Arduino Uno REV3 [A000066]

This really is a great product, fast delivery and so easy to use.

If you've never knowingly programmed a microprocessor before, they are electronic chips which can be taught to perform particular tasks - to 'teach' them, you write an instruction list (a program) which they run, and the program makes the chip behave in the way that your program determines it should. So why is that interesting? Well, Arduino boards are designed in a way which makes the electrical signal connections in and out of the chip easily accessable. They can read switches and keypads, they can turn LEDs on and off, drive LCD displays and with a little bit of extra electronic hardware they can operate electrically controlled switches (Relays) and control motors. Putting a project together and breathing the vital spark of life into it with a program you wrote yourself really is a magical experience, and one which never gets old, because the next idea is always a development of the last or something completely new.If you already know what a microprocessor is and have perhaps done some programming on AVR, PIC or similar devices then the Arduino series (of which this is just one model) will be a useful, low-cost addition to your toybox, although I would hesitate to call this a toy, because it is quite technically advanced and comes with no written instructions. A bright child could certainly make one of these fly given some guidance, but I think they would struggle without the initial help of a knowledgeable adult or other good online or offline information source. If you are buying this for a child I would take a look through the Arduino books here on Amazon and choose a well-reviewed tutorial book to hand over along with the Uno.The title 'Arduino' doesn't refer to a type of microprocessor you've never heard of - indeed, different Arduino boards are based on different microprocessors - This particular one uses an Atmel Atmega 328P. The name 'Arduino' really refers to a microprocessor development suite of hardware and software. The main software runs on the PC - the microprocessor also has some firmware preprogrammed into it to handle communications with the PC software and load and run user programs in the microprocessor's program memory. While your project is under development the Arduino board is conveniently powered from the PC via the USB lead. Once it is working to your satisfaction, the Arduino can be disconnected from the PC and run stand-alone on a simple unregulated DC power supply to perform whatever function you have programmed it to do.The Arduino concept consists of:-A microprocessor development board with plenty of input/output capability-A USB data / power connection to your PC-Integrated Development Environment (IDE) software for your PC, Mac, and unusually, Linux as well.By default, the Arduino Uno assumes that six of the input-output pins will be used as analogue input pins, and a further fourteen are regarded as general digital input/output pins. This basic I/O functionality will be quite enough to keep beginners busy for a while.For experienced microprocessor users, as on most microcontrollers a lot of these pins have secondary functions which are disabled by default. The details of those are beyond the scope of this review, but briefly, the secondary pin functions include multiple Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs and I2C and SPI serial communications. For further information, seek out the Atmega 328P datasheet on Atmel's website.The PC software is not provided when you buy a plain Arduino board like this, but it is downloadable, free, from the Arduino website. You do get a short USB lead.The programming language here is essentially 'C', simplified in some ways: For example, Arduino relieves you of the chore of having to predefine (prototype) all the functions before you use them.The Arduino system provides so many predefined functions and libraries for the programmer that it is genuinely possible to create a huge number of microprocessor driven projects using only the functions and libraries that the IDE provides, linking them together with just a few lines of code. One thing you might typically want to do is to connect a standard two-line alphanumeric display to the Arduino. Normally, it would be left to the programmer to write the routines needed to initialise and run the display - but Arduino has a library for this built in - you just give it some basic information about how the display is connected, and from then on using the display is just a matter of using the functions provided by the 'LiquidCrystal' library. The abundance of predefined functions and libraries, many contributed by third parties, means that fully working projects can be created even by people who don't necessarily understand (or want to understand) the use of microprocessors down to register level - If you want a 1000mS delay, there's a function for that - there's no need to manipulate or interrogate a timer down at register / bit level.If you do want to do that, there is of course nothing to stop you doing it, the only caveat being that code written to control the microprocessor's functions directly at hardware level may not run on other Arduino boards which use a different microprocessor.When connected to the PC, the Arduino appears to the PC to be a USB port serial device: Likewise, the PC appears to the Arduino board as a serial device - the IDE has a built in terminal facility so it's a simple matter for your Arduino project to send diagnostic or other information to the PC as serial data, and of course any other PC software capable of reading from / sending to the PC's serial port can also communicate with the Arduino by this means. For example, you could write an Arduino program (or 'Sketch' as they are called in Arduino-speak) which continually reads a voltage value from one of the Arduino's Analogue input ports and sends that reading to the PC via the serial port: On the PC, a Python program also written by you could serially receive and display the value in a nice graphic interface window.For simple projects, connections to external components like displays, relay boards, LEDs and switches can be via simple flying plug in leads plugged into the single-inline connectors along the edges of the board: However, the Arduino system has also spawned a whole host of third-party add-on hardware boards, known as 'shields', which can plug directly onto the top of an Arduino board to give it additional hardware capability. For example, there are Relay shields, Wifi shields, Stepper motor driver shields, all kinds of amazing interfaces designed to enable Arduino boards to connect to almost anything which can be read or controlled electronically.You'll find that this product is available under several slightly different descriptions on Amazon, and each of them has their own set of reviews as though they are separate products although they are actually the same item. To see more reviews of the Arduino Uno R3 than those you find here, seek out those other listings.

Worth getting the official uno I think, well built with a nice clear plastic base.

If you are reading this review, chances are you might know what an 'Arduino' board is intended to do.But just in case you do not - it's a tiny 'embedded' computer. The sort of thing you might find in a prize-winning maze running robot, or a walking robot, or a fabricator machine, or a smart GPS, or (in my case) a musical instrument.It's called 'embedded' because the computer is part of the machine, rather than sitting on a desk top (or lap top). Often there is no display other than a few blinking lights - sometimes a small LCD, or more rarely a full-on computer monitor.That's because the pins on the Arduino's processor are mostly I/O lines (Input/Output) and they are typically used to scan push buttons or sensors, or something on a daughter-board (called an Arduino 'shield') that has something else on it. My favourite shield has a Ronin 802 musical instrument synthesiser on it. Then the outputs are used to flash an LED, or play music, or pretty much anything that electronics can do.The important thing to remember with the Arduino is that it is easy to use. I just hooked up the USB lead, downloaded & installed the free software (which comes with demo examples) configured it to talk to an Arduino Uno (this model) and loaded the first 'sketch' (Arduino name for a program) from the examples, starting with the one called 'blink' (pretty easy to read and understand), and clicked on the upload icon. Bingo! The LED on the Arduino was blinking, once every second.Blinking is not a really big deal.But it's great for helping any newcomer to Arduino code understand what it does, and how. Rather than read a gazillion books, I was just tweaking the example code (blinking slower, eg) at first. It's pretty easy to pick up - I only started on it in January this year, and this is our third Arduino..... Yes, it's habit-forming. But if you like puzzles, puzzling out code design and then making something all your own is a truly wonderful feeling.And there are now thousands of 'sketches' free to download to make it do all sorts of things from music synthesis to an electric spider.... Have a look on You-Tube!It's an Arduino, it's wonderful, and at under 20 quid I recommend it to anyone who's curious, or who has a curious child around.

I was nervous to give arduino a go, as no matter how much I read about the programming I wasn’t getting my head around it. I gave in and bought the board as I needed to have a go to progress with my project idea. The free software is really intuitive, and the built in library’s show you what you need to do so you can borrow bits of code from there