Blum Video Tutorials Wiki Trying To Learn

Tonights work on microcontrollers involved too many things for me to get very far on actually making the Arduino perform tricks.

Because of not having enough hours in a day and trying to juggle too many balls at once, I wasnt able to watch all of the first three Jeremy Blum Intro To Arduino video tutorials and do all the exercises in them before the May 15 meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group. I finally got back to working on the videos and exercises for a short time tonight. However, not too much progress was made in the short time I had available. Once again, too many irons in the fire...

Tonight I was working on the first exercise in the #2 video, which involves hooking up the Arduino and
a switch to a breadboard, writing and uploading a program to the Arduino, then using the switch to make the light blink. If all I was doing was connecting hardware, writing simple programs, then running the programs, I probably could have done all of the #2 video tonight.

However, in addition to connect hardware / write program / run program, I was trying to understand more about the hardware (e.g. reading some background info about LEDs). I was also trying to understand the code I was writing (e.g. making sure I knew where to use parentheses and where to use braces), creating new pages for the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group wiki, adding and revising content for the wiki pages, trying to figure out what to write for todays blog post, and trying to figure out how to use the multi-meter to replicate what Jeremy was doing on the video with his multi-meter. He didnt explain how to use the meter (you need to know how or figure it out on your own), so I had to read up on using a multi-meter.

To make significant progress on videos #2 and #3, I need to set aside a three or four hour block, probably on Friday night or Saturday. Hoping to get both videos done this weekend.

Stay tuned for more progress reports on my journey through the Blum video tutorials.

In a future post, Ill also discuss the details of the video tutorials and the electronic hardware needed for learning the basics of using microcontrollers with the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

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MCU Beginners SparkFun Tutorials

For all us microcontroller (MCU) beginners, there are many online tutorials and other helpful web resources about electronics and related MCU topics.

A worthwhile set of tutorials for beginners participating in the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group learning the basics of using microcontrollers sessions is the SparkFun Tutorials. According to the website there are 193 tutorials in the SparkFun collection. A beginner could spend weeks just reading the tutorials and never get any MCU hardware circuits built or software / firmware programs written for the MCUs. And if you start looking around at electronics tutorials that arent on the SparkFun site, youll have months of reading to plow through what the web has to offer.

As an alternative to having MCU and electronics beginners spend weeks or months reading tutorials, this post will point you to two particular SparkFun tutorials you may want to read if youre doing the first three Jeremy Blum Arduino Basics video tutorials and you know nothing or very little about electronics.

In Jeremys #2 video, one of the steps is to connect a resistor to the breadboard. Resistors come with many different values or resistances, which is often measured in ohms. Because you need to use resistors with specific values for different circuits, and because resistors dont have numbers on them to tell you how many ohms their resistance is, you need to be able to interpret the resistor color code to chose the correct value resistor for a given circuit. The SparkFun Resistors tutorial will explain the color code and many other facts about resistors.

In Jeremys #2 video, he also uses an electronics multimeter. Youll need to use the multimeter to
measure or check many things when you go through the Arduino Basics video tutorials and probably in every electronics project you do after you finish learning the basics of microcontrollers. If you have previously used a multimeter and know how to use it to measure voltage, amperage and resistance, youre all set and dont need this tutorial. But if youre like me and havent used a multimeter for a few years, or havent ever used one, you probably want to read over the SparkFun How to Use a Multimeter tutorial, or maybe the instruction manual for the multimeter youre going to use for your MCU or electronics work. As you can see from this picture of a SparkFun digital multimeter, there are quite a few settings for the meter selector switch, and only one of them will be the correct setting to use for checking a specific electronic component or circuit.

As you go through the Arduino Basics video tutorials, there will be other topics you need to figure out or read about. If you like the SparkFun tutorials, check to see if they have a tutorial for your specific topic of interest. If they dont have a tutorial appropriate to your needs, do a Google search and youll find lots of other tutorials or pages explaining the basics of whatever youre interested in. Another resource to remember is Wikipedia --- its almost always a good first stop to read about the basics of any topic, including electronics.

A future post on this blog will list a bunch of links to online resources for microcontrollers. If you have any specific resources to suggest, or if you would like to see resources listed for a specific topic, send me an email at arcatabob (at) gmail [dott] com.

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