The Arduino Inventor's Guide Read Free Page A

RESOURCES
    All the resources you’ll need for these projects are available for you to download, reference, use, and modify. The resources include all the example code shown and discussed in the book, the cutting templates for the final builds, and code to get you started with hacking and modifying your projects to experiment further.
    You’ll find all of these resources in a single ZIP file that you can download from
https://www.nostarch.com/arduinoinventor/
. If you get stuck or something doesn’t seem to work, you can always reference these files as a guide and a fallback.
SPREAD THE WORD: SHARING YOUR WORK
    SparkFun is a hardware and electronics company with a strong focus on being open source—it is one of the core tenets the company was founded on. When we build projects, we love to share our ideas, code, and design files with our community so that you can leverage our knowledge base to use in your next project. As you build up your projects, we encourage you to share what you’re doing, too. Show a friend, or post it online. There are many different places that we’d love to see your work!
    Use social media like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to tell us about what you’re making. Tag us
@sparkfunedu
and
@nostarch
. We also have an online project gallery called InventorSpace at
https://invent.sparkfun.com/
. If you have an idea or a project that you want to show off, post it there. We hope this book provides you with some inspiration to start something amazing!
    Finally, you can also email us with your projects, photos, or general comments and questions at
[email protected]
. We’ll occasionally pick some great photos and projects to highlight on our blog. Who knows, we might end up asking to use one of your projects in our next book!

Electronics Primer
    This chapter provides a broad overview of electronics to readers who have little to no experience with electronics and electricity. If you’re already comfortable with some of the topics in this chapter, you can treat it like a choose your own adventure book and skip to subjects you want to learn more about or even move directly on to Project 1 .
    If you’re new to electronics or just want a refresher, we suggest reading this chapter in full. While it’s not a complete guide to electronics (there are whole books, classes, and degrees on the subject), this chapter is a handy reference designed to arm you with basic concepts and vocabulary. If you’re looking for more in-depth information on electricity, electronics, and circuits, please see the recommended reading list at the end of this chapter.
ELECTRICITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND BASIC TERMS
    Electricity is an odd beast. In a lot of ways it’s predictable, but it can be a little sneaky at times. If you look up
electricity
in the dictionary, you’ll probably find the definition sheds little light on what it is, how it works, or, most importantly, how you can use it. Let’s start with the basics.
What Is Electricity?
    To understand electricity, you first need to understand the structure of an atom. Atoms are the building blocks of everything around you. An atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The electrons have a negative charge, and the protons have a positive charge. A typical atom has the same number of electrons as protons and therefore is neutral in charge. Electricity is a form of energy that involves the movement or storage of charges; it is the phenomenon that occurs when we push or force charges to move in a prescribed manner or a defined path. If you’ve ever seen a lightning storm, you’ve seen evidence of the transfer of charges between the clouds and the ground. These charges are transferred through the air molecules of our atmosphere, lighting up the sky as they move. The movement and transfer of charges is called
current
. Current is measured in units called amperes (A) or milliamperes (mA).
    NOTE
    Conventionally, we refer to current as the movement of a