It's Here

So my Uno board came in the other day and I got a chance to play around with it for a few minutes and take a look at the schematic today.  At first I did not think that you could do anything with the board without wiring up some circuitry on a breadboard but there is actually one LED that is available and the blink sketch which comes as an example makes use of it.

If you go to Open > Basics > Blink it will open a sketch that turns the LED on for 1 second and then turns the LED off for one second.

Everything works very smoothly for me.  Simply plug it in and hit the "play" button to compile and download the sketch.  I did have to select the USB port that was being used but once that was done it downloaded without any issues.

It looks like really all you can do is "burn and learn" with this system - there is no debugging available to allow the setting of breakpoints, stepping, etc. so it looks like it may be difficult to figure out what is happening in more complicated systems.  However, I seem to recall that I read somewhere a debugging feature is in the works so we may get one in the near future.

Quick First Impression - Arduino IDE

So while I wait for my board to come in I am starting to get up to speed on the environment and the Arduino syntax.  This is going to sound really weird but for the life of me I could not find a screenshot of the IDE.  Of course if you really want a screenshot you can always do a google image search and find one but what I am saying is that on the general Arduiono website I don't recall seeing one so the first time I got a glimpse of the software was after I had installed it.  It looks much more like a text editor than what was expected based upon my experience with IDEs for other micro-controller platforms.  Seems to have very few panes with essentially a code editing area and then a status output below.  I'm not saying that is a bad thing, just different.  It makes me wonder how you manage multiple files in a project in order to bring in the libraries you create, etc.

Below is an obligatory screenshot of an example opened in the editor window.

Decisions, Decisions

So I sit down to order an Arduino board and there are a lot of different options.  Not only in the various types of boards but also there are a lot of different places to order them from.  Let's take a look at what I have found.

The hardware section of the official Arduino website shows many board assemblies.  Uno, LilyPad, Mega, Fio, Nano, and that isn't event getting into the shields.  So what are the differences and where should a beginner start?  One basic thing to remember is:

• Arduino boards are sort of "mother" boards which hold the micro-controller and the support circuitry needed to program and run your application.
• Arduino shields are a sort of "daughter" card which add functionality and interface to the connectors on the Arduino board.

I decided that starting with the Uno seemed to be the best choice.  From what I can tell it seems to be the best entry level board.  However, there now comes a second dilemma - which version of the Uno should I get?  It is now up to rev 3 and it seems that you pay a premium in order to get the latest hardware.  From what I found at various online retailers the Rev 3 boards about $3 more than the prior Uno generation.  While you do get some hardware improvements they did not seem to justify the few extra dollars cost to me.  On a somewhat related not, you could also purchase the Duemilanove version, which is nearly identical to the Uno for about $0.65 less.  But to me it was worth the extra few cents to get the Uno.

So now my hardware is in the mail and I guess the next step is to get the development environment installed while I wait.  If you have made it this far, thanks for reading!