Day 1 Arduino Advent Calendar

Arduino Advent Calendar Day 1 - Meet the Arduino

Can you believe it? It's already December 1st! Where did the year go? Oh well, the good news is it's time to dive into our Arduino Advent Calendar!

We're placing the daily guides up on guides.littlebird.com.au.

As you know, the Arduino is an open-source microcontroller and software originally designed to make electronics accessible for artists and designers. 

The Arduino team made the Arduino accessible by taking the artist-friendly interactive/new media arts software environment called Processing and making it work with their relatively cheap hardware board. The team called the new software the Arduino IDE (integrated development environment). For the first time, artists, designers and hobbyists could control hardware without needing an electronics engineering background.

Today you're getting a brand spanking new Arduino Uno compatible and in today's guide we're going to learn how to install the Arduino Software and blink the onboard LED (light emitting diode).

We're going to do this by opening the Blink Example Sketch. A sketch is simply a program written within the Arduino IDE.

The Arduino Uno comes with an onboard LED that is attached to pin 13. Being able to take control of the onboard LED is important because it enables us to show that our toolchain is working, and we can program our Arduino!

Without further ado, let's get on with the Day 1 Guide! 

Check out this great video that Craig has made!   We love to see what you are doing with your kit.  Write a comment or send us an email!