The Arduino platform consists of three parts: a microcontroller board, an IDE and a community. It’s the community that makes the Arduino platform special: there are many forums, blogs, tutorials, etc. to help you learn about embedded systems, sensors and electronic circuits in general and the Arduino platform specifically. And there are many people out there willing to help you with specific questions.
Hands-on
Note that the Arduino platform is all about experimenting, so don’t hesitate to dive right in and read up on what you need while you’re working on your assignment. For a primer on how to connect your sensors and actuators to your Stickuino, have a look at the hooking things up page. And note that there are really a gazillion other webpages that teach you how to connect a led or a button to your Arduino compatible board. If you’ve still got questions left, feel free to post to one of the forums out there.
Additional resources
Some examples of what’s available out there, ranging from very basic to rather advanced, are:
- Arduino built-in examples by Arduino
- Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit experiment guide (retired version, but still relevant)
- Adafruit Learning System – Learn Arduino
- Instructables on Arduino
- Tronixstuff Arduino tutorials
Introductory books
If, for some reason, you think that you need a more stuctured introductory text on the Arduino platform or electronic circuits, there are – again – many, many books available. We think they won’t be needed, but if you think otherwise, feel free to have a look at books like these:
- Getting started with Arduino, 4th edition by Massimo Banzi and Michael Shiloh
- Programming Arduino, 3rd edition by Simon Monk
- Make: Electronics, 3rd edition by Charles Platt
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