Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Introduction: the makings of an electronics dilettante

Ever since I was a very young I've loved the idea of computers interacting with the real world. I distinctly remember my excitement when my father got his first car with an onboard computer (and even more vividly remember my subsequent disappointment that all it did was show the temperature and calculate the remaining distance on the current tank of gas; it wasn't the capabilities that disappointed me, but rather the lack of interactivity).

I didn't know it at the time, but what I wanted to learn about were microcontrollers. I learned to computer program very young, and have been ever since, but always wanted to make my programs do something in the physical world, not just in the digital world. Still, for whatever reasons - difficulty, cost, laziness - I didn't learn how to work with microcontrollers or electronics.

Finally, about a month ago, I finally decided to do it. Make magazine and the DIY movement had inspired me to build things more myself, and when I saw the Arduino starter pack on one of the Make magazine gift guides, I went for it.

I'm amazed at how much I've learned since then. There's a wealth of knowledge out there, and I highly recommend looking at the Arduino tutorials (and everything else!) at ladyada.net. The PDF files from the Bionic Arduino course are also great. There are also some great books on the subject. I highly recommend Tim Igoe's Physical Computing (which doesn't deal directly with Arduino, but the theory is great) and Making Things Talk. (If you have to get just one, get Physical Computing.)

Still, there were many times where it took a lot of Google searching, and often some trial and error, to figure something out. I'm hoping to document my successes (and failures) here in the expectation that other people might have the same questions I did, and hopefully I can fill some of the gaps that I've found.

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