The digrams - Fritzing

I use a program called Fritzing to make all my diagrams that you can find in my postings.

Its open source and 100% free, I find that Fritzing is probably the easiest way to draw up circuit diagrams, real world breadboard views and even circuit designs which you can use to make your project enter the real physical world!

You can find the download link to your operating systems here LINK, they do ask for a donation just like the Arduino IDE, it all goes in to helping the program develop further so please do donate if you can!

4511 BCD to 7 segment decoder - 7 Segment display

In this project we will look at the 4511 chip and get it to display and output to a standard common cathode 7 segment display.

By the end of this project you will have a fully working chip that only uses a few pins from the Arduino and gives you an awesome number display that's easy to change!

Must have components

Just having an Arduino is one thing but what if you want to do something with it?

I have assembled a list of a few components that would be a good idea to have around for your experiments.

All of these can be purchased on-line or from local electronics parts suppliers, sadly in the UK there not a lot of "walk in" electronics shops that cater for the hobbyist or small volume parts supply :(.

If you are in the UK (and possibly in other country) Maplin do stock most of the common parts you might have to ask for them.

I tend to get most of my parts of  CPC UK (massive range) but you do have to order around £10 worth of parts to get free delivery.

Failing that try looking on Amazon or eBay if you know exactly what part you want and do not mind the quality.

Hello World, Lets get started with a Flashing LED

Lets get cracking with the first project.

This one is nice and simple, this program will make the inbuilt LED, shared on pin 13, flash on and off every second until you turn off the Arduino.

You can also find this starter project elsewhere on the Internet it might be called the "Arduino Hello World" or "Blink".

Arduino IDE

The Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is the easiest way to get started doing awesome things with your new Arduino.

The IDE is made by the Arduino team and works with not only the genuine boards but also the clones!

As of today (12/04/2015) the IDE is no longer just for Arduino, Intel's Galileo and Edison boards can be programmed with it too making the IDE even more useful that its first start in life.  Many company use the IDE in there product design.

Here is the link to downloads the software (Link), it’s multiply platform and works in the same way on all OS's (yes I have tried them all ... how sad!).

You may be prompted to contribute a little bit of money to help with the development of the IDE, if you can donate anything that will be able to help please do think about doing it (Link).