Tag: arduino starter kit

Tutorials

Introduction to LCDs

2016-04-15 Dan

An LCD is a great way to communicate a lot of information fast from an Arduino. Combine it with a few buttons, and it suddenly becomes a great control interface for your new machine, whatever it may be. However, LCDs only use 16 pins to communicate with other circuit boards, but the Arduino UNO only has 13 pins. We’re going to need to use something in between to let us do more with less. This is where an I2C backpack comes to the rescue. The only tricky part is that each I2C backpack and LCD are slightly different and require some small tweaks. Today, let’s go through it and show you how the LCD/I2C combo works out.

Check out our final product:

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Tutorials

Arduino Starter Kit Tutorials

2015-03-31 Dan

This is index of existing and future MarginallyClever Arduino Starter Kit tutorials.

A moment of clarity

  • Arduino
  • Serial 1: Texting from an Arduino to a computer
  • Serial 2: Texting from a computer to an Arduino

Creating a Grammar and Vocabulary

  • Building and Drawing Circuits
  • Breadboards
  • Resistors
  • Capacitors
  • Transistors
  • LED
  • Button
  • Seven Segment Display 1 2
  • 2×16 LCD
  • Passive and Active Speakers
  • 8×8 LED
  • Potentiometer
  • Joystick
  • Stepper Motor
  • Servo
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Shift registers
  • Making PCBs
  • Turing machines, CPU, and Arduino
  • Methods
  • Variables
  • Loops
  • Branches

Forming sentences

  • Speaker 101: How to Blink (or Beep) Morse Code with Arduino
  • Speaker 201: How to make a Piezoelectric speaker play music
  • Decoding Morse Code with an Arduino and a Microphone
  • Little Big Planet Sackboy faces – 8×8 LED, Joystick, Arduino.
  • Maze game – 8×8 LED, Joystick, Arduino
  • Tetris 1 2 3 4 – 8×8 LED, Joystick, Arduino.

From there we can get into lots and lots of other stuff, not in the scope of this kit:

Having a conversation

  • How to make a linear actuator – pi and circle math
  • CNC machines – linear actuators, bresenham’s algorithm, kinematics, algebra
  • 3D printers – CNC machines, thermistors
  • Robot simulation – 2D & 3D graphics with OpenGL
  • CAD/CAM
  • Robot vision

Follow along and comment your questions. I’ll answer them and improve the tutorial based on your ideas.