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Working Title

Intro to Embedded Electronics and the Arduino Platform

What is the objective of this class?

The general goal of this class will be to teach people some basics about embedded electronics and the Arduino. By "embedded" I mean we will be working with DC circuits [not AC] of low voltage [9 volts and less]. I hope to use the students' experiences and feedback to actually create something that we can charge for in the future.

Current Lesson Plan

• Basics of Electricity
  • What is Electricity? (crude explanation)
  • Models/Analogies/Terminology (How to think about electricity "inuitively")
  • Schematics and Breadbords
    • Vocabularity of schematics
    • Turning schematics into physical circuits
  • Ohm's Law
  • Calculating power consumption
• Components (for each: explain(characteristics && (applications || example circuits)))
  • Resistors
  • Diodes and LEDs
  • Transistors
  • Capacitors
  • ???ICs and Logic Circuits???
• ???Maybe take a break here to let it sink in???
• Arduino Basics
  • What is a microcontroller?
    • What's the difference b/w the atmega on my Arduino and my core 2 duo?
    • What can it do? How does it understand and interact w/ the world?
  • Basics of the Arduino Environment
  • Blink (Compiling and Uploading)
  • Programming Basics
    • Statements/Sequences (modifying blink sketch)
    • Data Types and Variables
    • Flow Control
      • Conditionals
      • Iterative Structures
    • Functions
      • Declaring
      • Return Types
      • Scope
    • Libraries (What are they? How do I use them?)
    • Digital Communication
      • Overview and Types
      • Communicating with computers over serial protocol
      • Communicating with other circuits/ICs/microcontrollers

How I want to organize this course

I want to organize this course to be heavy on basic electronics and then just a general introduction to Arduino to get people moving on their own. After examining the learning curve of myself and others, I noticed that it plateaus once the users must break past examples and build their own circuits. The Arduino has a wealth of examples and information so this plateua can come late, but it can get confusing pretty quick if you don't understand the circuits you are using and you don't understand why it isn't working.

Materials and Grouping

For now, I think everyone should bring as much of their own materials as possible. I think we should bring a few Arduinos and break into groups. Defnitelty bring your own laptop with the Arduino software installed and ready. I can possibly buy some cheap breadboards and components and be compensated at the end of the night. ???Eventually, all materials should be purchased by us and become part of the course fee???. I am still thinking of the best way to handle this for the moment. It may be that I construct all the example circuits in part one and everyone else watches and takes notes.

Discussion and Feedback

The lesson plan and organization is a work in progress. I need your initial feedback to iron out the details. Please fill in stuff here about what you want to see, how long this class should be, etc. * Have we decided on a location? I can host at my place in Metairie if you want, especially if the group is small (under 10) it might work well. - MikePerry

Attendees

• BenjaminEckel
• SimonDorfman (my electrician friend, JoshScalf , is also interested in this class)
• MichaelDeese (I'm really interested in learning more about schematics and how to read them)
• JasperFields
• MarcCenac (Co-worker of Ben)
• MikePerry
• AlexWalker
• JacksonLynch

-- BenjaminEckel - 27 May 2009