So I got one of these... [Arduino Board/Electronics]

[earlz]

Well finally just tonight I opened up the most awesome thing ever. http://www.moderndevice.com/diecimila.shtml is what I got..

So guess I'm going to have to polish up on my *real* low level programming(bit twiddling is not nearly as common with the PC)

Also, I'm going to have make some small little periphrials(that wouldn't be mispelt, but firefox is being freaky) .. I have a photoresistor, so that should be interesting.. and I have plenty of LEDs. and a motor or two and some transistors(can't remember specific kind for handling up to 3A) so I shouldn't run out of ideas too soon..

anyone have a device as this and how did you put it work?

[tantrikwizard]

The Arduino is becoming rather popular in recent years. There's hundreds of prototype/demo boards for nearly every microprocessor, microcontroller, DSP, etc. I primarily use Microchip yC's for physical IO (motors, sensors, etc) in robotics because they're so damn cheap.

[Troy Martin]

DO WANT

(isn't that a funny word? want want want want)

I _really_ want an ardunio board... I just don't know if it'll break in my cave where my laptop and friends are. I don't have a serial port either or any of that ol' goodness.

[kmcguire]

I had an one very similar. It is very fun. The only part to be careful with is to always double check that you do not sink or source too much current on any of the pins. Also, do not exceed the voltage at VCC or what you power the actual processor with. It can differ from what the boards takes and some(most if not all) pins come directly from the chip. As long as remain a little bit of a percentage below that in voltage and never sink too much current you will never tear it up.

Dont sink too much current from any individual pin [some pins vary in maximum sink current], and not too much overall from everything summed. Resistors.. Datasheet..

I have burned a few things up by not keeping that in mind. It is very bad because you have to wait to get another.

I used mine to do all sorts of stuff from digital signal processing, system programming, running motors using PWM, flashing lights, tempature sensor with diodes, eletrical learning, and even hooking it up to other electronics to do various stuff that might be difficult to do with a PC.

[earlz]

DO WANT

(isn't that a funny word? want want want want)

I _really_ want an ardunio board... I just don't know if it'll break in my cave where my laptop and friends are. I don't have a serial port either or any of that ol' goodness.

dude. Get one! only cost me $32(well, technically $37 cause I ordered some much needed NPN transistors for handling high current(up to 3A) loads) with shipping.. http://www.moderndevice.com/diecimila.shtml is where I got mine, its a great little board once you get the avr-gcc compiled and the Wiring library compiled(so you can learn from "easy" examples) .. it has a USB port, which triples as a power port, programming(flashing) port, and serial TTY to the PC(though I need to get g++ going before I can use that) there is really nothign required to get some blinkenlight programs going except a USB cable(it has a builtin LED on pin #13)

I've made a thing to play mary had a little lamb and just got done building a thing to detect light levels..

temperature with diodes? hmm(*googles)

I think I'll be trying to use transistors where I can to limit the chance of over powering my atmega...

I'll have to be sure to read up on what minimum resistance values are and such though..

Also, I'm afraid I'll burn it up lol.. So everytime I hook up a circuit I check it like 10 times. lol..

Yea.. I'm really having fun with it so far.. though getting all the software working was a little... lonesome. lol it seems like no one compiles Wiring and still uses avr-gcc(instead of the actual Wiring "language")..

edit:
sometimes I think the mods try too hard.. lol (shouldn't a post topic change have an "edited by" thing appended at the bottom?