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  • Published: 1 August 2017
  • ISBN: 9781593276522
  • Imprint: No Starch
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $59.99

The Arduino Inventor's Guide

Learn Electronics by Making 10 Awesome Projects



First, you'll master the basics with a primer that explains how a circuit works, how to read a wiring schematic, and how to build and test projects with a solderless breadboard. Then you'll learn how to make your hardware move, buzz, flash, and interact with the world using motors, LEDs, sensors, and more as you build these 10 projects:

  • The classic first Arduino project: blinking an LED
  • A miniature traffic light
  • An LED screen that displays animated patterns and shapes
  • A fast-paced button-smashing game to test your reflexes
  • A light-sensitive, color-changing night-light
  • A challenging ball-balancing game
  • A temperature-sensing mini greenhouse with an automated fan and vent
  • A motorized robot that you can control
  • A racing timer for toy cars
  • A tiny electric piano that you can actually play!

  • With each project, you'll learn real coding skills so you can tell your inventions what to do, like how to store temperature readings with variables, start a timer or spin a motor with functions, and make decisions using loops. You'll even find tips and tricks to put your own twist on each gadget and take things further.

    Uses the Arduino Uno board or SparkFun RedBoard

    With Arduino, you can build any hardware project you can imagine. This open-source platform is designed to help total beginners explore electronics, and with its easy-to-learn programming language, you can collect data about the world around you to make something truly interactive.

    The Arduino Inventor's Guide opens with an electronics primer filled with essential background knowledge for your DIY journey. From there, you’ll learn your way around the Arduino through a classic hardware entry point—blinking LEDs. Over the course of the book, 11 hands-on projects will teach you how to:
    –Build a stop light with LEDs
    –Display the volume in a room on a warning dial
    –Design and build a desktop fan
    –Create a robot that draws with a motor and pens
    –Create a servo-controlled balance beam
    –Build your own playable mini piano
    –Make a drag race timer to race toy cars against your friends

    Each project focuses on a new set of skills, including breadboarding circuits; reading digital and analog inputs; reading magnetic, temperature, and other sensors; controlling servos and motors; and talking to your computer and the Web with an Arduino. At the end of every project, you’ll also find tips on how to use it and how to mod it with additional hardware or code.

    What are you waiting for? Start making, and learn the skills you need to own your technology!

    Uses the Arduino Uno board or SparkFun RedBoard

    • Published: 1 August 2017
    • ISBN: 9781593276522
    • Imprint: No Starch
    • Format: Paperback
    • Pages: 336
    • RRP: $59.99

    Praise for The Arduino Inventor's Guide

    "A great addition to makerspaces that want to take coding and electronics to the next level."
    --School Library Connection

    "Quite impressed...an excellent book for a parent/child combo."
    --Damien Kee - Domabotics

    "This is probably the best Arduino starter book out there! I highly recommend it for every library and classroom."
    --Sequential Tart