All the examples in this book use the Arduino Uno R3 platform. This version of the Arduino board was chosen because it is the most often recommended microcontroller board for learning hardware/software prototyping. Once the techniques have been mastered, the reader will be able to adapt the examples to other development boards and devices as well.

It is expected that the reader possesses the following basic skills that will be required for engaging in this 10-day Arduino prototyping crash course:

• Basic knowledge of C programming (simple variables, functions, if statements, for loops and functions will suffice, nothing fancy is needed) is required to follow through the chapters in this book.
• Familiarity with basic electronic components (resistors, diodes, transistors, breadboards, circuits, and so on). You do not need to know the fundamentals of how these components work; the book will explain everything ground up starting from fundamental concepts.

Each chapter in this book uses many hardware components and has a list of hardware parts required to build the example prototypes in the chapter. In order to provide you with a comprehensive experience; a concise list of the hardware components that you will need, has been provided in Chapter 1, Boot Camp.