First Sensor Project

[n1mie]

I received my first Arduino (actually two, an Uno and a Leonardo) a few weeks ago. I've tinkered with them primarily with the LEDs and the serial port. Then I received my LCD and fiddled with that some. Today I finally finished my first sensor based project. This was a lot more challenging then I thought it would be. I bought stuff that looked plug and play. Then I found it was going to be more challenging, so I bought more, and so forth. Now I have a huge pile of sensors (all of which I have plans to use), but none of them are quite as plug-n-play as the sales pages make them seem. The one I finally got working was a one-wire based temperature sensor. The sales page (not Adafruit, I do have a bunch of their stuff and I'm getting there soon) made it seem like it was a perfect fit for Arduino (and it is, sort of). But for a beginner I found that the device, which comes with leads, couldn't plug into the Arduino with the provided leads, they didn't match up to anywhere on the board. There was no place that had +5v, ground, and a digital input side by side in the correct sequence. So I used some Adafruit breadboard wires to go from the sensor to the Arduino. But then I had problems getting the sketch to compile. After running in circles for a little while I learned there was an updated version of the libraries that were necessary for the Uno (v1.0 Arduino). Tada, got that working. Then I decided to add the LCD (the keyboard-shield version). Again things weren't simple. Took me awhile to determine the right libraries for that. Then took me more time to find that the pin alignments weren't the same on the output (upper side) of the shield as they were on the input (Arduino side). But again I conquered. Then I decided to play with my just received Adafruit clear case. I like it, it is a great design. But unfortunately the LCD shield (a) can't fit on the Arduino and align with the holes and (b) doesn't align with the holes on it's own. So I'll need a new LCD screen just to use with the case (not a big deal as I have tons of projects in mind and many will need LCDs). Generally I am very excited about this arena, but the learning curve is a lot steeper than I anticipated. I know I am up to the task, this is nothing compared to what I've learned for work. It's just going to take more planning, focus, and determination than I expected. The end will be well worth the means. I have great plans for several projects to enhance my home or my hobbies. For example before winter I'm going to design a system that measures the temperature in several areas of the room, then use the multiple inputs to start and stop the pellet stove. This will be a dramatic improvement over the thermostat I use now which is too close to the pellet stove. Anyway, thanks to the community and Adafruit for supporting such a cool device.

[Franklin97355]

Posts, as with programming languages benefit from punctuation and white space.

[adafruit_support_rick]

n1mie-
Glad to hear that you're getting some traction! Learning curves always turn out to be steeper than anticipated, don't they? Seems like I'm always climbing one or another. But it sounds like you're well on your way. Congratulations!