Day 1: Opening the Sparkfun Inventor's Kit

My wife, Victoria, was kind enough to purchase the Sparkfun Inventor's Kit for me for Christmas. This kit costs about $95 and includes an Arduino board for running programs, a breadboard for creating circuits, and a variety of things like motors, sensors, and LEDs to hook up in a circuit. It also comes with a very nice manual with some basic projects. The code for the projects which can be uploaded to the Arduino are available online.

It's a nice kit that comes with a nice plastic box to keep everything in. Fancy eh?

Everything in the box comes in nice little labelled pouches. All you have to do is attach the Arduino and the breadboard to the little plastic dish they give you. Below are the contents of the package.

Setting up the Arduino with my computer could not have been easier. Just follow some simple instructions on the Arduino website. I was up and running my first program in about 10 minutes. Since the Arduino was powered by the USB port connected to my PC, there was no need to hook up batteries or anything. Once all the drivers were installed, I followed some of the simple instructions for the first circuit presented in the Sparkfun manual. It's a simple circuit that creates a blinking LED light.

As you can see, the instructions are accompanied by very clear and helpful illustrations and explanations. After setting up the circuit, I opened up the provided code which was also very clearly annotated. I hit upload and boom! Blinking LED!

By adjusting the program a little bit, I was able to adjust the speed of the blinking. Simple but fun. Who knew a simple little blinking light could bring so much joy! And thus ended my first day of playing with my new Arduino.