Basic Arduino Beginners Kit
What is this?
There are often attendees at Arduino U who are just starting out and have not yet invested in any hardware. This kit is targeted at these people and the selection of items has been informed by the following principles:
- CHEAP Genuine Arduino or official clone is around $35. This is a quite an investment when you don't even know what the thing is yet!
- Basic but comprehensive. The kit should have a wide enough selection of VERY BASIC parts to allow construction of SIMPLE circuits for all the “example” programs that come with the IDE.
- Fruit is Fun! There should be at least a few “complex” components to allow at least a glimpse of what the platform is capable of.
- Available NOW! Cheap components and parts are readily available from various Chinese websites, but these usually take a month or more to arrive. In any case, beginners will generally not know what to order from such sites.
Target cost for the entire kit is < $20. Sale price will be around $30. The $10 profit will go directly to the space. There are plenty of premium price Arduino kit products out there already - this needs to be a basic beginner hack pack that gives good value for money.
V1.0 Kit Contents
(Total cost of V1.0 kit = $20.57 on 16/12/14)
Kit will be packaged with cheap plastic bags, paper and cardboard inside a laser cut Artifactory branded MDF case.
| Component | Qty | Approx. Cost | Link | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese Arduino clone + USB cable. | 1 | $8.16 | Aliexpress | Linked option is not the cheapest, but uses a DIP ATMEGA which can be helpful for faultfinding and fixing. I intend to have replacement boot-loaded ATMEGAs for sale as well. |
| 9V battery clip | 1 | 41c | Aliexpress | Simple way to supply Arduino when not connected to USB. |
| Breadboard | 1 | $1.78 | Aliexpress | For construction of temporary circuits without soldering. |
| 20cm jumper wires M-M | 25 | $1.06 | Aliexpress | Connect from Arduino to bread board and between components on breadboard. |
| 20cm jumper wires M-F | 15 | 56c | Aliexpress | Connect from Arduino to components with header pins. |
| 40 pin header | 1 | 21c | Aliexpress | Handy for reliable connect/disconnect of semi permanent breadboard circuits. |
| Solid core hookup wire | 1 | 1c | in house. | Stripped from surplus Cat5e (blue data cable). |
| 390 ohm resistors | 30 | 19c | aliexpress | For current limiting simple circuits connected to Arduino output pins. |
| 1k ohm resistors | 30 | 18c | Aliexpress | For current limiting transistor base circuits and other loads connected to Arduino output pins. |
| 10k ohm resistors | 30 | 18c | Aliexpress | For digital and analogue input “pull-down” and voltage divider circuits. |
| Red 5mm LED | 5 | 11c | Aliexpress | Silly numbers of LED's, but cheap! |
| Green 5mm LED | 5 | 11c | Aliexpress | |
| Yellow 5mm LED | 5 | 11c | Aliexpress | |
| Blue 5mm LED | 5 | 11c | Aliexpress | |
| White 5mm LED | 5 | 11c | Aliexpress | |
| RGB 5mm LED | 3 | 22c | Aliexpress | 4 pin common cathode red/green/blue LED |
| Pushbutton | 8 | 15c | Aliexpress | Tactile switches |
| 10k ohm potentiometer | 1 | 58c | Aliexpress | |
| LDR | 2 | 11c | Aliexpress | Light Dependent Resistor |
| BC337 | 4 | 20c | Futurlec | general purpose transistor. Only 1 needed to demonstrate, but enough supplied for some useful projects. |
| SPDT 5V Relay | 1 | 55c | Futurlec | Used with transistor for “how to drive a high power / AC load” demonstration. |
| 74HC595 IC | 1 | 19c | Aliexpress | 8-bit Serial-to-Parallel Shift Register. Pretty sure there are multitudes of these in the boxes of free components we got some time ago… |
| 7 seg display | 1 | $1.16 | eBay | Common cathode 2.5cm red 4 digit 7 segment LED numeral display |
| Ultrasonic Sensor | 1 | $1.19 | Aliexpress | Mitch has offered these free for the first kits (Thanks Mitch!) but we still need to factor in price for later. |
| 9g hobby servo | 1 | $1.93 | Aliexpress | |
| eboxen enclosure | 1 | $1 | in house |
Resources
Documentation, links and other resources for kit V1.0 and V2.0 can be found here.
Add Ons
Add your suggestions here!!