Alfred's musings

It's no secret that I'm Arduino crazy. And I've got (and need) a few. One I bought from Farnell  for about £17. Then I learnt how I could build my own on a bread board , and then I just finished a soldered version on protoboard yesterday. The DIY route is cheaper... and the components probably cost me about £10, plus several hours of labour. But the cheapest and best option, was this Indiegogo "$9 Arduino" . It's my first experience of putting my own, real money in some crowd-funded project, and the results are stunning: On 26 July, I paid $22 for two Arduinos, and the promised delivery date was 20 September. The campaigned got 14x the backing planned (target $12k, actual $164 401), yes delivered on time, and increased the value to me (because of the greater backing received) by adding more goodies for free. And the kit works as expected, so I'm super impressed. This certainly would not have happened without a really dedicated project manager ...

I'm running a class on Arduino at Google for Googlers... and this came in very handy today in remembering which pins are which... printed to Avery 7x2 labels. End result looks something like this:

Summary: Atmega328p is the brains of an Arduino and could be used on it's own. 1) (Once only) Burn bootloader 2) Program is by plugging into your Arduino Uno board 3) move to breadboard by just providing power and an external clock. Have your favourite blink program running for £3. Detail: I'm hooked on Arduino. It allows me to have a touch pad (made of foil) to toggle my LED strips in my house on and off, to have a laser trip-wire in my front garden, control my heating and provide a cool flickering-fire effect night light to my kids... but with only one Arduino board, I can only do one of these at a time. First, I got excited about Arduino at <£20. But many times <£20 is still a lot. Then I got excited about the <$10 Arduino , and ordered a few (due for delivery very soon, I'm told). And then, thanks to a Google-run electronics course, I discovered what many others know already. You can have all the benefits of a micro controller without an Arduino.....