Creative Computing Club: Week 4 Arduino

Today was all about the Arduino, although it was difficult to get started due to driver installation issues on some of the machines, as soon as we did, the students were able to speed through it.  I was so pleased, as for a lot of them this was the first time a lot of them had ever done any electronics. They were extremely careful and respectful of the components, and followed the instructions perfectly.

I took them through a brief introduction to the parts; the LEDs, the breadboard, the resistors, potentiometers and the layout of the Arduinos it was light introduction, nothing too heavy.

Thankfully their experience with Processing last week helped them speed through the typing of the code and already new about things like the setup() and loop().

We started with the classic "Blink" tutorial and added more lights so we could then sequence them, we also gave the "pinouts" names so we could understand what the code was doing more easily.

We then added a variable "int time" so we could change the timing of the lights a lot easier across the sequence.


We were also able to add a potentiometer to change the speed at which the lights flashed, so we could interact with the Arduino in real time. 

All the resources from the session today can be found here. Sincerest of thanks to loveelectronics.co.uk for the donation of the Arduinos please check out their range of Arduino breakout boards and sensors and thanks to Rapid electronics for donating all of the components.

The Arduino I recommended you purchase is the Arduino Uno from Rapid Electronic and the book I recommended was Getting Started with Arduino which can be found here.