more tutorials?

[adafruit]

i did not abandon the starter pack tutorials project
but i am tired of people emailing me constantly
and posting here constantly
and PMing me constantly
and pestering me constantly



as a result i am not as excited about it especially as each tutorial lesson takes about 20 hour to write

the starter pack kit is sold at an big discount and the tutorials are freely given but many people seem to think that it is their right to have me generate tutorials at their demand. until that ends, i put the project on hiatus

[GAHorton]

hey, thanks for all of your hard work!

i got my arduino this week and plowed through the lessons and it was really great to get me started.

If people are that clamoring over more projects, why not pick this up: http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails ... lick=19209

there are also a lot of projects on the arduino.cc website, although not as thorough as the lady ada ones, they are good.

your projects have inspired me to go back to school full time (after a 2 year hiatus of not knowing what to do/ being a bicycle mechanic) and get a EECS degree.

as a last note, i found a photoresistor in my kit and i didn't see it used in any of the lessons. Did i miss something?

again A HUGE THANK YOU for all of the FREE time you put into all of this for us!

[adafruit]

i dont have that book but i dont believe it covers more than what is already in the tutorials i posted. (it is physical tho)
if you're missing a part, email support@adafruit to get it
im feeling less grumpy so ill try to work on 'em some more...

[GAHorton]

i'm not missing anything, just a photo resistor was included in my kit and i didn't see it used in any lessons...

[westfw]

(it is physical tho)

Have you considered setting up an account at one of the self-publishing-on-demand sites like lulu.com ? I don't know how much work would be involved in reformatting the tutorials for a printed page, but the (end-user) costs look pretty reasonable; I could buy a 100 page letter-sized color document for about $20 (not including any profit for the writer), which I daresay is probably cheaper than I could print it... (I don't know if the quality is appropriate for the photos that are so well used in the tutorials, but it might be worth a try.)
(online stuff is nice, but sometimes a paper copy just feels better.)

[adafruit]

yup im investigating this. but first i have to finish this xbee kit

[big93]

yay! xbee!


::::: harasses ladyada for more tutorials ::::::

jk, do them when you want idc

[coffeeandsparks]

thanks ladyada
for the free tutoring

i hope you get time to go to some more shows or conventions in 2009

[MattieShoes]

I just got my starter kit today, and finished soldering the proto-board a few hours ago. For what it's worth, everything worked perfectly straight out of the box, even on 64 bit Vista

Did I miss a memo? There are tutorials?! Or are you talking about the lessons here?

There's no reason you have to write the tutorials yourself, you know. There's plenty of geeks around dying to show off their knowledge! Define a standard tutorial/lesson format, announce a contest for best lesson, and give a lucky winner a free lilypad or some such. Heck, you'd probably get a lot of submissions with no prize at all It'd still probably cost you 20 hours to manage it, but you might get several lessons out of it.

Or another, less time consuming tack could be forum-based challenges... "Make your arduino do *this*" with an associated forum for people to post how they did it, discuss methods, whatever.

Or have people try to solve the problems on http://projecteuler.net/ using their arduino. I confess I'm tempted to try that myself

I appreciate the lessons on your page though -- It's the clearest, most thorough, and easiest introduction to the arduino that I've found.

And to whoever mentioned the light dependent resistor included with no suggestions on how to use it...
Throw it in series with a resistor and read values in between the two (like a voltage divider basically). Now you have an ambient light meter. Throw the LDR inside a straw wrapped in electrical tape. Now you've got a directional light meter. Use the serial port to periodically record light levels. Use ambient light to control whether some other light source is on. Solve the flickering issue. Put colored filters in front of it and detect certain wavelengths. Get another arduino and allow them to talk wirelessly via LEDs and LDRs. The only limit here is your imagination.

[MattieShoes]

Hah, I solved a project euler problem with my arduino.
screenshot

[westfw]

There's plenty of geeks around dying to show off their knowledge!

Alas, "showing off your knowledge" and writing a clear and cogent tutorial (especially for beginners) have quite a vast gulf in between them. Lady Ada has set the bar quite high; just taking comparable pictures is no trivial task!

( people who think otherwise are invited to practice over at http://www.instructables.com )

[MattieShoes]

The lessons are excellent! I was just brainstorming possible ways to get a larger tutorial base without requiring so much of one person's life

[-NKT-]

I'd just like to point out, in this, the official thread, that the tutorials are brilliant, and the feedback I've left should not be regarded as negative in any way!

If there are newer and more tutorials coming, then great. The one's I've got are already teaching me a huge amount.

I'm an ex-aerospace engineer who is now a locksmith and tool designer, I've got a mechanical background and I've been doing computers since my first ones which were less powerful than these little Aurduinos (ZX81 - 1K of RAM without an expansion pack) but... I'd never yet taken the jump to learning microprocessors and PICs. I spent hundreds on some, many years ago, and they are still in a little bag somewhere, awaiting my building all the extra bits that you need to program them!

Thanks to these tutorials, and especially the starter pack, I've taken the jump. Tonight I programmed up a number of ways to flash a 5 LED strip, I think I stopped at 7. I didn't move from my PC for a solid 3 hours, as I moved bits on the breadboard, debugged code and generally fiddled and followed.

The starter pack I didn't need to buy, I've got every component that comes with it, and could probably have made up the protoshield and motor boards without buying more than the PCB and a couple of bits. However, I did buy it, both to support LadyAda and to make my life easier. But I'd not have bought any of it if the tutorials weren't there, holding my hand for those first few steps to get that LED to flash...

LadyAda, thanks.

[phil.drummond]

The tutorials are -why- I'm re-learning micro controllers and 'C' :)
I read the one with the "dirty cat" example and was hooked. I ordered a kit that evening! (actually two :)

Adafruit! == Smart people!

[jerrya]

I just want to jump in on the dog pile of others who got started with Arduino because of the tutorials and the starter kit. I had been reading about all the stuff people were doing with Arduino on the Make blog, looked into it a little, felt somewhat intimidated, and then BAM! I found the tutorials, realized all I needed to get started was in the starter kit, and got to it. That was last year. Since then I've gotten a coworker to get a starter kit for his 11 year old son, done a few of my own projects, and bought some other stuff from the 'fruit stand.

So, I guess I'm saying, thanks for the tutorials, which really are what sold me your kit.