OK you’ve gotten your Arduino set up and also figured out how to use the software to send sketches to the board. Powerful stuff!
But…just running example sketches is a little boring. What we really want to do is use our own creativity and skill to write new sketches! That’s what we’ll be doing in this lesson.
We’ll start off easy by just modifying something that already works. You might not expect it, but most of the time as a hardware and software artist will just be modifying someone else’s code examples!
This is known as the “Hey let’s change something and see what happens” programming technique. It may not be formally taught, but everyone does it!
To start we will venture deep into the Blink sketch, looking at each line and trying to understand what its doing.
Then we will start hacking the sketch, and maybe even meet an internationally-famous DJ and design custom hardware for him!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
