Project 1 - LED Flasher

Project 1 is as straight-forward as they go - connect up an LED with a small resistor and program the Arduino to flash the LED on and off. The circuit is very simple but it's the code where I'm finding myself spending the most time reading and examining. I'm not a programmer by any means, although I've had some programming classes in the past. That said... I'm not a programmer! So this C language is a bit confusing with all its void-this and setup-that stuff.

For now, I'm just going to accept that this is the format and requirements for programming in C (for Arduino) and if I find later I need more advanced training, I'll dive into C programming... but not yet. Having worked through the Make: Electronics book, I feel I've got a solid grasp on the electronics portion - voltage, resistance, current, etc... and how many of these components work... still, it was a short read to go back over the details of how to read a resistor's bands and how to find the Anode (versus Cathode) of an LED.

Off to a good start... the Arduino appears to be functioning properly and the IDE is installed properly, so at least I won't have to troubleshoot trying to get moving on the projects.

Two videos below - first is just the plain code seen on page 23 (I hope my page 23 of the PDF file I'm viewing on the iPad matches the page 23 in the print book - someone let me know if it doesn't and I'll stop using page numbers). The LED blinks on and off in 1 second increments. The 2nd video is where I changed the HIGH and LOW delays to 250ms.