Arduino Experience

I am going to be a junior in college this fall as a mechanical engineer. For the last two years, I have been a part of a robotics team, mostly doing Solid Works designing, but I am really interested in programming. Our team used Arduinos on our robots so I have wanted to learn how to program one for a while, especially since my friends and I decided to make our own robotics team for next year. I thought that helping on the programming end would be fun so learning Arduino coding has become a goal for me. 

This summer I am working in a mechatronics lab and I volunteered to work on part of a project that uses Arduino -- a great excuse to learn! I was able to find an Arduino Mega in the lab along with a bread board, LED light, a USB cord, and a 220 ohm resistor. I downloaded the Arduino software on my laptop and got started with the built in examples.

With the combination of the Arduino website Built-in-Examples page and the actual examples in the program I started playing. The programs were super straight forward and I had no problems with the software or understanding the code. I found it very much like C++. I was only able to work through a couple of examples that involved the few pieces of equipment that I had, but it was very educational. I wish there was more that I could do with an LED light besides make it blink or fade!

With my one day of experience, I would say that picking up Arduino coding is not hard. The syntax doesn't look very complicated, especially if you have some programming background. There are tons of resources available online if you ever need help to learn something. I am excited to learn more and see what else I can do with Arduino!