Arduino "How To's" and Projects: "Bite sized" pages, some about complete Arduino based projects, others about specific Arduino skills and techniques, i.e. tools for your use while building your own projects

Arduino Programming Course: A series of pages. If you read them in sequence, you will be taken through many, many aspects of programming an Arduino in its version of C. The pages are presented in a carefully considered sequence. The sequence was chosen to let you walk first, then run when ready. That isn't to say that you can't dip in at random, but if you are just beginning with programming, using the sequence may, in the long run, be a better choice.

You don't need to pay for a compiler: the tutorials can be followed with the free software that is available online for use with Arduinos. It runs on Windows XP and can also be used on Linux boxes (hurrah!) and Macs. Thus, everything is valuable to, and supported by a wide community of users.

Feel free to use the tutorials in programming courses, but mention of "SheepdogGuides.com" would be appreciated.

I became excited about the Arduino at the start of 2008. If you are bothered about its use of a C-like language, don't be. It us just another high level language. If you can program in Java, or Pascal, etc, you can program in the Arduino language. (People from a Pascal background can say "goodbye" to the finger- annoying ":=", but semicolons remain a "little joy" to stay on top of.....)

I've used the Arduino development software extensively under Windows, and have, successfully(!), given it a short "test drive" on a Linux (Ubuntu 7.04) box. It installed on Ubuntu nicely, there are installation instructions on the Arduino site.

Also, I have an alternative, "quick start" guide. The alternative guide is written for people who already know something about programming.

You may want to go to the main Arduino site, www.arduino.cc if you haven't been there before.

My pages about Arduino programming were started in February 2008. I didn't know much about the Arduino then, but know a lot more now.

So why did I start publishing so quickly, even though I was (then) new to the device?

I did it, and the subsequent work, because I think the Arduino is a great product. I like the support it already has, and hope to see it go from considerable strength to even greater success.

I say that on the basis of working with computers since 1968, and as someone who taught for twenty years. I don't yet say it on the basis of extensive experience with the Arduino.

(If you think microcontrollers seem pretty cool, but you're not sure that the Arduino is what you need, my introduction to microcontrollers might be helpful.)

       Editorial Philosophy

I dislike 'fancy' websites with more concern for a flashy appearance than for good content. For a pretty picture, I can go to an art gallery. Of course, an attractive site WITH content deserves praise... as long as that pretty face doesn't cost download time. In any case....

I am trying to present this material in a format which makes it easy for you to USE it.

Before I turn to fancy things, here's a simple idea which I think will be useful to you. These pages are browser friendly. If you resize the window your browser occupies, these pages will re-wrap themselves nicely. They are much easier to work with if you make the column of text you are trying to read narrower. (See my Power Browsing page for more tips like this.)

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Offline use...

Most of us have HTML capable wordprocessors. My pages don't do "clever" things. You can save them from a browser, and re-load them to the browser from your hard-disc later, off-line. (I describe this in detail below.) OpenOffice (the excellent, FREE, office suite for Windows AND Linux from www.openoffice.org) takes HTML in its stride. With WordPerfect, you can load the .htm file, select all, copy to clipboard, start a new WordPerfect document, then paste in the text, mostly intact and cleansed of HTML.

You should be able to read the tutorials on-line without difficulty. However, you should ALSO find it easy to capture them for off line use, including editing for your own purposes. The following should work. I would suggest that you create a folder for the tutorials so that you can retain my filenames with no risk of clashes. Remember, however, if you pull the tutorials offline, and use them there, you won't get the benefits of revisions to the online version which arise after you do your "harvesting".

On-line, use your browser to view the tutorial you want to capture.

Use the browser's File|Save As... to save the web-page to your disc. At this point you can log off, or visit other pages, perhaps saving them, too.

When you have logged off, just use your browser's File ! Load command to view the material. If you want to edit the files, try using your usual wordprocessor. Failing that, start Notepad (or Wordpad, or anything you like, but then you're on your own <g>). Load the file you saved. Turn word-wrap on. (Notepad: Edit|Word-wrap.)

Snip off the html header and footer. Re-save the document, changing the extension to .txt or .doc Depending on the tutorial, there will be more or less HTML code within the body of the text. With luck, your wordprocessor will cope with this. Give OpenOffice a try if not! Otherwise you can use global search and replaces to remove most of the tags fairly quickly.

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This would seem to be the place for a plug for Textpad. It is much more than Notepad, while not being all that a "wordprocessor" is... but it DOES have features that you will soon come to love, if you do much work with text files.... especially programming or HTML coding. All of my web pages are created with it, and much of the other text work I do is done with it, too. It has a spell check. It has syntax highlighting. I turn to my wordprocessor (OpenOffice Writer, aka ooWriter) only when I want to produce a letter- formatting and font options are not extensively supported in TextPad. However, it does have many, many, very neat touches which make it a joy to use for many things. I particularly like their answer to "autotext", and the fact that the user can configure how it displays different classes of documents. Here is a link to their site. Shareware: You can try it for free, and it is not expensive to register for continued use.

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Filenames...

I've tried to be organized: Names start "aht", for "Arduino How To essays". Next is a digit, for the level. Then I've used letters one after the other, e.g. aht1a, aht1b, aht1c. The letter doesn't mean much... it just shows when I got around to that particular topic! Sadly, there are some files with non-systematic names. Sorry!

Ad from page's editor: Yes.. I do enjoy compiling these things for you... hope they are helpful. However.. this doesn't pay my bills!!! If you find this stuff useful, (and you run an MS-DOS or Windows PC) please visit my freeware and shareware page, download something, and circulate it for me? Links on your page to this page would also be appreciated!

Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org