What is Arduino: first steps in electronics

Arduino is a small board with its own processor and memory. The board also has a couple dozen pins to which you can connect all sorts of components: light bulbs, sensors, motors, kettles, routers, magnetic door locks, and in general everything that runs on electricity.

You can load a program into the Arduino processor that will control all these devices according to a given algorithm. In this way, you can create an infinite number of unique cool gadgets made by yourself and according to your own idea. To understand the general idea, take a look at the illustration. It does not reflect even a millionth of all the possibilities, but still gives a primary idea. Learn more at https://electronicshacks.com/interfacing-a-flame-sensor-with-arduino-guide/. 

Available Difficulty The Arduino platform has become wildly popular due to its simplicity and friendliness. Even a complete zero in programming and circuitry can master the basics of working with Arduino in a couple of hours. This is facilitated by thousands of publications, tutorials, notes on the Internet and an excellent series of video tutorials on Arduino.

Programs for Arduino are written in plain C++, supplemented with simple and understandable functions for controlling I/O on contacts. If you already know C ++, Arduino will become the door to a new world where programs are not limited to the computer, but interact with the outside world and influence it. If you are new to programming - no problem, you can easily learn, it's simple.

For convenient work with Arduino boards, there is a free official Arduino IDE programming environment that works under Windows, Mac OS and Linux. With it, downloading a new program to the controller becomes a matter of one click, just connect the board to a computer via USB. Although more inquisitive minds can work through Visual Studio, Eclipse, other IDEs or the command line, the XOD IDE visual programming environment is suitable for beginners.

You won't need a soldering iron. Full-fledged devices can be assembled using a special breadboard, jumpers and wires absolutely without soldering. Construction has never been so fast and easy.

Sandwich principle Another distinguishing feature of Arduino is the presence of expansion boards, the so-called shields or simply “shields”. These are additional boards that are placed like layers of a sandwich on top of an arduino to give it new features. For example, there are expansion boards for connecting to a local network and the Internet (Ethernet Shield), for controlling powerful motors (Motor Shield), for obtaining coordinates and time from GPS satellites (GPS / GLONASS receiver), and many others.

Eventually The Arduino is the heart of the kit, with no finite set of parts and no limit to the variety of things that can be built. Everything is limited only by your imagination. It's a new world, a killer hobby, and a great gift. Tens of thousands of people in the world have already understood this.