Skill

These are the various skills that people may need to know while learning a technology tutorial and could be required to complete a ‘hookup’ tutorial. Skills are most often learned by doing a physical action or using a physical thing.

Insulation Techniques for e-Textiles

January 22, 2015
Learn a few different ways to protect your conductive thread and LilyPad components in your next wearables project.

How to Use a Multimeter

January 9, 2015
Learn the basics of using a multimeter to measure continuity, voltage, resistance and current.

Installing a Bootloader on the MicroView

August 22, 2014
Fix your bootloader-less MicroView! This tutorial covers how to: disassemble the MicroView, wire it up to an assortment of programmers, program the bootloader, and test it out.

Customizing LilyPad LED Colors

May 19, 2014
A short guide to creating a rainbow of new LilyPad LED colors at home!

Make Your Own Fritzing Parts

March 18, 2014
Learn how to create your own Fritzing part so you can make amazing looking wiring diagrams, learn about schematics and PCB design, and get your design fabbed into a real PCB with Fritzing's PCB manufacturing service.

How to Use an Oscilloscope

February 25, 2014
How to work the dials and buttons on an oscilloscope, and a glossary of the o-scope lexicon.

Installing an Arduino Bootloader

December 4, 2013
This tutorial will teach you what a bootloader is and why you would need to install or reinstall it. We will also go over the process of burning a bootloader by flashing a hex file to an Arduino microcontroller.

Making Custom Footprints in EAGLE

September 27, 2013
This tutorial will show you how to make custom, 1:1 footprint for any IC in EAGLE.

How to Solder: Through-Hole Soldering

September 19, 2013
This tutorial covers everything you need to know about through-hole soldering.

Serial Terminal Basics

September 9, 2013
This tutorial will show you how to communicate with your serial devices using a variety of terminal emulator applications.

How to Install and Setup EAGLE

September 5, 2013
Not just how to download and install EAGLE, but how to install the SparkFun EAGLE Libraries and scripts.

Using EAGLE: Schematic

September 5, 2013
How to design a PCB in EAGLE using through-hole parts.

Using EAGLE: Board Layout

September 5, 2013
Part 2 of the Using Eagle tutorials, this one covers how to lay out a board after designing a schematic.

Using GitHub to Share with SparkFun

August 19, 2013
A simple step-by-step tutorial to help you download files from SparkFun's GitHub site, make changes, and share the changes with SparkFun.

How to Read a Schematic

July 12, 2013
An overview of component circuit symbols, and tips and tricks for better schematic reading. Click here, and become schematic-literate today!

How to Install FTDI Drivers

June 4, 2013
How to install drivers for the FTDI Basic on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

How to Use a Breadboard

May 14, 2013
Welcome to the wonderful world of breadboards. Here we will learn what a breadboard is and how to use one to build your very first circuit.

Installing Arduino IDE

March 26, 2013
A step-by-step guide to installing and testing the Arduino software on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Working with Wire

February 8, 2013
How to strip, crimp, and work with wire.

How to Power a Project

February 7, 2013
A tutorial to help figure out the power requirements of your project.

Installing an Arduino Library

January 11, 2013
How do I install a custom Arduino library? It's easy! This tutorial will go over how to install an Arduino library using the Arduino Library Manager. For libraries not linked with the Arduino IDE, we will also go over manually installing an Arduino library.

Using GitHub

December 30, 2012
How to use repositories and GitHub for version control.

Designing PCBs: SMD Footprints

December 21, 2012
How to design new SMD parts in Eagle PCB

Designing PCBs: Advanced SMD

December 10, 2012
Advanced Eagle layout for PCBs with SMD devices.

Old Tutorials

Looking for the old, archived tutorials? Head on over to the archived tutorials on the main SparkFun site.
Please be aware that the tutorials you find there are no longer actively maintained.