I ‘helped’ my father assemble a couple of HeathKit electronic devices (a clock, which I think my brother took to NMSU, and a digital scale), which involved soldering a pile of resistors and other components to some printed circuit boards and putting it all together. I’ve always remembered doing this, but it wasn’t until just recently that the memory blossomed and led me to Arduino.