Getting started with your Arduino

The Arduino is a programmable device that you can use to sense and control things in the physical world. It is easy to learn and an excellent way to learn some computer programming and a about electrical circuits.

This will help you get started, but if you run into problems ask Bryce for help and he can help get things sorted out.

The Arduino comes in many different flavors, some very tiny and some larger.  Your flavor of Arduino is an Uno.

Getting started with your Arduino:

The Arduino board is in a silver bag and it looks like this.

To get started, you only need the Arduino board and the blue USB cable hooked to a computer, but don't connect the Arduino until instructed.  The other items in the blue box are things you can hook up to the Arduino.

On your computer, go to: arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage

Follow the instructions for installation.  You will be installing a small development environment on the computer and a driver.  Remember, the model of Arduino you have is an Uno R3.

If you think you've done everything correctly but are having problems, make sure the COM port is still correctly selected (it can sometimes change after you unplug and re-plug in the Arduino) and that the
Arduino model is correctly selected.

Resources:

There are a lot of helpful resources and simple projects to experiment with even if you've never built a circuit before. The following websites will help.

fritzing.org
makezine.com/category/electronics/arduino/?post_type=projects
www.instructables.com
playground.arduino.cc/Projects/ArduinoUsers
www.adafruit.com/blog/category/arduino/