Arduino

Arduino brought microcontrollers to the masses. The project founders took a complex chip, put it on an easy to interface, open-source board. Then they created an easy to install, easy to use, open-source, cross-platform programming environment with simplified commands. Add both of those to an active and sharing user community, and you have a run-away hit. That is Arduino.

My first Arduino experience was with Adafruit's Boarduino back in 2008. I don't know why I went with an alternative to the original, but I think it was because I already had rockets in mind and the boarduino's form factor was perfect. It was a bit of learning curve, but I was amazed at what could be done. Blinking LEDs!

Fast forward five years, and I've got a number of projects under my belt, and am part of an Arduino group at work. Here are the slides from a presentation I gave called The Cult of Arduino. A number of advances in microcontrollers have been made, but the open-source hardware and software model of Arduino has kept them in the forefront.  Linux and ARM are the buzz-tech of the day, but if you want to get down to bare metal and flash LEDs using an 8-bit real-time operating system, Arduino will get you there.

My first Youtube video, and one of my first Arduino projects with the Adafruit Boarduino from March 2008.

If you are wondering what you could do with an Arduino, check out a couple of easy and cool projects from Sylvia: