My Arduino Adventure - Hello World

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When I was a kid - maybe 11 - I got an electronics kit for Christmas. It promised the ability to make all kinds of exciting projects, including building a radio. Of course, being a child I wanted to run before I could walk, so I went straight to the radio project, couldn't make it work, and the kit didn't get used much after that.

Now I'm a bit more than a kid, somewhat more patient and methodical, and I've got a new electronics kit. Basically it contains an Arduino Uno R3 and lots of other components including motors, LEDs and LED displays, sensors, buzzers, breadboards and wires. Sadly, it doesn't contain the things you need to make a radio. And I haven't entirely grown out of the learning to walk thing - I wanted to make an LED light up, so I touched the two termini to a 9V battery. And POOM!. It did light up. Briefly. Then a smell of burning pervaded the air. And I had a dead LED.

In this video I'm unboxing the kit and then doing my first project. In programming, whenever you learn a new coding language, the first thing you do is make it print 'Hello World' to the screen. The Hello World of the Arduino is to make the onboard LED blink - so that's what I'm doing, learning to walk.

Here's the video on my YouTube channel...


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