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Hello,
I decided to get me some Arduino kits, mainly to feel nostalgic about simple programming. Given the huge discounts (particularly when ordering 3 items) and some interest towards specific sensors, I decided not to get the Mega2560 starter, but the Uno starter kit, along with a sensor kit and a separate Mega2560. This all cost less than the Mega2560 starter kit, and I have 2 Arduino's to play with and a huge array of sensors (some double, but I feel there are less that don't interest me compared to when I would have gotten the Mega2560 starter kit). Two arduino's could be fun as they can communicate via i2c, something I would love to try, and immediately provides 2 platforms for the double sensors.
First experiences were great fun: the tutorials are very simple but give you a small feel of how to connect and program things. The kit contains many pieces (servomotor, motor, stepper motor, displays, ...) to keep one occupied. Seeing how easy it all is, maybe I should have gotten one of those robot kits (that drive around), but that is always possible later.
All in all great fun, and I would really recommend it for people who like to tinker with it. Nice is that you don't need to solder anything (well, unless you want to really make it final). The programming language resembles a simplified C. You don't need to program much to interface with the sensors, although care has to be taken when reading data as the whole system is a permanent loop; if you are not careful you read the same events twice or miss an event. It is nice that everything is so uncomplicated: you read a pin and you get a value. Or you have a value and send it to a pin. Very intuitive, but so nice to see the programming code have a real world effect (motor turns, sensor data is read, ...). It really allows you to focus on the functionality of what you want to make and then you see if it works in the real world. One thing: the Arduino IDE is quite primitive (no autocomplete or other code-helpers, no direct way of opening header files, ...); not a big miss but it may make it more difficult to quickly know which functionality a particular library offers.
Jörg
I decided to get me some Arduino kits, mainly to feel nostalgic about simple programming. Given the huge discounts (particularly when ordering 3 items) and some interest towards specific sensors, I decided not to get the Mega2560 starter, but the Uno starter kit, along with a sensor kit and a separate Mega2560. This all cost less than the Mega2560 starter kit, and I have 2 Arduino's to play with and a huge array of sensors (some double, but I feel there are less that don't interest me compared to when I would have gotten the Mega2560 starter kit). Two arduino's could be fun as they can communicate via i2c, something I would love to try, and immediately provides 2 platforms for the double sensors.
First experiences were great fun: the tutorials are very simple but give you a small feel of how to connect and program things. The kit contains many pieces (servomotor, motor, stepper motor, displays, ...) to keep one occupied. Seeing how easy it all is, maybe I should have gotten one of those robot kits (that drive around), but that is always possible later.
All in all great fun, and I would really recommend it for people who like to tinker with it. Nice is that you don't need to solder anything (well, unless you want to really make it final). The programming language resembles a simplified C. You don't need to program much to interface with the sensors, although care has to be taken when reading data as the whole system is a permanent loop; if you are not careful you read the same events twice or miss an event. It is nice that everything is so uncomplicated: you read a pin and you get a value. Or you have a value and send it to a pin. Very intuitive, but so nice to see the programming code have a real world effect (motor turns, sensor data is read, ...). It really allows you to focus on the functionality of what you want to make and then you see if it works in the real world. One thing: the Arduino IDE is quite primitive (no autocomplete or other code-helpers, no direct way of opening header files, ...); not a big miss but it may make it more difficult to quickly know which functionality a particular library offers.
Jörg
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