Arduino was invented in Italy by Massimo Banzi and a group of others and is a low cost microcontroller board system. It is a hardware and software program that together allows you control just about anything. Even a novice techie/tinkerer can do it. Let’s say your hanging baskets arern’t doing so well in the hot sun. Let Arduino sense the humidity in the soil and and give your plants the exact amount of water and nutrients they need to thrive.
The UNO board, essentially plug and play, was made with plenty on input and output pins and can be programmed using open source code by simply connecting it to a computer with a USB.
Some other examples of Arduino are home automation, pixel light message boards, robots, mood lamps, alarms and just about anything you cann imagine. A great beginner place to start is at https://www.instructables.com/ or join the community at https://blog.arduino.cc/category/community/.
You can also purchase Arduino kits with basic components here: https://amzn.to/2Lx7rPg
- Arduino Projects Book
- Arduino UNO
- USB cable
- Breadboard 400 Pins
- Easy-to-assemble wooden base
- 9V battery snap
- Solid core jumper wires (70)
- Stranded jumper wire (1)
- Phototransistors (6)
- 10KΩ Potentiometers (6)
- Push buttons (10)
- Temperature sensor TMP36
- Tilt sensor
- Alphanumeric LCD (16×2 character display)
- LEDs (1 x Bright White, 1 x RGB, 8 x Red, 8 x Green, 8 x Yellow and 3 x Blue)
- Small DC motor (6/9V)
- Small servo motor
- Piezo capsule
- H-bridge motor driver L293D
- Optocouplers 4N35 (2)
- MOSFET Transistors IRF520 (2)
- Capacitors (5 x 100nF, 3 x 100µF, 5 x 100pF)
- Diodes 1N4007 (5)
- Transparent gels (red, green, blue)
- 40 pin male header strip
- Resistors (20 x 220Ω, 5 x 560Ω, 5 x 1KΩ, 5 x 4.7Ω, 10 x 10KΩ, 5 x 1MΩ, 5 x 10MΩ)
Have fun and enjoy the experience of creating your first Robot
