My first Arduino

A few weeks ago I ordered my first Arduino as part of the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit. I bought direct from SparkFun without realizing that it was the same price on Amazon but with free shipping. Bummer, but I’ve moved on with my life. Anyways, it arrived today and I got to spend an hour or two playing with it. Oh man is it fun! The kit came with a few basic tutorials to get you up to speed with basic circuits (already had this covered) and the Sketch programming language (which is basically a version of C/C++), along with a small breadboard and a bunch of electronic components.

I ran through the first few example circuits and got to one that played a little tune using a piezo element (a little speaker). Anna really liked it, and I showed her how to hit the reset button on the Arduino to make it play the song again. I decided to make it more fun for her, so I added a few LEDs that alternate between yellow and red with each note, a push button to reset the song (so she doesn’t have to wait for the Arduino to reset), and eventually a second button to play a different song. She had a blast hitting one button for Baa Baa Black Sheep and another for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, both of which she has been singing nearly non-stop all week. I’m really excited to make a bunch of little electronic toys for her! I hope to make some worth packaging up as kits and selling on SproutBoard, but those projects will have to wait until we make a little bit of money off of the main product line.

In the meantime, maybe you’ll enjoy a video of Anna enjoying my Arduino: