Guides: The Spark: Arduino

Arduino

Learn first-hand how to use Arduino, a tool that can transform the average desktop computer into a device that can interact with the physical world in a whole new way. Explore this cutting-edge technology with us and expand your software-writing horizons.

Kits and Boards

Arduino Esplora

Specifications and Info.

Description: Game controller-shaped microcontroller board derived from the Arduino Leonardo. It has a number of built-in, ready-to-use sensors already on the board, for easy interaction. It's designed for people who want to get up and running with Arduino without having to learn about the electronics wiring first.
Info: Overview / Specifications | Getting Started Guide

Included

Outputs: Onboard sound and light outputs
Input Sensors: Joystick, a slider, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer, a microphone, and a light sensor.
Connectors: Two Tinkerkit input and output connectors, and a socket for a color TFT LCD screen

Circulation Information

House Location: DP
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Arduino Mega 2560

Specifications and Info.

Description: The Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started. The Mega 2560 board is compatible with most shields designed for the Uno and the former boards Duemilanove or Diecimila.

Circulation Information

House Location: DP
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Arduino Uno boards (Multiple Copies)

Specifications and Info.

Description: Microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P (datasheet). It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz quartz crystal, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.
Info: Specifications

Circulation Information

House Location: DP
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Arduino Starter Pack

Specifications and Info.

Description: This bundle is designed to get you started quickly and easily on your path of learning electronics. It's designed for everyone, even people with little or no electronics and programming experience. The starter pack has everything you need (except tools) to begin your Arduino journey!

Included

Click here for a full list.

Circulation Information

House Location: DP
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Breadboard (solderless)

Circulation Information

House Location: WILLIS, DP, & FRISCO LANDING
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Intel Galileo Board (Multiple Copies)

Specifications and Info.

Description: Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip. It’s the first board based on Intel® architecture designed to be hardware and software pin-compatible with Arduino shields designed for the Uno R3.

Included

One item in case

Circulation Information

House Location: DP
Catalog Record: Check Availability / Place a Hold
Fines Rate: $10 per day late

Shields

Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit v.1.1 by Adafruit
Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz 12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It's low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer. This shield is a kit, and comes with all parts you need to build it.
Adafruit Ultimate GPS Logger Shield by Adafruit
Brand new and better than ever, we've replaced our Adafruit GPS shield kit with this assembled shield that comes with an Ultimate GPS module. This GPS shield works great with either UNO or Leonardo Arduinos and is designed to log data to an SD card. Or you can leave the SD card out and use the GPS for a geocaching project, or maybe a music player that changes tunes depending on where you are in the city.
Adafruit RGB LCD Shield Kit by Adafruit
This new Adafruit shield makes it easy to use a 16x2 Character LCD. We really like the RGB LCDs we stock in the shop both the RGB negative and RGB positive. Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That's half of the pins available on a classic Arduino!
Adafruit CC3000 WiFi Shield with Onboard Ceramic Antenna by Adafruit
The CC3000 hits that sweet spot of usability, price and capability. It uses SPI for communication (not UART!) so you can push data as fast as you want or as slow as you want. It has a proper interrupt system with IRQ pin so you can have asynchronous connections. It supports 802.11b/g, open/WEP/WPA/WPA2 security, TKIP & AES. A built in TCP/IP stack with a "BSD socket" interface. TCP and UDP in both client and server mode, up to 4 concurrent sockets. It does not support "AP" mode, it can connect to an access point but it cannot be an access point.
Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino by Adafruit
We've taken our popular Adafruit PN532 breakout board and turned it into a shield - the perfect tool for any 13.56MHz RFID or NFC application. The Adafruit NFC shield uses the PN532 chip-set (the most popular NFC chip on the market) and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. This chipset is very powerful, and can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and 'act' like a NFC tag. While the controller has many capabilities, our Arduino library currently only supports reading/writing tags, and does not support phone-to-shield communication, tag emulation, or other more advanced features at this time.
Adafruit Assembled Data Logging Shield for Arduino by Adafruit
Here's a handy Arduino shield. We've had a lot of people looking for a dedicated and well-designed data logging shield. We worked hard to engineer an inexpensive but well-rounded design. Not only is it easy to assemble and customize, it also comes with great documentation and libraries.
Adafruit Ethernet Shield by Adafruit
The W5500 Ethernet Shield for Arduino from Seeed Studio is a great way to set up your projects with internet connectivity with just a single chip. Similar to the Arduino Ethernet Shield, but with a newer chipset, this ethernet shield supports both TCP and IP Protocols in TCP, UDP, ICMP, IPv4, ARP, IGMP, and PPoE format. The RJ45 ethernet port is also low enough so you can stack another shield on top of it.
Adafruit 1.8" Color TFT Shield with MicroSD and Joystick by Adafruit
This lovely little shield is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. We took our popular 1.8" TFT breakout board and remixed it into an Arduino shield complete with microSD card slot and a 5-way joystick navigation switch (with a nice plastic knob)! Since the display uses only 4 pins to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used easily to add a display & interface without exhausting the memory or pins.
Arduino interface shield for Scientific Probeware by Vernier
Make connections from Arduino microcontrollers to Vernier sensors.

2 analog sensor ports (BTA sockets), 2 digital sensor ports (BTD sockets), reset button, general-purpose button, indicator LED, multiplexer to allow auto-ID to work on both channels.
Supported microcontrollers: SparkFun Arduino RedBoard, Arduino UNO, Arduino Leonardo, Intel Galileo.

Range: 0 to 200 NTU; Typical resolution: 0.25 NTU; Standard: StablCAL Formazin Standard 100 NTU; Accuracy: ±2 NTU for readings under 25 NTU; ±5% of readings above 25 NTU; LED wavelength: 890 nm.
RGB LCD 16x2 by Adafruit
Specifications:
-16 characters wide, 2 rows
-Multi-color text on dark background
-Connection port is 0.1" pitch, single row for easy breadboarding and wiring
-Pins are documented on the back of the LCD to assist in wiring it up
-Single RGB LED backlight included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM and uses much less power than LCD with EL (electroluminescent) backlights
-Each R, G, & B LED has a 200 ohm resistor in series so you can power the backlight from 3V or 5VDC. R forward voltage is ~2.2V, G & B are ~3.4V
-Can be fully controlled with only 6 digital lines! (Any analog/digital pins can be used) and 3 PWM pins for the backlight
-Built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the HD44780 datasheet for the full character set
-Up to 8 extra characters can be created for custom glyphs or 'foreign' language support
-Comes with 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header
-Screen Dimensions: 27mm x 71mm / 1.1" x 2.8"
RGB Matrix Shield by Adafruit
Note that this shield is just a wiring adapter, if you have a Metro 328 you can only use 16x32 or possibly 32x32 matrices before you run out of RAM. For big panels, use a Metro M0 or M4 - those will work best thanks to their enormous RAM.
I2C Controlled + Keypad Shield Kit for 16x2 LCD by Adafruit
Dimensions: 2.1" x 3.2" For use with 16x2 Character displays Plug and play with any Arduino 'classic' - UNO, duemilanove, diecimilla, etc as well as Arduino Mega R3. Uses only the I2C pins - Analog 4 & 5 on classic Arduinos, Digital 20 and 21 on Arduino Mega R3 This board/chip uses I2C 7-bit address 0x20

Sensors

ADXL335 Board v2 by Adafruit
We've updated our favorite triple-axis accelerometer to now have an on-board 3.3V regulator - making it a perfect choice for interfacing with a 5V microcontroller such as the Arduino. This breakout comes with 3 analog outputs for X, Y and Z axis measurements on a 0.75"x0.75" breakout board. The ADXL335 is the latest and greatest from Analog Devices, known for their exceptional quality MEMS devices. The VCC takes up to 5V in and regulates it to 3.3V with an output pin. The analog outputs are ratiometric: that means that 0g measurement output is always at half of the 3.3V output (1.65V), -3g is at 0v and 3g is at 3.3V with full scaling in between.
Maxbotix Ultrasonic Rangefinder - LV-EZ1 by Adafruit
LV-EZ1 Maxbotix Ultrasonic Rangefinder provides very short to long-range detection and ranging, in an incredibly small package. It can detect objects from 0-inches to 254-inches (6.45-meters) and provides sonar range information from 6-inches out to 254-inches with 1-inch resolution. (Objects from 0 inches to 6-inches range as 6-inches). The interface output formats included are pulse width output (PWM), analog voltage output (Vcc/512 volts per inch), and serial digital output (9600 baud).
PIR (motion) sensor by Adafruit
PIR sensors are used to detect motion from pets/humanoids from about 20 feet away (possibly works on zombies, not guaranteed). This one has an adjustable delay before firing (approx 2-4 seconds), adjustable sensitivity and we include a 1 foot (30 cm) cable with a socket so you can easily reposition the sensor or mount it using the two drills on either side
Sensor Pak 900 by Adafruit
An assortment of the most common sensors used in electronics. Nine sensors and 3 additional components to interface with the 'analog world'.
Membrane Matrix Keypad by Adafruit
Punch in your secret key into this numeric matrix keypad. This keypad has 12 buttons, arranged in a telephone-line 3x4 grid. It's made of a thin, flexible membrane material with an adhesive backing (just remove the paper) so you can attach it to nearly anything. The keys are connected into a matrix, so you only need 7 microcontroller pins (3-columns and 4-rows) to scan through the pad.
Adafruit 9-DOF Absolute Orientation IMU Fusion Breakout - BNO055
Bosch is the first company to get this right by taking a MEMS accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope and putting them on a single die with a high speed ARM Cortex-M0 based processor to digest all the sensor data, abstract the sensor fusion and real-time requirements away, and spit out data you can use in quaternions, Euler angles or vectors.
Reflective IR Sensor with 470 and 10K Resistors
These sensors are handy when you want to detect if something has passed by the sensor, or a very simple hand-detector. Also sometimes these are used as rotary encoder, if the encoder wheel has black and white stripes, the photo sensor is fast enough to tell you the RPM.

Looking for More Sensors?

You can use the Vernier Arduino Shield to connect to The Spark's scientific probeware, or you can use the littleBits Arduino module, perfboards, and proto modules to build you own sensors, connect to their input modules, etc.

The Spark

Arduino

Kits and Boards

Arduino Esplora

Specifications and Info.

Included

Circulation Information

Arduino Mega 2560

Specifications and Info.

Circulation Information

Arduino Uno boards (Multiple Copies)

Specifications and Info.

Circulation Information

Arduino Starter Pack

Specifications and Info.

Included

Circulation Information

Breadboard (solderless)

Circulation Information

Intel Galileo Board (Multiple Copies)

Specifications and Info.

Included

Circulation Information

Shields

Sensors

Looking for More Sensors?

Additional Links