Finally breaking the plastic on the Arduino kit I was surprised on how much initial work there was to get things going. I waded through boxes of miscellaneous components which all appeared alien to me. It reminded me a lot of playing with Lego as a kid, all these separate vessels of parts with an ominous booklet telling you how to use them.

Not only was there the task of getting oriented with all the components, but I also had to download and IDE for the Arduino as well. Finally, once all the setup instructions had been checked off I was able to start my first project.

The first task is to get an LED to light up. This got me to understand the different ports on the Arduino Board, as well as using the grounding wire. Voltage and current were also introduced topics that felt like old relics getting dusted off in my mind. Resistors and their metric of an OHM’s are still going to need a solid refreshing since they are quite confusing to me.

After picking through every step I finally got the LED to light and it felt great!

My next step is using switches!