C H A P T E R  1

Introduction

Since the Arduino Project started back in 2005, over 150,000 boards have been sold worldwide to date. The number of unofficial clone boards sold no doubt outweighs the official boards, thus it's likely that over half a million Arduino boards and its variants are out in the wild. Its popularity is ever increasing as more and more people realize the amazing potential of this incredible open source project to create cool projects quickly and easily with a relatively shallow learning curve

The biggest advantage of the Arduino over other microcontroller development platforms is its ease of use; non-“techie” people can pick up the basics and be creating their own projects in a relatively short amount of time. Artists, in particular, seem to find it the ideal way to create interactive works of art quickly and without specialist knowledge of electronics. There is a huge community of people using Arduinos and sharing their code and circuit diagrams for others to copy and modify. The majority of this community is also very willing to help others. You'll find the Arduino Forum the place to go if you want answers quickly.

However, despite the huge amount of information available to beginners on the Internet, most of it is spread across various sources, making it tricky to track down the necessary information. This is where this book fits in. Within these pages are 50 projects that are all designed to take you step by step through programming your Arduino. When you first get an Arduino (or any new gadget, for that matter), you want to plug it in, connect an LED, and get it flashing right away. You don't want to read through pages of theory first. This author understands that excitement to “get going” and that is why you will dive right into connecting things to your Arduino, uploading code, and getting on with it. This is, I believe, the best way to learn a subject and especially a subject such as Physical Computing, which is what the Arduino is all about.