Monk Simon - Programming Arduino: Getting Started With Sketches

Getting Started with Sketches

Simon Monk

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ISBN: 978-0-07-178423-8

MHID: 0-07-178423-3

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To my boys, Stephen and Matthew,
from a very proud Dad.

About the Author

Simon Monk has a bachelors degree in cybernetics and computer science and a doctorate in software engineering. He has been an active electronics hobbyist since his school days and is an occasional author in hobby electronics magazines. He is also author of 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius and 15 Dangerously Mad Projects for the Evil Genius.

I thank Linda for giving me the time, space, and support to write this book and for putting up with the various messes my projects create around the house.

I also thank Stephen and Matthew Monk for taking an interest in what their Dad is up to and their general assistance with project work.

Finally, I would like to thank Roger Stewart, Sapna Rastogi, and everyone involved in the production of this book. Its a pleasure to work with such a great team.

Arduino interface boards provide a low-cost, easy-to-use technology to create microcontroller-based projects. With a little electronics, you can make your Arduino do all sorts of things, from controlling lights in an art installation to managing the power on a solar energy system.

There are many project-based books that show you how to connect things to your Arduino, including 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius by this author. However, the focus of this book is on programming the Arduino.

This book will explain how to make programming the Arduino simple and enjoyable, avoiding the difficulties of uncooperative code that so often afflict a project. You will be taken through the process of programming the Arduino step by step, starting with the basics of the C programming language that Arduinos use.

Arduino is a small microcontroller board with a universal serial bus (USB) plug to connect to your computer and a number of connection sockets that can be wired to external electronics such as motors, relays, light sensors, laser diodes, loudspeakers, microphones, and more. They can either be powered through the USB connection from the computer, from a 9V battery, or from a power supply. They can be controlled from the computer or programmed by the computer and then disconnected and allowed to work independently.

The board design is open source. This means that anyone is allowed to make Arduino-compatible boards. This competition has lead to low costs for the boards.

The basic boards are supplemented by accessory shield boards that can be plugged on top of the Arduino board. In this book, we will use two shieldsan LCD display shield and an Ethernet shieldthat will allow us to turn our Arduino into a tiny web server.

The software for programming your Arduino is easy to use and also freely available for Windows, Mac, and LINUX computers.

This is a book intended for beginners, but it is also intended to be useful to those who have used Arduino for a while and want to learn more about programming the Arduino or gain a better understanding of the fundamentals.

You do not need to have any programming experience or a technical background, and the books exercises do not require any soldering. All you need is the desire to make something.

If you want to make the most of the book and try out some of the experiments, then it is useful to have the following on hand: