What is an Arduino?

Contributors: b_e_n

What Does it Do?

The Arduino hardware and software was designed for artists, designers, hobbyists, hackers, newbies, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can interact with buttons, LEDs, motors, speakers, GPS units, cameras, the internet, and even your smart-phone or your TV! This flexibility combined with the fact that the Arduino software is free, the hardware boards are pretty cheap, and both the software and hardware are easy to learn has led to a large community of users who have contributed code and released instructions for a huge variety of Arduino-based projects.

For everything from robots and a heating pad hand warming blanket to honest fortune-telling machines, and even a Dungeons and Dragons dice-throwing gauntlet, the Arduino can be used as the brains behind almost any electronics project.

And that's really just the tip of the iceberg -- if you're curious about where to find more examples of Arduino projects in action, here are some good resources for Arduino-based projects to get your creative juices flowing:

• Instructables
• Arduino Playground
• The ITP Physical Computing Wiki
• LadyAda
• Make: Projects
• and, of course, you can find plenty more Arduino tutorials here at learn.sparkfun.com.