How I got started with Arduino

Hello human 🚀

Recently I have been really interested in electronics and IoT development, so I ordered the “Arduino Uno starter kit” from AliExpress (thanks to a friend of mine for suggesting). You can click here to order it, I must say the pricing is reasonable and the kit is pretty sick (at least for a noob like me).
goes to get some coffee

When I received the kit a few days ago, I thought like “What extraordinary things am I going to build with this?”. But of course being a C++ pro isn’t enough, I needed to understand what each piece could be used for, some electronics related things and other information which my best friends, Google and YouTube provide. Actually, I only knew what the wires and the LED-s could be used for ( #hackergirl ).

Most tutorials I checked on started with: electricity, the basics. Now, I had some knowledge from school, because it’s my favorite topic from the physics classes, however, the FreeCodeCamp course I watched on YouTube was explaining it very well (link at the end of the article). I know that going in depth isn’t very necessary for the starter projects, but it’s definitely important 🤓

After that, I explored the different tools, what they could be used for etc,. which I looked up on the internet. I don’t think there is any need to fully understand them in the beginning, but at least to know what each of them could be used for or what they are. I like to do this because it helps me “familiarize” with the environment I’ll be working on.

I finally started practicing using the Arduino IDE. There are a lot of projects and examples which are really useful. Now, here it comes. Are you ready for the ultimate project of mine? Well, I used the breadboard, 1 resistor, jumper wires and a LED light, as well as the Arduino Uno, to make the blink example! Isn’t that an accomplishment?

Okay okay, reality aside, I also played around more, tried to replicate the coffin dance meme’s music with the LED-s and the delay() function — successfully failed doing that — and that’s basically all I did during the first day. (in my defense, I couldn’t be more productive because I ran out of coffee && my browser somehow managed to open Netflix)

Ladies and gentlemen, please look at my ACTUAL first project in Arduino. I’m a pro.

The next day, after discussing with Google about beginners project ideas, I was like “this stuff is rocket science”. I mean, try to search “Arduino projects” on there and you’ll see it for yourself! So I just got the kit and started looking at all the devices. When I saw the water sensor I asked myself “okay what can I use this for?” — I obviously had no answer, so I asked my other bestie, YouTube, where I found A LOT of tutorials, from which I chose to use the water sensor and see how much water is in the glass. It isn’t really useful but good for the sake of practice.
I started watching a tutorial and 1 minute later I found myself looking for another one about connecting the LCD screen with the Arduino Uno, then was reading through the documentation on how to display output there, and then returned back to the first video.

This was a great little “research” and to be honest, I never expect || want to get everything from one video, which offers a solution to my current problem, but gives me limited information about every part in particular and why I’m doing what I’m doing. Maybe it’s a different learning methodology from yours, but in my opinion, going through the internet, having different sources of knowledge, even for the little things is more efficient in the long term run, because that’s when you learn most. Momentarily I am not interested in doing a particular project as much as I want to learn in depth about the tools I’m using. I do know that the internet is always there, but my theory is “If you know how to do the simple things, you have more time to study the difficult ones on larger projects”.

I am well aware that it was quite simple but the truth is, I really enjoyed playing around and creating something, because it’s a totally new field for me and learning is fun (as you could probably tell by now). There’s more Arduino starter projects I’m occupying myself with currently and for each of them I check on the web almost the same way as I did for the above-described project. You can tell me your way of learning / creating things in the responses, I’d like to know and try out :)
Ah, I just finished my coffee and I don’t think I have much left to say, except for see you next time && don’t forget to #stayHydrated and #drinkCoffee 🤓

Below you can find the resources of all videos / helpful information mentioned in this post:

Arduino course for beginners — FreeCodeCamp (covers the electricity part, the C++ programming basics and some starter projects)

Download the Arduino IDE

The Arduino reference / documentation

The water sensor tutorial

How to connect the LCD screen to Arduino Uno: Video and Article