Getting Started with Arduino

Chapter 1. Introduction

Arduino is an open source physical computing platform based on a simple input/output (I/O) board and a development environment that implements the Processing language (www.processing.org). Arduino can be used to develop standalone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (such as Flash, Processing, VVVV, or Max/MSP). The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment) can be downloaded for free from www.arduino.cc

Arduino is different from other platforms on the market because of these features:

• It is a multiplatform environment; it can run on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

• It is based on the Processing programming IDE, an easy-to-use development environment used by artists and designers.

• You program it via a USB cable, not a serial port. This feature is useful, because many modern computers don't have serial ports.

• It is open source hardware and software—if you wish, you can download the circuit diagram, buy all the components, and make your own, without paying anything to the makers of Arduino.

• The hardware is cheap. The USB board costs about €20 (currently, about US$35) and replacing a burnt-out chip on the board is easy and costs no more than €5 or US$4. So you can afford to make mistakes.

• There is an active community of users, so there are plenty of people who can help you.

• The Arduino Project was developed in an educational environment and is therefore great for newcomers to get things working quickly.

This book is designed to help beginners understand what benefits they can get from learning how to use the Arduino platform and adopting its philosophy.

Intended Audience

This book was written for the "original" Arduino users: designers and artists. Therefore, it tries to explain things in a way that might drive some engineers crazy. Actually, one of them called the introductory chapters of my first draft "fluff". That's precisely the point. Let's face it: most engineers aren't able to explain what they do to another engineer, let alone a regular human being. Let's now delve deep into the fluff.

Note

Arduino builds upon the thesis work Hernando Barragan did on the Wiring platform while studying under Casey Reas and me at IDII Ivrea.

After Arduino started to become popular, I realised how experimenters, hobbyists, and hackers of all sorts were starting to use it to create beautiful and crazy objects. I realised that you're all artists and designers in your own right, so this book is for you as well.

Arduino was born to teach Interaction Design, a design discipline that puts prototyping at the centre of its methodology. There are many definitions of Interaction Design, but the one that I prefer is:

Interaction Design is the design of any interactive experience.

In today's world, Interaction Design is concerned with the creation of meaningful experiences between us (humans) and objects. It is a good way to explore the creation of beautiful—and maybe even controversial—experiences between us and technology. Interaction Design encourages design through an iterative process based on prototypes of ever-increasing fidelity. This approach—also part of some types of "conventional" design—can be extended to include prototyping with technology; in particular, prototyping with electronics.

The specific field of Interaction Design involved with Arduino is Physical Computing (or Physical Interaction Design).