Hello, I was wondering if anyone had experience with the arduino kit. I want to start some mini projects and wanted to know if buying this microcontroller would aid in my understanding to circuit building (on a breadboard).

Also, there are many out there and I have been considering either the Arduino Uno, the Arduino Mega 2560 or the nano one. Anyone had experience with these, or any other ones not listed that are good?

Just curious as to peoples thought, so answer anything about the Arduino in this thread! Thankyou XD

 

I started in the world of micros/embedded systems with an Arduino Demenuelove or whatever.

Pretty fun little device. Relatively very easy to use and get into if you have any coding experience.

Great device to learn by doing!

 

I have had several Arduino Uno boards and an Arduino Mega2560 board. They are very nice boards for the purpose of learning to program and hardware design.

The wealth of library functions that are available at the www.arduino.cc website will give you a tremendous leg-up on getting started. The boot-loader that is present on the Arduino board means you will not need to purchase a programmer. You only need a laptop (Mine is Windows based) with a spare USB port and you have the hardware you need. You need a USB cable that has a type-b USB connector on the end you will plug into the Arduino. You can then download the latest free Arduino programming software application and you are ready to roll. The Arduino board auto switches from being USB port powered to the external power supply when the external power supply is plug into the board.

If you don't already have a lot of experience in c-programming, the arduino will give you a good platform for sharpening you programming skills.

There are quite a few shields (the arduino term for various daughter boards that plug directly onto the Arduino board) that give you ready made hardware to interface to using your Arduino. There are also blank shield boards that permit you to design your own circuit for interface to the Arduino.

If you have specific questions post them here and I will try to answer them.

hgmjr

 

Thankyou for the replys! I know C language ever so slightly, Im much stronger at c ++ and inparticular, Java. Is there anyway to program using these two languages in addition to C? I dont mind improving on my C skills anyways...just wondering if the board is written fully in C or not.

 

My kid has been looking into it, he thinks it is a simplified version of C. I don't know myself

I bought this unit a while back, and still haven't powered it up yet.

http://www.bgmicro.com/bredboardarduinokit.aspx

 

Thankyou for the replys! I know C language ever so slightly, Im much stronger at c ++ and inparticular, Java. Is there anyway to program using these two languages in addition to C? I dont mind improving on my C skills anyways...just wondering if the board is written fully in C or not.

Maybe you should notice that C is basically a subset of C++, so if you know C++ you know C.

 

Thankyou for the replys! I know C language ever so slightly, Im much stronger at c ++ and inparticular, Java. Is there anyway to program using these two languages in addition to C? I dont mind improving on my C skills anyways...just wondering if the board is written fully in C or not.

I believe the 'duino IDE allows C/C++. The board itself would be running machine language programs, loaded from the IDE after compilation.

--Rich

 

Thankyou for the replys! I know C language ever so slightly, Im much stronger at c ++ and inparticular, Java. Is there anyway to program using these two languages in addition to C? I dont mind improving on my C skills anyways...just wondering if the board is written fully in C or not.

See http://www.arduino.cc/en/Hacking/BuildProcess for details of what happens in the background when you click Upload or Verify in the IDE.

A combination of C and C++ is used. For example, many of the "core" library files are in C, while the EEPROM library is C++.

I have found that the Arduino allows me to quickly blink some LEDs without having to learn every detail about the MCU.